2012 TransGriot NFL Picks-Week 16

With Christmas rapidly approaching the usual Thursday night game has been shifted to Saturday and there's no Monday night game this week because it's Christmas Eve.   That gives me a few extra days to ponder how this weekend's NFL games will play out. 

You can call my favorite NFL ballers the back to back AFC South Division Champions after beating the Indianapolis Colts 29-17.   

Thanks to the early Christmas present we Texans fans received from the San Francisco 49ers when they beat New England 41-38 Monday night, the Texans can clinch home field throughout the AFC playoffs with a win tomorrow against the Minnesota Vikings or in their regular season finale next week against the Colts.

And speaking of beating people, after Mr Watts erased my seven game margin and took a two game lead going into Week 15, he (cough, cough) gave it right back and we're tied once again.  

So with just two weeks left in the season it's a fight to see who will emerge victorious in our 2012 NFL prognostication battle.  Yes, I plan to do this again during the 2013 NFL season, but now it's time for Moni to handle her 2012 NFL prognostication business. 

Mike's picks are here, mine are as usual in underlined bold print.   May the best Texan (pun intended) win.


Week 15 records 
TransGriot  10-6
Mike Watts 8-8

2012 Season Records
TransGriot  140-83-1
Mike Watts 140-83-1

Week 16

Saturday, December 22
Falcons at Lions

Sunday, December  23
Titans at Packers
Raiders at Panthers
Bills at Dolphins
Bengals at Steelers
Patriots at Jaguars
Colts at Chiefs
Saints at Cowboys
Redskins at Eagles
Rams at Buccaneers
Giants at Ravens
Vikings at Texans

Sunday Afternoon
Browns at Broncos
Bears at Cardinals
Chargers at Jets

Sunday Night
49ers at Seahawks

The Fake FOX Noise 'War On Christmas'

Happy Holidays y'all!!

The conservafools at FOX Noise don't believe in the 'War on Women', the 'War on Non White People' or the 'War on Planned Parenthood'' that the conservafool movement engages in, but they sure do want to bamboozle their propaganda network watching sheeple into believing there is a 'War on Christmas'

Yeah, right.   

Rev Al calls the GOP network mouthpiece out on their broadcasted BS






And no, as a Christian, I don't believe the conservahype about a 'War on Christmas'.   This is the USA, in which we have no national religion.   You have freedom to worship and freedom NOT to worship if you choose as well and I respect the faith of my Muslim and Jewish friends and even my friends who are agnostic or atheist as long as they reciprocate.

So Happy Holidays y'all! 
  .    
 
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Nizah Morris Tenth Anniversary

<sup>Today was the day ten years ago that 47 year old Nizah Morris stumbled out of a downtown Philadelphia bar, accepted a courtesy ride home from a PPD officer, and ended up at a local hospital with a fatal head injury that she died from on Christmas Eve

Ten years later there still hasn't been a satisfactory explanation as to what and how it happened.  The things that make you go hmm moments surrounding this case still have the Philadelphia LGBT community and Morris' family asking questions to this day.

We still haven't forgotten, and won't rest until the truth about December 22, 2002 comes to light.</sup>

The Planet's Still Here

Well, the end of the world gloom and doom forecast for this date was only in a Roland Emmerich movie, so we can get back to normal activities on this space rock and stop stressing people out. 

Will be looking forward to hanging out with my family on Christmas Day, January 1, 2013 and beyond that date to President Obama's second inauguration.

True, Guns Don't Kill People But...

TransGriot Note: Been a while since I spotlighted the brilliant commentary of Kat Rose on this blog, and this one definitely needed to be signal boosted in the wake of that jacked up press conference this morning by Wayne LaPierre in which he talked loud but said nothing as usual in the wake of another mass shooting their NRA lobbying paves the way for.

Kat has very definite opinions about that too, but let me give you a taste of her commentary in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting last week that I needed to signal boost.

Despite that, people like the Connecticut shooter(s) aren’t what worry me most.

What does?

Morons.

Morons with machine guns (or any other kind of gun.)

