HBO 'Taxicab Confessions' Trans Style

I watched the HBO show Taxicab Confessions when first started in 1995.   The show started in New York, moved to Las Vegas for a few season and is now back in the New York area. 

The premise is that a taxicab with six lipstick sized cameras roll through the streets of the city steered by the producers of the show who ask questions that focus on getting details about the past or present lives of the passengers.

Sometimes those conversations can be reflective and chock full of wisdom, while others can get pretty graphic, raunchy and NSFW along with the video for it.  When the ride is over, the passengers are asked to sign a waiver for broadcast purposes.   From time to time trans people would get in those cabs and tell the stories of their lives at the time with the cameras rolling.

I found the uploaded video on YouTube from two of those stories, and here they are for your perusal.

Andrey Bridges Found Guilty Of Killing Cemia Dove Acoff

After a 10 day trial that started with the empaneled jury taking a trip to the crime scene where it took place, a Cuyahoga County jury found Andrey Bridges guilty of stabbing 20 year old Cemia Dove Acoff to death in January after discovering her trans status.

According to a Cleveland Plain Dealer report, the jury comprised of nine women and three men deliberated for a day before rejecting the recordings of Bridges' declarations of innocence made during his four hour police interrogation after his arrest in May.   

Acoff was called several times by Bridges on the morning of January 5, hired a taxicab to pick her up and paid the driver $100 upon her arrival at his apartment in Olmstead Township, OH.

She was never seen alive again after that date.  Later that day, two men stopped by the apartment house to pick up rent money that Bridges owed. They reported finding blood spattered in the apartment, Bridges’ hand bleeding profusely, and a bonfire burning in the yard.   

Acoff's body when found three months later was stabbed 40 times and anchored to a concrete block.  

Judge Hollie L. Gallagher has set the sentencing for next week and Bridges is facing 15 years to life for the murder conviction. 

Report On The Human Rights Situation Of Afro-Brazilian Trans Women

While Brazil's trans models have been ripping the runways around the world since the 1980s, SRS is free courtesy of the Brazilian national health plans and with a trans beauty pageant that sends its winner to Thailand all expenses paid to Thailand to compete in Miss International Queen it seems on the surface to be a friendly haven for trans people.

But for those of us who have been attending the TDOR's over the last few years, it's been fairly obvious that my Brazilian trans sisters are catching hell.

If you are of Afro-Brazilian descent and trans, it's even worse as this latest TDOR on November 20 and perusing Eduarda Santos' Transfofa em Blog posts documenting what's happening there will sadly attest to. 

Global Rights.org recently released a report documenting what's happening to my Afro-Brazilian trans sisters, and it's not a pretty picture.  

An annual report by Grupo Gay de Bahia (Gay Group of Bahia) or GGB, a leading national organization in Brazil combating anti-TBLG violence against LGBTI Brazilians noted that there was a 21% increase in murders directed at BTLG Brazilians between 2011 and 2012.    

There was also a 5.6% increase between 2002 and 2010 in the number of homicides of Afro-Brazilians as they declined 24.8% amongst white Brazilians during the same period

The lack of Brazilian federal legislation to prevent violent acts based on sexual orientation or gender identity also has been a factor in fueling the anti-trans murders aimed at trans Afro-Brazilians.  

You may wish to read this sobering Global Rights.org 'Report On The Human Rights Situation Of Afro-Brazilian Trans Women' by clicking on the link.

Transpeople of Color Don't Get The Luxury of Ignoring Race And Class

Sigh.  Once again, Moni's gonna have to break it down for the wallowing in white privilege clueless. 

And this clueless youngling had the nerve to claim in the subsequent comment thread that she's 'anti-racist'.

Peep this comment posted by Jocelynn Veleta on the mixed company Facebook Transgender Alliance FB page.

It was posted on a comment from Black Transmen Resources ironically posted to promote their upcoming BTAC 2014 conference in Dallas April-May 2014.

At first I was going to be nice and not embarrass her in cyberspace until she deleted her initial comments before I had a chance to copy them, ran, called me 'stupid', said I was 'playing the victim'  and cried the usual 'white women's tears' before I got tired of her mouth and unleashed the 50 megatons of knowledge on her azz.  

im offended when ppl add race, ethnicity, or gender restrictions to anything, Trans in itself is enough of a minority i personally don't feel we need to break up anymore... hey maybe its just me; im not trying to be rude.

No, you weren't rude, you were white privileged clueless.

As I've said on multiple posts here on this blog and on countless discussion threads inside and outside the trans community for over a decade in various ways, race matters, even in the trans community..

We transpeople of color do not have the luxury of separating our race and ethnicity from our trans status. They are inextricably part of us.   And as part of the Black community, we still get whacked by the microaggressive and macroaggressive ways whiteness and white supremacy deleteriously affects us.

