Miss Transsexual Brazil 2012 Pageant

Brazil has been a good news, bad news place for our transsisters living there.   While this emerging South American economic power nation has free SRS coverage in their national health plan, is the home of trans supermodel Lea T and has had transwomen openly walking the runways at Rio's fashion week since Roberta Close first did so in the 1980's, at the same time it has seen a horrific spike in anti-trans violence and murders aimed at our Brazilian trans sisters.

Back on October 30 the first ever Miss Transsexual Brazil 2012 pageant happened in Rio de Janeiro, and here's some video from AFP documenting what happened during that first ever pageant  

Shut Up Fool Awards-Fall Back 2012 Edition

Early Sunday morning daylight savings time ends in the United States, so at 2 AM you get to turn those clocks back and get an extra hour of partying or sleep.

That also means I have to remember to write the CST abbreviation behind my posts for the next few months as well.

Something else I remembered along with you TransGriot readers is that today is Friday, and that means it's time to reveal this week's edition of the Shut Up Fool Awards.

Every Friday since January 2009 I shine a bright spotlight on the fool, fool or group of fools who went out of their way to prove how jaw-droppingly ignorant they are or lacking in basic common sense and knowledge, and it's my duty to call their azzes out.

So let's get right to it..

Honorable mention number one goes to that teabagging humanitarian Rep Steve King, (R-IA) 

Please Christine Vilsack, beat his azz on Tuesday and remove this fool from Congress.

Honorable mention number two goes to Michael Brown, FEMA director under GW Bush who had the nerve to open his mouth and criticize the current director for responding too quickly to the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. 

Dude, you need to drink a 2 liter sized bottle of shut the hell up because you have no room to criticize anybody after the 'heck of a job' you did during Katrina.


Honorable mention number three goes to Fox Noise's John Stossel who is still pimping the free market Kool-Aid by stating on O'Reilly's show "Government shouldn't rebuild after disasters, it should be "free, private individuals who have the money.

Yo John, where is that rush of free, private individual money?  Oh yeah, being wasted trying to oust President Obama from office.

This week's Shut Up Fool winner is radfem Roseanne Barr for letting fly with transphobic tweets, crying white women's tears about it after she got called out on them by me and countless other peeps in the trans community, and then doubling down on the insults and some weird conflation of NAMBLA.

.Roseanne Barr, shut up fool!
.

Why Is A So Called GLBT Election Exit Poll Excluding The 'T'?

Since the 1990's a consortium of five networks NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and Fox along with the Associated Press have contracted with the New Jersey based Edison Research polling firm to conduct a national exit poll not only during the congressional midterms, but also during presidential elections.

In the 2000, 2004 and 2008 presidential elections 4% of the respondents that took part in election exit polling have responded YES to the question, “Are you gay, lesbian, or bisexual?”

Notice who isn't included in this question despite the fact that some of my transbrothers and transsisters identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual.

Joe Lenski, the executive vice president of Edison Research, told the Washington Blade that the exit poll for the 2012 presidential election won’t seek to identify transgender voters through a lengthy questionnaire given to voters as they leave polling places across the country.

“We’ve tried to keep that wording as consistent as possible across elections and that’s the way it’s been asked in the last decade at least,” he said.

Umm Joe, the weak azz 'that's the way it's been done before' excuse doesn't compute with me, who has voted in every presidential and congressional midterm election since 1980 and other trans voters around the country.  It's also frankly insulting to us as well. 

Some of those people you ask those questions as they leave polling places happen to be trans people who are also part of the rainbow community. 

It's important that we transfolks be counted in your polling data in light of the fact we are not only American citizens exercising our civic duty, but we're working to get trans human rights laws passed all over this country.   We need to have that data handy to get reluctant legislators hipped to the fact they have trans constituents in their districts.

It's November Sweeps Month-Here Comes The Trans Themed Programming

The Nielsen Company conducts the national samples that determine the fate of television and cable programs, who gets the advertising dollars, and the jobs of television executives and the actors and producers of that programming through their Nielsen Ratings that are composed of a cross-section of representative homes in the top 56 TV markets throughout the United States.