And, no, I don’t mean mass murderers who, after the fact, do suddenly begin to care about what the legal system might do to them and then try to game the system with an insanity plea – and I don’t even mean people who may truly be insane (though they are technically a subset of who I’m talking about.)
I mean morons – the people you, I and everyone know who you would never even let touch the remote control to your television because they’d somehow manage to break the entire system, from the DVR to the dish and right up to the satellite itself…

but who, if they suddenly get a hankerin’ after managing to watch at least part of Sudden Impact before the system crashes via their incompetence with the remote control, can run out and buy and one of them thar big-ass automoatic pistols that Clint used in the movie.

read the rest of 'True Enough, Guns Don't Kill People' at ENDABlog 2.0

Shut Up Fool Awards-Ain't The End Of The World Edition

Today was supposed to be the day according to all the people who overhyped the fact the Mayan long count calendar ended today that the world as we knew it would end.  

Yeah, right.   Only thing that happened today is the winter solstice for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere or the summer one for my TransGriot readers south of the Equator. 

I'll take NASA's and astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson's word about the state of our universe and 4 billion year old planet over a bunch of doom and gloom peddlers and a movie producer reading more into the Mayan long count calendar ending on this date than necessary.  

So since Planet Earth is projected to be around for another several billion years until our Sun becomes a red giant, let's move on to our usual Friday business of selecting this week's fool, fools or groups of fools and shining a bright spotlight on their ignorance and jaw dropping stupidity in this week's Shut Up fool Awards.

Honorable mention number one is easy.   It goes to all you peeps who took the Mayan calendar 'end of the world' hysteria far too seriously to the point NASA was fielding calls about it.  '2012' was a movie, not a documentary.

Honorable mention number two goes to the NRA and Wayne LaPierre for pimping their usual spin lines in the wake of two mass shootings on opposite sides of the country several days apart that resulted in the deaths of 30 people, their week of silence after the Sandy Hook school one, and LaPierre having that BS press conference this morning leaving everyone no room to doubt that the NRA is nothing more than shills for the gun industry.

Honorable mention number three goes to Mike Huckabee for parting his lips to say that school shootings are happening because we have 'systematically removed God from our schools'   Guess you forgot about all those shooting that have happened either in church sanctuaries on on church grounds..

Our winner this week on one filled with an abundance of fools spouting stupid comments like the flow of feces into a sewage treatment plant is Pope Benedict XVI. 

Papa Nazi opened his mouth and said in his World Day of Peace address to declare that 'gay marriage poses a threat to justice and peace'.  

Really?  The one thing that consistently is a major threat to world justice and peace is fundamentalist strains of all religions and fundie religious figures pimping hatred of GLBT people.

Hatred of GLBT people mind you that has resulted in an unacceptable level of deaths for transwomen in predominately Catholic countries and increasing violence and draconian laws aimed at them

Pope Benedict XVI, shut the hell up fool!

Dissing Lee Brewster

Want to know why I can't stand the radfems, or as they are sometimes referred to in some online circles the TERF's?  (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists).   I call them the Whyte Womyn Gone Wyld.

They have spent four decades of their vanillacentric cisprivileged time hating on transpeople and opposing our human rights, and as Cristan Williams points out once again in her latest post at Ehipassiko, those of us in the 2k10's aren't the only ones to have felt the ugliness of their transphobia.   Our pioneers Sylvia Rivera and Lee Brewster did so as well.

Here's a taste of Cristan's post:

I’ve noted before how RadFems inspired the violence inflicted upon Stonewall hero Sylvia Rivera. Until now, I wasn’t aware that their cruelty was extended to the transperson who coordinated and paid for overturning anti-gay NY laws:

Lee Brewster staged a number of actions designed to bring a case against NY so that Brewster could have NY’s anti-gay laws overturned. Have you ever wondered where the Mattachine Society’s money came from? That was Lee Brewster. Ever wonder where the cash came from to have the early 1960s national queer meetings? That was Lee Brewster. The cash for challenging anti-gay laws came from Lee too.

Any hope that giving a moment to Jean O’Leary and Sylvia Rivera would end this squall disappeared the moment Lee Brewster took the stage. He, too, was in full drag, with thick eye makeup, a lush blond wig tumbling over his shoulders and a queen’s crown resting on the wig. “I cannot sit and let my people be insulted,” Brewster said. “They’ve accused me of reminding you too many times that today you’re celebrating what was the result of what the drag queens did at the Stonewall. You go to bars because of what drag queens did for you, and these bitches”—he gestured to the lesbians—”tell us to quit being ourselves.” Vito Russo walked over to Brewster, slipped his arm around Brewster’s waist and whispered into his ear, but Brewster pushed him off.

You can read the rest of Christan's interesting look at our history.

TransGriot Note:  The portrait of Lee Brewster was by artist Vicki West.  Brewster ran Lee's Mardi Gras Boutique from 1968 until passing away in 2000.  And yep, I visited it on one of my New York trips in 1998 

POTUS Is TIME Magazine's Person Of The Year

And yep, he earned it. 

Since 1927, TIME magazine has chosen the person who for better or worse, has made an overpowering impact on the nation and the world for the year.

Runner up for the internationally renowned honor was Pakistani teen blogger Malala Yousafzai.   She lives in the Taliban infested Swat region of the country and is an advocate of girls attending school.   The ideas that this 15 year old girl voiced on a blog so threatened 'the menz' in the Taliban they tried to kill her.  

She's recovering from her wounds in a British hospital and sentiment is building around the world for her to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013.  

The POTUS had the bigger impact on the year news wise.  In addition to winning reeelection in a blowout and becoming the first Democratic president since FDR to win in consecutive elections with more than 50% of the vote (read that and weep conservafools), he was the first president of either party since 1940 to win re-election with an unemployment rate above 7.5 percent.

As TIME editor Rick Stengel wrote:

“We are in the midst of historic cultural and demographic changes, and Obama is both the symbol and in some ways the architect of this new America."

“For finding and forging a new majority, for turning weakness into opportunity and for seeking, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union, Barack Obama is Time’s 2012 Person of the Year.”
President Obama is the fourth African descended person after Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie in 1937, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King in 1963 and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1977 to be honored with TIME Person of the Year..   The POTUS also won it after his historic election in 2008.

It's Already December 21st....

for my readers west of the International Date Line.

Those of you who east of the International Date Line who presume December 21 is the last day our planet will be around you have until the end of the day to send me your valuables for safekeeping.  I'll give them back to you after the Christmas holidays, minus a 10% administration fee.

There's something happening on the 21st, but it happens every year.  It's called the winter (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere) or the summer solstice.  It's the shortest day of the year for those of us in the Norther hemisphere and the longest day for those of you in the Southern one.  

If you're north of the Arctic Polar Circle, you'll now get 24 hours of darkness while those of you below the Antarctic Polar Circle will get 24 hours of sunlight.

For those of you clinging to gloom and doom scenarios, we already had the 3 mile wide (5 km) asteroid 4179 Toutatis zip within 7 million kilometers (4.3 million miles) of Earth yesterday.  

Once again I point you to the words of astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. 

Beyond Althea Garrison-Run Black Trans People Run!

The 2012 election cycle is rapidly receding into the history books and the winners during these hard fought campaigns across the country will begin to be sworn into their offices and go to work in January.

But this completed election cycle also reminded me that it has been twenty years since stealth trans woman  Althea Garrison was elected to the Massachusetts state legislature in 1992.

The major reason we found out about the historic piece of Black trans history was because Eric Fehrnstrom, the person who outed her at that time when he was a columnist for the conservative leaning Boston Herald, was the communications director in the failed Mitt Romney presidential campaign

I've seen an increase since 1992 of open trans politicians running for and winning offices around the world. Three transwomen, Georgina Beyer in New Zealand, Vladimir Luxuria in Italy and now Anna Grodzka in Poland won seats in their national legislative bodies while others in several nations have tried and fallen short of doing so. .

I've seen several trans people run for and win public offices in the United States from mayors to small town city council seats.  Kim Coco Iwamoto twice won election to the Hawaii state school board in 2006 and 2010 and Vicky Kolakowski that same year won a Alameda County, CA judicial seat.  Others have run for office and lost.  Some have done so multiple times for different offices like Vermont's Karen Kerin.  

But unfortunately the common thread in all those American trans people who have run for and either won or lost races is that they haven't been African descended trans people.

And that needs to change.