Nielsen uses two types of meters to capture how TV is used: set meters capture set-tuning only and report what channel is being tuned, while People Meters go a step further and gather information about who is watching in addition to what channel is being tuned.

Paper diaries are used in the remaining television markets to collect viewing information from Nielsen’s sample homes during what are called 'sweeps' rating periods.   Every year Nielsen processes approximately 2 million paper diaries from households across the country for the months of November, February, May and July.  During those sweeps periods seven-day diaries (or eight-day diaries in homes with DVRs) are mailed to homes to keep a tally of what is watched on each television set and by whom.

Over the course of a sweeps period, diaries are mailed to a new panel of homes each week and at the end of the month, all of the viewing data from the individual weeks is aggregated as the television and cable execs, actors, writers and producers of those shows nervously await the results.

If you've noticed, during sweeps month the networks and cable provides also roll out programming designed to get as many viewers tuning into their programming as possible.  
That means the most provocative and drama filled episodes of scripted shows get rolled out and documentary news shows like ABC's 20/20 or What Would You Do try to tackle controversial or other topics designed to get maximum viewereship and attention during that sweeps period.

Over the last few years, that means trans themed programming and with the November sweeps period getting started October 25 and running through November 21, we're about to see another mixed bag of good, bad and ugly trans related programming all in the name of boosting those TV and cable rating at our community's expense.

Whether it's tonight's ABC 20/20 special with Barbara Walters in which she revisits the trans kids she interviewed a few years ago in the 'My Secret Self' show to Iyanla Vanzandt's Fix My Life show on OWN that was aired October 27 involving a young trans man and his minister father who is resisting the transition, the undeniable fact is that people are fascinated by and hungry for information about trans people.


 

Unfortunately it's also a lesson the talk shows learned back in the late 80's -90's.  I have video scattered throughout my TransGriot archives of various talk shows from the late 80's to early 90's that respectfully discussed the topic of transsexuality.   Believe it or not even Jerry Springer did so until he decided to go tabloid in 1994 and ride outrageousness to ratings success.  



Maury Povich then joined in with his 'Man or Woman' shows that conveniently were broadcast during sweeps month to compete with the 'trans gone wild' stuff that Jerry was putting out there to the world.


Far too often the transpeople featured in the Springer and Povich transploitation shows were predominately transwomen and transmen of color who got a free trip to New York or Chicago and $500 to get their faces on national TV. 

However, they didn't consider as one of my homegirls unfortunately found out to her horror that it might have deleterious effects on their lives long after the camera stopped rolling and they spent that $500 check they received.

They also didn't consider that in their youthful rush to get their 15 minutes of fame, they made themselves and the whole trans community look stereotypically bad on national television.

So word to my trans younglings, especially trans younglings of color.  Just say no to transploitation.

But the messages I'm most desirous to get out there is that we transpeople are part of the diverse mosaic of human life, we deserve human rights coverage, to love and be loved for ourselves and the opportunity to live our lives to the best of our abilities.

Now that another sweeps period is upon us, let's hope that the messages from the shows that feature our images are the ones we want to send out to the world and are positive ones.


 

Last Day To Early Vote In Texas

If you haven't done so yet, today is your last opportunity to early vote in the Lone Star State from 7 AM to 7 PM, so head over to your nearest early voting polling center and get you vote on. 

If you don't do it today, you'll have to wait until Tuesday since the Republifools erased the last weekend before the election because they're 'scurred' of non-white turnout.

So handle your electoral business Texas TransGriot readers and everybody else this message applies to.

2012 TransGriot NFL Picks-Week 9

This week my fave NFL ballers come back from their bye week and welcome the Buffalo Bills and their former 2006 overall number one draft pick Mario Williams to Reliant Stadium.  

In addition to watching the AFC's best team continue their march toward home field advantage in the playoffs, we'll have one NFL game that will be watched by people on the liberal and conservative sides of politics for other reasons besides it being a clash featuring the last two Heisman Trophy winning quarterbacks.  

The Washington Redskins vs Carolina Panthers will be the latest test of the Redskins Election Predictor.  Since 1940, the Redskins last home game before a presidential election has uncannily predicted the eventual winner in 17 out of 18 elections. If the Redskins win that game, the incumbent party goes on to win that election. If the Redskins lose, the party out of power wins the election.  