It's been painfully obvious to me over a decade of lobbying at the local, state and federal level that in addition to getting current legislators up to speed on the issues that affect trans people and voting  for politicians who are supportive of our issues, we also are in dire need of transpeople sitting at the table helping to formulate the policies and write the laws that govern us.

I'm happy for the trans people in various states that have stepped up, run and won or lost their various political races and broke barriers in the process.  We need more qualified trans people to run for public office if we're going to get the trans human rights coverage we deserve. 

Some of those qualified people running from office must be African descended ones.   One of the reasons why is because in a lot of cases, our chocolate transition journey is not like a white transperson's transition journey because of cultural factors and the deleterious impact of race and class on it.

And it's not like we don't have support in the Democratic Party.   There were thirteen trans delegates in Charlotte for the DNC convention last summer, and two of them were African-American.. 

Even Vice President Joe Biden has recently verbalized that trans rights are human rights, and one of the ways to make them a reality is get political power so we can write good laws for our community and be in a position to block bad ones.

Some of our Black gay and lesbian brothers and sisters are already running for and winning public office and have been for several years now.  

I said it during that OUT on the Hill trans panel that it was past time for us to do the same if we are going to have the issues that impact us as African descended transpeople dealt with.

It's also clear that we need to build upon what Althea Garrison started in 1992..

We need to run Black transpeople to send the message to the world trans community that American trans community leadership is not monoracial and we are stepping up, ready and willing  to take our rightful place on the world trans leadership stage.   

It's increasingly becoming clear that we will need to have politicians who are boys and girls like us, and that can only happen if we're in the political game to win it. 

So run Black trans people run!  

Trans Model Connie Fleming Strikes A FLOTUS Pose

The fledgling trans style magazine Candy is only four issues old, but publisher Luis Venegas looked to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for inspiration for the Winter 2012 cover.

It features trans model Connie Fleming styled and made up to resemble First Lady Michelle Obama.

The split front cover shows New York based model Fleming, who worked for fashion designer and Ugly Betty stylist Patrica Field, being sworn into office and waving an American flag accompanied by the headline 'The Candydate'.

Venegas explained the rationale behind this Candy cover in a Dazed Digital magazine interview..

“I remember back in early 2007 when the Democratic Party’s nominees were narrowed down between two ‘controversial’ stereotypes never before seen for presidency: a black man, Barack Obama; and a woman, Hillary Rodham Clinton. At that time, I thought, ‘when will the time come when these archaic walls break down and the White House will be occupied by, for example, a black, transsexual woman?’”

The cover has definitely been generating some buzz and conversation on the Net and has its fans and its detractors.  I fall somewhere in the middle on this. 

I'm just happy they didn't decide to do some full of fail 'edgy' cover and put a white transwoman in blackface on it.

Nizah Morris Case-Ten Years Later

One of the cases I've been tracking ever since I started the blog is the Nizah Morris case. 

In the pre-dawn hours of December 22, 2002 she was at the downtown Key West bar at 13th and Walnut streets attending a party being held there.  She was allegedly severely inebriated and collapsed in front of the bar around 2:00 AM.  Someone called the paramedics to take her to the hospital   While waiting at least 20 minutes for the paramedics to arrive a Philadelphia police officer arrived at the scene. 

The 47 year old Morris declined the police officer's offer of a courtesy ride to take her to the hospital but instead asked to be taken home.  She was helped by bar patrons into the back of the police cruiser and unfortunately never made it there.

Instead she was found lying on her back at 16th and Walnut by a passing motorist unconscious with a fractured skull and bleeding from the right side of her head.  She had a life threatening subdural hematoma that required immediate medical attention and Morris was taken to Philadelphia's Jefferson University Hospital in critical condition.   She was on life support for several days until she was taken off of it and died at 8:30 PM EST on Christmas Eve.

The next day Morris' death was declared by the medical examiner as a homicide.   And you knew there had to be a little transphobia lurking in this story as well.   On December 26 Nizah's mother Roslyn Wilkins was notified of her daughter's death by a police detective who said to her, "He's dead"   

After Wilkins complained about the misgendering way he broke the news of her child's death to her, that detective was removed from the case.   The family was even more disturbed after looking at photos taken at the medical examiner's office that showed Morris with what appeared to be defensive wounds on her hands.
  