So you know the Obama administration and every Obama supporter in the country will be rooting for RG3 and the Skins.  The Republicans and Mitt Romney will be rooting for a Black man for once and the Panthers.

But back to the prognostication battle.  I had a 10-4 record in Week 8 and picked up a game on the 9-5 birthday boy (it was Monday for Mr. Watts) when the Broncos beat the Saints, so my lead over him is now 4 games going into the second half of the season.  


Mike's picks are here.   Mine's are in underlined bold print.   Only fourteen games to pick once again with the Patriots, Jets 49ers and Rams being on their bye week.  I'm still shooting for that perfect week after narrowly missing it in Week 7.


(Singing) Hail to the Redskins...hail victory.

Week 8 records 
TransGriot   10-4
Mike Watts  9-5

2012 Season Records
TransGriot   73-45
Mike Watts 69-49

Week 9

Bye week
Patriots, Jets, 49ers, Rams

Thursday, November 1
Chiefs at Chargers

Sunday, November 4
Panthers at Redskins
Cardinals at Packers
Lions at Jaguars
Bears at Titans
Broncos at Bengals
Ravens at Browns
Bills at Texans
Dolphins at Colts

Afternoon Games
Vikings at Seahawks
Buccaneers at Raiders
Steelers at Giants

Sunday Night Game
Cowboys at Falcons

Monday, November 5
Eagles at Saints
. 

Mia Nikasimo: Transgender Community As An African In The Diaspora

One of the things I love to highlight is trans voices of the African Diaspora, and one of those voices from the Mother Continent speaking eloquently for people on the second largest continent on the planet has been Nigerian Mia Nikasimo..

Not only do I enjoy reading their words and wanting to learn about their perspectives of being a transperson in various nations on the African continent,  as a child of the African Diaspora I extend an open invitation to my Diaspora trans brothers and trans sisters there, the Caribbean and elsewhere to guest post here if you feel the need to do so. 

But here's a taste of what Mia had to say about the subject.

When I think of the plight of the transgender community as an African in the Diaspora I’m reminded of all those little murders that happen daily in the name of propriety or why most of them happen in the western world. In Africa most transgender people are underground so nobody knows any better but as a friend argues it is no surprise. “If African transgender people were out they’d suffer the same plight as their sistren and brethren in the west,” and don’t we know it?

This post she wrote at Black Looks definitely needs to be signal boosted.

It's Hell To Be Trans In Kuwait

While we think we have it tough being trans in the United States, there are some parts of the world where just trying to live our trans lives can lead to severe harassment, arrest or death.

Our transsisters in Kuwait since 2007 have been dealing with the deleterious fallout from an amendment to Article 198 of the Kuwaiti Penal Code that arbitrarily criminalizes 'imitating the opposite sex in that nation.  

It has led to a rise in transphobic discrimination against trans women and according to a Human Rights Watch January 2012 report and trans activists in that nation, they face daily persecution, physical, sexual, and emotional abuse both at the hands of the police and the Kuwaiti public.  This is despite the fact that GID is officially recognized by the Kuwaiti Health Ministry as a legitimate medical condition

Police were given the freedom to determine whether a person’s appearance constitutes “imitating the opposite sex” without any specific criteria being laid down for what exactly constitutes violating Article 198.

Human Right Watch documented cases in which trans individuals were being arrested even when they were wearing male clothes and later forced by police to dress in women's clothing in order to claim they arrested them in that attire. 

Other Human Rights Watch cases documented interviewed trans women stating police arresting them because they had a soft voice or smooth skin.

A trans activist who spoke to Gay Middle East said, 'The situation in Kuwait is horrible for us, just intolerable. There are at least 13 transgender women in jail right now.' .Sheikh Sheikh Jaber Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah, the Prime Minister of Kuwait, denied was happening when he was approached by international human rights activists.  

The trans prisoners the prime minister claims were arrested for other offenses were not allowed by Kuwaiti authorities to be interviewed by human rights activists to corroborate the veracity of his statement.