And yes, what would a story about a murdered African-American trans woman be without a heaping helping of media disrespect and misgendering?   When the Philadelphia Inquirer published their initial account of the morris story on December 31 they referred to Nizah as a 'prostitute' and stuck the misgendering 'male prostitute' in the body of the story. 

On January 1 after a memorial service attended by over 300 people Nizah Morris' body was cremated.      

That was ten years ago, and to this day the Morris family nor the Philadelphia trans community has gotten a consistent story from the PPD about what exactly happened to Nizah Morris on that fateful night.   It also hasn't helped that information, tapes and evidence pertaining to the case has mysteriously disappeared

The Morris family and others in the Philadelphia rainbow community suspect that excessive force was used on Morris, the PPD knows more about what happened on that fateful December 22 night than they are acknowledging and are covering up what really happened.

The three officers involved in the Morris incident, Thomas Berry, Elizabeth DiDonato and Kenneth Novak remain on the Philadelphia police force and were cleared of any criminal wrongdoing in December 2003.

In the latest intrigue surrounding this case it seems the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office refuses to confirm or deny whether it has a police log pertaining to the Nizah Morris case, even though such logs are considered public records under Pennsylvania state law.

The case has been investigated by the Philadelphia Police Advisory Commission for several years and neither the family or the Philadelphia LGBT community has gotten a satisfactory explanation of what happened.

The question i continue to ask in this case is the same as always.  What does the Philadelphia District Attorney's office and the Philadelphia PD know about what happened to Nizah Morris, when did they know it, and if the po-po's are involved, who did it? 

“Bring in the feds,” Wilkins said.  

I agree with the family in the call for federal authorities to get involved in this ongoing investigation.  It's sadly ten years later and we are still no closer to answering the simple question of what did happen to Nizah Morris in those predawn December 22 hours.

4.5 Million Hits!

Another day, another TransGriot milestone.   

It was only back in July that I had the 4 millionth person surf by to visit my cyberhome.  As of 5:48 PM CST today person number 4.5 million has done so.

Thanks TransGriot readers for your huge part in making this milestone happen.   You spend your valuable time reading my over 6100 posts including this one, recommending them to your friends and even dropping tips in the electronic tip jar.    I can't thank you enough for that.

My soon to be seven year old blog (midnight January 1 is my blogiversary) wouldn't be where it is without your support.

Now on to 2013 and my next milestone of 5 million hits!.

Archbishop Tutu Reminds Ugandan MP's God Does Not Discriminate

TransGriot Note: Nobel laureate and Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu wrote this op-ed that was originally published at the Ugandan-based  Daily Monitor    Hope they heed his words and ponder them while they are on holiday break

Uganda’s Parliament is – unbelievably – on the verge of considering a new piece of legislation that would have the effect of legalising persecution, discrimination, hatred and prejudice in that country.
Should the Anti-Homosexuality Bill be voted into law, it will criminalise acts of love between certain categories of people, just as the apartheid government made intimate relations between black and white South Africans a punishable offence.

Members of the apartheid police force charged with the upkeep of “morality” would rush into the bedrooms of suspected offenders to gather evidence, such as warm bed sheets. Those found guilty were arrested, put on trial and punished. What awaits the people of Uganda?

One thing that Ugandan legislators should know is that God does not discriminate among members of our family. God does not say black is better than white, or tall is better than short, or football players are better than basketball players, or Christians are better than Muslims … or gay is better than straight. No. God says love one another; love your neighbour. God is for freedom, equality and love.

People have over many centuries devised all kinds of terrible instruments to oppress other people. Usually, they have rationalised their awful actions on the basis of their belief in their own superiority, in their culture, in their spiritual beliefs, in their skin colour. Thus, they argue, they are justified to hate and bomb and maim the “other”.

The anti-homosexuality legislation now under consideration in Uganda is just such an instrument. Nelson Mandela said: “No one is born hating another person.” If people are taught and can learn to hate, they can learn to love.

Many times in my life, I have been blessed to witness the innate capacity of our human family to reconcile differences. The common denominator in all these transactions is recognition that the notion of equal rights in any family, in any society, is non-negotiable. No sane person or group of people can sustainably argue that their rights should be more equal than others.