Kuwaiti media has been gleefully pushing transphobic coverage of the harassment, which doesn't help the situation.     

There have been calls to not only to repeal that portion of Article 198, but release the trans women who are in Kuwaiti jails and stop the persecution of trans women in that nation.  

I know we have our own problems in the United States, and I've documented them in this blog's electronic pages.  But that shouldn't stop us from being concerned about what is happening to our trans sister's human rights in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.   

Political Football 2012

Washington Redskins football is always a popular ticket inside I-495 and the Washington DC area, but every four years the last Redskins home game before the election takes on a heightened significance with the inside the Beltway political pundit class because of the Redskins Game Election Predictor.

So what's the story behind the Redskins Game Election Predictor?

Since 1940, the Redskins last home game before a presidential election has presaged the eventual winner in 17 out of 18 elections. If the Redskins win that game, the incumbent party goes on to win that election. If the Redskins lose, the party out of power wins the election.

The only time the Redskins Game Election Predictor has been inaccurate was in 2004. The Green Bay Packers marched into FedEx Field on Halloween night and beat the Redskins 28-14 but GW Bush stole the election won anyway

The incumbent party in the White House this time is the Democrats and the Redskins will be playing the Carolina Panthers at FedEx Field on Sunday.   You can bet there will be some extra loud cheering for RG3 and company coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Obama campaign headquarters in Chicago and from every Obama supporter in the country for a Redskins victory.

Time for me to learn the Redskins fight song, too

VP Biden: Transgender Rights Are The Civil Rights Issue Of Our Times

I've always liked Vice President Joe Biden for a number of reasons, but I have even more reason to love him according to a HuffPo report.

He was visiting an Obama for America field office in Sarasota, FL yesterday when he struck up a conversation with a woman who was there at the office that according to the pool report has 'beautiful eyes'.

Their conversation was inaudible to the pool reporters, but Biden is reported to have said it 'is the civil rights issue of our times'.  The woman in question was identified Sarasota resident Linda Carragher Bourne. 

She said her daughter was Miss Trans New England and that she had asked Biden if he would help them.

"A lot of my friends are being killed, and they don't have the civil rights yet. These guys are gonna make it happen," Bourne told the reporter.

The commentary underscores the fact that when it comes to trans issues, the Obama Administration has been the best ever when it comes to trans human rights issues.  It's why many trans people supported him in 2008, and I'm proud as a trans African-American to see that a president who shares my ethnic background has been an ally to our community.

And as human rights warrior Julian Bond once said,  “The humanity of all Americans is diminished when any group is denied rights granted to others.”

Trans rights are a human rights issue, and anyone who thinks that we shouldn't have the same rights they do is making their own human rights less secure.

 

Happy Trans National Holiday 2012!

I call Halloween the 'Trans National Holiday' because its one of the times besides Mardi Gras when we could walk the streets as ourselves and not get hateraid directed at us.

While some people take the opportunity to dress up as their favorite horror movie character or whatever idea comes to their mind, many people in the trans community take the time to dress en femme or as drag kings.  

It's also the night that back in the day the elaborate drag balls would happen like the Finnies Ball on the South Side of Chicago, the events at Webster Hall and other venues in New York that had their roots in the Harlem Renaissance, and elsewhere in the country.   









Now the ballroom community ha picked up that torch, carried it into the 21st century and the legacy of those early balls lives on with them.

Scary Proposition For African-Americans

One of the things that sends shivers up my spine this Halloween is fast forwarding to November 6 and hearing the networks say, "We project Mitt Romney will be the next president of the United States." 

I also don't want to see the FOX noise gloating that will ensue.

It is why you've seen the long lines of African-Americans at the polls enduring waits in some cases of several hours to do so because to us the prospect of hearing those words and what they mean long term scares me and other African-Americans to death.

We fear a Romney presidency for starters because he will fill the Supreme Court and our federal judiciary with Robert Bork-Antonin Scalia clones.   His domestic policies as Rosie Perez stated, suck and that's before we even get to discussing his clueless foreign policy.

No, Mitt Romney scares the hell out of me and many African-American in this country, and we definitely want 4 more for POTUS 44.