If what I am told is true, that the anti-homosexuality legislation in Uganda has widespread popular support, it should surely be the moral duty of the custodians of that country to educate its citizens about discrimination and equal rights. Surely, it should be their duty to clarify the fundamental misunderstandings in communities about what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex (LGBTI).

The depiction of members of the LGBTI community as crazed and depraved monsters threatening the welfare of children and families is simply untrue, and is reminiscent of what we experienced under apartheid and what the Jews experienced at the hands of the Nazis.

To those who claim that homosexuality is not part of our African culture, you are conveniently ignoring the fact that LGBTI Africans have lived peacefully and productively beside us throughout history.
I am proud that in South Africa, when we succeeded in overthrowing apartheid, we put in place a Constitution that prohibited all forms of discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

We did this because we understood that the freedom of one depends upon the freedom of all. We call it the spirit of ubuntu: the idea that I cannot be free if you are not also free.

A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, and does not feel threatened by others’ differences, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

The ideology of racial superiority that was once used to justify the colonisation of our lands is part of our recent history. Today, we face a new challenge. We must overcome the notion that sexual orientation defines one’s identity or determines one’s station in life – or unjustly elevates one class of people over another.
It is with supreme sorrow that I witness, to this day, the subjugation and repression of African brothers and sisters whose only crime is the practice of love. Hate, in any form or shape, has no place in the house of God.

I urge the people of Uganda to reject hatred and prejudice.

Love comes more naturally to the human heart than hate.

Christine Jorgensen-Sixty Years Later

While Christine Jorgensen was quietly convalescing in a Danish hospital after the second of her genital surgeries on November 20, the news about her being the first post World War II transwoman was about to explode literally into New York's and eventually the world's consciousness.

Dr Magnus Hirschfeld and his Berlin institute had already done the first trans surgeries with Lili Elbe and 'Dorchen' back in 1930-31.  Christine was the first post World War II to do so after undergoing hormone replacement therapy under Dr. Christian Hamburger and his team.. 

On December 1, 1952 the headline for the New York Daily News blared 'EX-GI BECOMES BLONDE BEAUTY', thus triggering the ongoing fascination of America and the world with us transpeople.

That December 1952 headline knocked a nuclear test at Eniwetok Atoll off the front pages and also created a news feeding frenzy that only became more pronounced when then 27 year old Christine  returned home to New York on February 13, 1953.

It is a sixty year period that has seen surgery for transwomen evolve through the efforts of people such as Georges Bourou, Roberto Granato, Stanley Biber, Yvon Menard, Sanguan Kunaporn, and a girl like us in Marci Bowers.

It is also a period that has seen the knowledge of the medical and social side of transsexualty grow through the efforts of Harry Benjamin, organizations such as WPATH and in many cases, transpeople themselves.


Christine Jorgensen as our pioneering American transwoman would be followed by legions of other transwomen and transmen not only here, but around the world such as Great Britain's April Ashley and France's Coccinelle.   There were countless others who eventually had surgery and under the protocols of the time faded into society never to reveal their status as transwomen while other picked up the advocacy torch to fight for the human rights of people like themselves. 

Christine was the first to deal with trans celebrity status.  She navigated the media onslaught that greeted her upon her return to the States.  She wrote her life story in an autobiography that sits on my bookshelf now and became a movie.  She had a career in entertainment and Hollywood. She did the education at university campuses as a lecturer in the 1970's and 1980's.   She did the television interviews on the shows of the day such as Donahue and Dick Cavett .  She worked with the medical professionals of her time such as Dr. Harry Benjamin while living her life to best of her ability until she passed away in May 1989 of lung and bladder cancer the day before my 27th birthday. 

Christine also dealt with the societal frustrations that many transpeople still deal with today.   She was denied the opportunity to get married in 1959 because her birth certificte still had 'male' on it.  She was loved by some and vilified by others.  But she was happy and never regretted what she'd gone through to become a pioneering #girllikeus.

She also gave a name and a face to what people were suffering with and was the trans icon of many of my trans elders who were kids during that time period.  When Jorgensen passed away on May 3, 1989 in San Clemente, CA I was well into gathering information and making the moves to get hormones to facilitate my own transition that would happen for me in 1994.