A Tale Of Two Responses To Hurricane Sandy

If you needed any more evidence as to the vast chasm of difference between President Obama and Mitt Romney, all you needed to observe as prima facie evidence of it was their reactions and responses to Hurricane Sandy.

When the POTUS was asked how this would effect the election next week, President Obama responded with, “I am not worried at this point about the impact on the election, I am worried about the impact on families, I am worried about the impact on first responders, I am worried about the impact on our economy, and on transportation. The election will take care of itself next week.”




Mitt Romney on the other hand,  finished up his speech during an Ohio campaign stop by asking people to help their fellow Americans on the Atlantic coast. He said that not only are the people on the Atlantic coast counting on Ohio, but people in the entire nation are counting on Ohio. Because if Ohio votes me in as President, my guess is that I will be the next President of the United States.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

You guessed wrong Mittens.   Guess you forgot since you're suffering from Stage 3 Romnesia that you proposed during a GOP debate to kill FEMA or privatize it.

Republican Racism On Display

The debates are over, and now this long 2012 presidential campaign marathon has evolved into a sprint to the November 6 finish line in eight battleground states. 

Wisconsin, Colorado, Nevada, Florida, New Hampshire, Virginia and North Carolina are going to see a lot of visits by both campaigns from now until November 6.

Ohio and its must win 18 electoral votes are the big prize coveted by both campaigns.  Romney can't win without it, and while the POTUS has more paths to victory, he rather make life easier toward getting to a second term by capturing the Buckeye State.

Ohio's voters will have a major say in determining who will be standing in front of the Capitol taking the oath of office from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on January 21, 2013.

The stress inducing tightness of this race in the final days means that any unforced errors by either side are magnified, especially since early voting has already commenced in many of those battleground states. 

And the conservafool movement ain't handling that stress too well because in addition to allowing their misogny to run rampant with Senate candidates Rep. Todd Akin in Missouri, congressional deadbeat dad Rep. Joe Walsh in Illinois, and Richard Mourdock in Indiana leading the reprehensible way, their white sheets are showing too. 

They've been cutting loose with the overt and covert race baiting in their desperate attempt to try to stir up their bigot base as the clock ticks inexorably closer to November 6 and their defeat.

If it isn't media ho Donald Chump Trump one day with his yawn inducing bigoted 'October Non Surprise' demanding the POTUS release his college transcripts and passport records, it's John Sununu questioning his intelligence or hurling accusations that the only reason former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed the president for the second consecutive election cycle is 'because he's Black'.

Hey John, you and many of your Republifool voters are only voting for Mitt Romney because he's the incompetent white male in the race, so stop projecting.

Even Caribou Barbie crawled out from her Wasilla location to throw her race-baiting jab in at the POTUS.  Palin wrote a post on her FB page (she can write?) claiming he was 'shucking and jiving' about the Benghazi consulate attack in a desperate attempt to get back in Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes good graces and flagellate it into a scandal.

If you think I'm being harsh about calling the GOP racist, ain't nothin' I haven't said before on this blog.  Sadly I'll probably be writing another post about some foul racist elephant feces laden racism before the end of this month. 

Let me direct your attention to a current Republican and former aide to Secretary of State Powell in former Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson.

He's stating the white sheet wearing obvious and cosigning what every African-American voting for President Obama in this 2012 cycle has known since the 1970's 

 Lawrence Wilkerson: 'My Party Is Full Of Racists'

“My party, unfortunately, is the bastion of those people—not all of them, but most of them—who are still basing their positions on race.” said Wilkerson. “Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists, and the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander in chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin, and that’s despicable.”

Hey, I have to admit the man knows y'all well.  So do we, which is a major reason why the POTUS has 93% support in the African-American community and 70% support in the Latino one.  

Latinos are also are waking up, smelling the cafe de leche and noting that the GOP doesn't like them either On behalf of the Democratic Party I say gracias for driving the fastest growing voter bloc in this country in our direction because of your lack of multicultural vision . 

And yeah, as my Latina sister Rosie Perez pointed out, your shape shifting candidate's policies suck too.
.

Keep it KKKlassy, conservafools.   Y'all continue to be the party of choice for the bigots of America while the rest of us more forward, not backward to the mid 20th century in terms of race relations and social policy.

POTUS Ain't Moving Until January 2017

So Ann and Mitt, don't even bother to start packing.  We already have a highly qualified and competent  POTUS that is doing the job.   

He's cleaning up the mess that the previous incompetent white POTUS left him, and needs four more years to finish what he started.   Your vulture capitalist services will frack up this country are not required, especially since you made it quite clear you don't care about 47% of the US population.

I'd rather go forward, and not backward to the 20th century anyway.  

Thinking About You Peeps In The Path Of Hurricane Sandy

Since I've spent the majority of my life living on the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana, dealing with hurricanes and being prepared for them is one of the prices we pay for living in this part of the world.

I've ridden out everything from small tropical storms to nerve jangling ones such as Hurricane Betsy when I was living in New Orleans and 1983's Hurricane Alicia.

I'm not sellin' you woof tickets when I say to all my friends in the Northeast corridor that I feel your anxiety as a 900 mile wide Category 2 Hurricane Sandy inexorably comes closer to making landfall in New Jersey.   That's the worst part of it.  

All you can do is make sure you have your windows taped or boarded up, you have your hurricane supplies, and you have an emergency evacuation plan if things get serious.   And yes, for my trans family members hope you don't run into any transphobic bigotry or anti-trans hatred if you have to evacuate and seek shelter. 

So thinking about all my friends and TransGriot readers who are in the path of this storm.  I'm saying a few words of prayer for your safety .  I hope that Hurricane Sandy blows through the area as quickly as possible and causes as little damage and disruption to your lives once it does.. 

   

Still Pissed About Roseanne Barr's Transphobic Tweets

The passage of this weekend not only didn't lessen my anger about Roseanne Barr's jacked up transphobic tweets I put her and Kola Boof on blast for Friday, it poured gasoline on the smoldering anger I felt about it when I discovered this wasn't an isolated incident of transphobic bigotry coming from her. 

From 'Roseannearchy: Dispatches from the Nut Farm'

“Then the Transgendered versus the Butch Dyke wars started—to see two of those folks fighting about being female was quite an eye-opener for me. You haven’t lived until you have seen a huge guy with boobs talking about female hormones and deciding to keep his penis, and how that was a feminist issue.” – Roseanne Barr

Umm hmm...guess you'll be telling jokes from The Land next year.  

I find it laughable that you and your whyte radfem womyn gone wyld allies are bloviating about angry tweets aimed at you from righteously angry trans women reacting to the negativity your vanillacentric privileged behind put out there. 

Keep crying those White Women's Tears.  It ain't working because you privileged white feminists started this War on Transwomen beck in the 1970's and we're beyond tired of it.

Thanks to the Net trans women and our cis feminine allies now have the ability to return your transphobic rhetorical fire just as quickly as y'all put it out there.  Some of my trans sisters don't really care at this point if it hurts your feelings and tweaks your delicate precious nerves.  You damned sure didn't care about our feelings when you let fly with those comments and we see you and your feminist buddies as worse than our right wing conservafool oppressors. 

News flash, Roseanne.  The bathroom predators you rail about are cisgender people attacking trans people.  Bottom line is that your pimping of that demonstrably false bathroom predator meme has deleterious and real word effects on trans people's lives.   It not only fuels anti-trans hatred, but in some cases results in anti-trans violence aimed at transwomen and the people who give a damn about us.

Roseanne's clueless pushing of the bathroom predator meme is not only pathetically sad, it's par for the white feminist course. 

As long as it's transwomen, and especially non-white transwomen who are getting assaulted and killed, you don't give a rats anus that it's happening, nor are you concerned about doing anything to eradicate it.

Well, I am concerned about it and I do care what's happening to my sisters because there but for the grace of God go I in that situation. 

Your ill considered tweeted words needlessly poured gasoline on this testy situation and will lead to hatred and potential assaults not only aimed at us, but cis women who don't fit the Femininity Police standards on what and how a woman should look like and present herself in public. .

The trans women and the masculine appearing cis women who will experience those assaults will have you Roseanne and your radical feminist buddies to thank for it.