Some people consider Christine Jorgensen's arrival in New York and her stylishly stepping off that SAS airplane from Copenhagen at what is now JFK airport the opening moments of the sexual revolution in the United States and there's a plausible argument that could be made for that.   

As she said in the film that was made several years before her death in which she returned to Denmark to reunite with the medical team that made her transition possible, "We didn't start the sexual revolution but I think we gave it a good kick in the pants!"

But Christine Jorgensen is also the starting point for our public fascination with and at times sixty year contentious discussion of transsexality on many levels   It's also the beginnings of a worldwide journey of discovery and evolution for those of us who are gender variant.   It also jump started the still evolving medical and societal thinking concerning gender identity and the causes and treatment of transsexuality.

And we transpeople owe a lot to her sixty years later for being courageous enough to start that journey.

East Aurora, IL School Board Caves To The Bigots Again

What started out as a wonderful happening for the kids in the East Aurora, IL district when their school board passed a trans inclusive policy only to cave on it days later after opposition from the SPLC certified hate group the Illinois Family Association is getting more exasperation inducing as it goes along. 

After the IFA browbeat the school board into rescinding the policy, the East Aurora board announced the formation of an ad hoc committee to formulate a new policy to protect their trans and gender variant students.

But as I feared when the board caved initially to the IFA in October and emboldened the transphobes, they simply doubled down on the bullying tactics in an attempt to kill any trans inclusive policy from being crafted and adopted.   At a November 30 meeting of the ad hoc committee they filled the room with 120 opponents of the trans inclusive policy and disrupted it to the point the committee couldn't conduct business.   

Anita Lewis, the school board member chairing the ad hoc committee declined to schedule another meeting, and now the East Aurora IL school board has caved once again to the transphobic bigots. 

The board dissolved the ad hoc committe that was formed to craft a trans policy that would be in their words when they formed it 'a model to the nation'.

Yeah East Aurora, IL school board.   You're a model to the nation all right.   You caved in the face of intolerant bigots, reversed a policy that would have protected your trans and gender variant students and now left them vulnerable to the very bigots you sought to protect them from.

You also sent a message to those trans and gender variant students in this district that you as a school board would (and have) throw them under the bus and not stand and deliver for them when they needed you to. 

I hope your profiles in cowardice are rewarded with all of your being voted out of office by progressive minded parents and residents and you are replaced by civic minded people who will do what's right for all the kids of the East Aurora district.  

They need school board members who will stand by their principled decisions,  not retreat from them in the face of loud and wrong opposition.  

Trans Pioneer April Ashley Receives Her MBE

I wrote about this when it happened back in June, and in a morning investiture ceremony held at Buckingham Palace last Thursday, trans pioneer April Ashley was awarded the Member of the British Empire (MBE) as part of the annual Queen Birthday Honors list.

The now 77 year old Ashley  was one of the first persons from Great Britain who underwent SRS back in 1960, became a successful actress and model, appeared in the Road To Hong Kong movie with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope and became a trans human rights advocate..

She was also one of the parties in the horrible 1970 Corbet v Corbett divorce case that set a grossly negative marriage precedent for transpeople in Great Britain by not allowing them to get married until it was reversed in 2004 by the British Gender Recognition Act.

Ashley received the Member of the British Empire in the investiture ceremony from Prince Charles for her long time work as a British trans human rights advocate, and congratulations to her for a well deserved honor.

Ashley said that for over half a century she had "been writing to people and helping people and I've written thousands and thousands of letters".

"Strangely enough although it was transgender, it was also gay and lesbian [people writing to me] and women desperate for divorces," she said.

About her gender reassignment surgery in 1960 and being awarded the MBE Ashley said, "To me it was just a normal thing to do - I never thought I was doing anything special quite frankly, so to be suddenly awarded this is astonishing."

Bella Jay, who organizes the annual Sparkle event in Manchester, UK said the former model had "faced many struggles in life, which perhaps people don't really understand in the more tolerant and open society in which we live today".

"Achieving real transgender equality is a big issue for many people in modern Britain, but all too often it either fails to gain any real publicity or is misunderstood," said Jay in a BBC interview.

"I congratulate April on the award which recognizes her achievements and again helps bring the issues facing the trans-community into the public eye.

Ashley's trans cousins across the Pond and around the world that she was an inspiration and beacon of hope to in the 60's and beyond also join our British cousins in recognizing April Ashley, MBE as well.

Break Out The Oreos, We Have A Cookie-Chomping US Senator

To no ones surprise, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (R) chose Rep Tim Scott (R-SC) yesterday to fill resigning Senator Jim DeMint's remaining term in the US Senate.  

The 47 year old Scott is a Tea Klux Klan favorite who was elected to the House in 2010 from a district that includes north Charleston and Myrtle Beach, SC.  He beat the son of notorious segregationist Strom Thurmond in the GOP primary that year on his way to election..

Scott will be the first Black* senator from South Carolina, the seventh in US history and the first from the  South since Hiram Revels (1870) and Blanche K Bruce (1875-1881) represented Mississippi during Reconstruction. 

In addition to Revels and Bruce, the other Republican senator was Edward Brooke from Massachusetts.

He was the first African-American elected to the US senate by popular vote and represented the state from (1967-1979)  Brooke was a moderate Republican who championed mass transit, low-income housing and a higher minimum wage.  

The Democratic African-American senators all come from Illinois and includes the only Black female US senator in Carol Moseley Braun. She served from 1993-1999, was a prosecutor before winning political office and called for more restrictive gun laws during her tenure. Unfortunately she was defeated in her first re-election bid and was later appointed as the US ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa.

We know about the second US senator from Illinois because he now lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  But before he became the 44th president of the United States in 2008,  in November 2004 Barack Obama was elected to the Senate in a landslide over his GOP opponent Alan Keyes.

When President Obama left the Senate, Roland W. Burris was appointed to Obama's seat on December. 31, 2008.  He served two years and was reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee for being misleading about his controversial appointment to the seat by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Now that I've discussed the history of African-Americans in the US Senate,  back to the conservanegro about to replace Jim DeMint.   Scott achieved a 92 percent score on the Club for Growth’s legislative scorecard, which meant that he was more conservative than all but 30 members of the House.  

He will have to run for the seat in 2014, so South Carolina Democrats, you have time to get a candidate to take him on.

So yeah, the Republicans can point to Scott's nomination to the US Senate and claim until they're red in the face it's an example of how diverse their party is. 

Knee-grow sycophants mouthing the same failed conservative policies as their white brethern not only will not get our votes, but it's an insult to our intelligence if you think the only reason we vote for candidates is based on the color of their skin. 

But then again, that's a play you vanillacentric privileged conservafools have perfected. 

It's even more of an insult when you nominate a guy who earned an F on the NAACP Congressional Report card and supports policies hostile to African-Americans.

Let me count the ways. Scott called for the impeachment of President Obama if he raised the debt ceiling, is virulently anti-gay, opposes a woman's right to choose, the labor movement, opposes the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." 

And oh yeah, he's the first one along with Angela McGlowan and CL Bryant the Tea Klux Klan trot out when they need a knee-grow human shield to deflect attention from their racism. 

The conservafools are hailing Scott's Senate appointment, but many African-Americans aren't.   He's just another cookie-chomping knee-grow sellout to us. 

Break out the Oreos.

POTUS Sandy Hook Vigil Speech

The POTUS speaking at Sunday night's vigil for the victims of the Newtown CT mass shooting.

The 2012 Presidential Electors Meeting Today

Yes, we American voters handled our electoral business back on November 6.  President Obama won with 51.7% of the vote and got 65,600,358 people to do so compared to Mitt Romney's 47.3% (snicker, snicker) and 60,861,543 votes.

On that date we were not only voting for either the Democratic or Republican party presidential tickets, but also casting votes for the electors who will take part in representing our various states in the Electoral College.

Those electors are meeting in the 50 state capitols and the District of Columbia (AKA Washington DC) today to carry out that part of the presidential election process.  DC gets three electoral votes and is treated like a state per the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution.

The electors barring any defections will ratify the 332-206 blowout win for President Barack Obama over Mitt Romney,  but the results of the 2012 election don't become official until the President of the Senate counts the electoral votes out loud at a special joint session of Congress that will be held on January 6, 2013.