 

Dyssonance: Cloud Atlas Is A Film For Us

You know I enjoy my Arizona homegirl Dyss' thought provoking posts because she has the same talent of not only fearlessly and intelligently saying what needs to be said, but at time occasionally pissing you off in the process. 

In this post she discusses the just released Wachowski sibling film Cloud Atlas and adds her observations about it. 

This won’t make much sense to a lot of people, but Cloud Atlas is Our Film. And there isn’t a trans person in the film. But truly, this is a movie that is as rich and complex and deeply moving as the lives of Trans people, and it carries forward with so many themes that it resonates soundly with transness in a way that it id challenging to describe.

It is a movie for those who love, and for those who are loved. It is a film for those who struggle, who wonder, who hope.
It is awesome, and if you haven’t started making plans to see it, then you really should start to do so now…

This post definitely deserves to be signal boosted, and you can read it here.

1000th Post For 2012!

It's not even Election Day yet and you're looking at the 1000th post I've written this year. 

And note, that's just on my blog.

That makes the third straight year since 2010 that I've written that many posts, and that was also an election year in which.I finished with 1260 when the clock hit 11:59 PM CST.  

In 2011 it was my all time high of 1563 by the time the clock ushered in the New Year.

I doubt I'll exceed that number of posts by the time we hit New Year's Eve 2012, but I still have eight weeks left in this year.  I was actually trying to at times back off from that frenetic writing pace I had last year. I wanted to actually leave some time for me to chill, live my life, hang out with my friends and strictly limiting myself to three blog posts per day was a way in my mind to do that. .

Who was I kidding?  

This was a presidential election year, and news events here and around the world sometimes demand that I write more than three per day.   My status as an IFGE Trinity winning activist and major blogger sometimes meant that I needed to add my Afrocentric comments on issues of importance to the trans community.

And yes, sometimes I'm in hard solid thinking mode about something and it inspires me to write a post I have to put down for posterity or something happens that pisses me the hell off and I need to vent.

One post you will see on New Year's Eve is my 2012 Shut Up Fool of the Year one, and I'll have it out in time for you to read it before you get your New Year's Eve party and drink on.

And before I end this one, thank all you TransGriot readers who have surfed by here over the years and spent your valuable time reading what I have to say about the world as I see it.  I deeply appreciate it. 



  

I've Voted, The POTUS and FLOTUS Have Voted, Have You?

Early voting is going on in many locales in the United States in advance of our critical November 6 presidential election.

President Obama went back to Chicago last week to early vote while First Lady Michelle Obama did so via absentee ballot. 

The POTUS and FLOTUS have already early voted.  Have you done so yet?  If you have, I thank you very much for exercising your civic duty as an American citizen and making you voice heard.  

If you haven't and are eligible to do so, here's my commentary on that via Maya Wilkes from the dearly departed but beloved show Girlfriends.

Why the hell have you not taken your soul to the poll yet?  This is a potentially American history altering election that demands you cast your ballot if not for you, for the people who can't vote. 

I handled my early voting electoral business last Monday on the first day we were able to do so in the Lone Star State.  

I wasn't kidding when I wrote I was pissed off and highly motivated to fire Republicans at the ballot box. 

Got up, got dressed and walked to my nearby early voting polling station on a beautiful Houston chamber of commerce weather day.   I arrived there at 8:30 AM CDT to happily discover there was a line around the corner and out the door of the room housing the eSlate machines that was rapidly growing.  

It took me 40 minutes, but my electoral business is handled. 

Glad I did because it has been a record breaking first week for early voting in Texas.   I was part of that record breaking first day in which I and 47,902 other Harris County residents cast our ballots.  

That was 20 percent higher than the previous record of 39,201 cast four years ago.   Speaking of Texas early voting, you have until Friday, November 2 to get your early voting business done. 

While we liberal-progressive peeps were successful at legally pimp slapping the racist Texas voter suppression law into oblivion, the Teapublicans unfortunately killed our 'souls to the polls' weekend before election day.

So handle your electoral business TransGriot readers.   Don't make me send Samuel L. Jackson after you.