Your lived experience as a solitary white trans person doesn't trump (and never will) the lived experience of someone who has taken the brunt of the white supremacist attitudes since birth, much less her people's 400 year history of living in the Americas.

Jocelynn, you may not like the fact that we have Black, Latina and Asian trans groups, organizations and conventions, but they didn't come out of a vacuum.

As Kwame Ture said, 'in order to become a part of the greater society, you must first close ranks.'

People of color face anti POC hatred whether we are trans or not and being trans only magnifies that. And some of the worst manifestations of that anti-POC hatred are in our own TBLG ranks.

What we do have, if the trans community will seize that opportunity, is to lead by example in eradicating racism in its subset of society.

Our little subset of society is infected by the same isms and ills of the parent society, and just because you transitioned doesn't mean you nor transpeople of color are free of that baggage.  Race and ethnicity add to our trans status as bigotry multipliers in terms of the anti-trans hate directed at us inside and outside the TBLG community.   Black trans women have to deal with the same 'ugly black woman' meme and destruction of our images that our cis sisters have had to grapple with for four centuries.  Black trans men when they transition step into being just as hated by society as their cis Black masculine counterparts do and the transmasculine discussion being disproportionately centered on white trans men. 

And when the Teapublicans seek to block the vote of the Black community at the polls, I don't get a pass from that because I'm trans.    

Jocelynn, you aren't even close to being anti-racist if you can't openly acknowledge the point that racist attitudes permeates American society, still affects POC's in the second decade of the 21st century, can't see past your own unacknowledged white privilege and how it has shaped your thinking (as the playing the victim conservacomment demonstrates) and that racism= prejudice plus systemic power.

And before you even part your lips to ever try to bring up the word 'anti-racist' in a conversation, better hit Google and learn the word 'intersectionality'. 

I'm offended Jocelynn when you make such a knee jerk reactive clueless statement on the comment of a Black trans group promoting their upcoming Dallas trans conference open to all, you failing to see how problematic that statement of yours was, and then running when you get called on it.

And you getting your vanillacentric privileged back up, accusing me of 'attacking you' for schooling your barely out of zygote stage behind and you running from the truth isn't going to change one syllable of what I posted about race still mattering in the trans community.     

We do have the opportunity in the trans community to build a society better than the one we left behind but it's going to take honest communication about race relations in our community to do so. 

Honest communications that obviously you're not even close to being ready for or intelligently discuss.
 

Shut Up Fool Awards-Trans Inclusive ENDA Passed Edition

Thursday November 7, 2013 will be a proud day in trans history because of what happened in the United States Senate yesterday.

S. 815, the trans inclusive ENDA passed on a 64-32 vote!   It was twenty years of hard work and lobbying to get there, but our efforts STILL aren't done yet.  We have to get it out of a GOP obstructionist House and to President Obama's desk for his signature.

And if Speaker John Boehner won't allow it to come to a vote.   Then we handle our business next November and elect a congress an a speaker in Nancy Pelosi that will in 2014.

And as y'all know, it's Friday, and it's time for me to handle my usual business I engage in on this date and unveil this week's Shut Up Fool Award winner.

It's time to call out the fool,. fools or group of fools that did their best to exhibit mind numbing stupidity, rank hypocrisy or fall victim to their over hubris and arrogance. 

And thanks as always to you TransGriot readers who send me suggesstion and nominees for this week and every week's Shut Up Fool award winners.

So let's move on to determining this week's fool.

Honorable Mention number one is Don Lemon, who sipped on the Lemon-aid again and appeared to part his lips in a TJMS commentary to support Stop and Frisk, but was busted by a 2001 news report that noted that when he was put in the same situation in Philadelphia he sued. 

Honorable Mention number two the ironically named  Jessica Black of Craigsville, VA.who allowed her 7 year old son to dress up in a Klan KKKostume for Halloween and made it for him. 

Honorable Mention number three is Texas GOP AG Greg Abbott, who is considered the Teapublican front runner in the race to get the nomination for Texas governor now that Governor Goodhair is finally giving up the chair.

Homeboy has been pimping the Texas voter suppression law, filed two losing lawsuits to defend it and wasted no time after the SCOTUS whacked at the VRA to implement it.

Well, word got out that he was nearly not able to cast a ballot in Tuesdays election because of the Voter Suppression law he pushed, and it was only because of the affidavit provision he fought was able to cast a ballot.  

The affidavit provision of the law was conceived and pushed by his opponent in the 2014 Texas governor's race, Sen Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth) 

Karma is not only a you know what, she weards a dress and heels (snicker snicker) 

Honorable mention number four goes to Honolulu Police office and Hawaii Police Union President Tenari Maafala.  Hawaii is enduring major drama around a special session called by Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) to pass a marriage equality bill.  This fool parted his lips to say during a hearing on the bill that you 'would have to kill him' before he would enforce a marriage equality law. 

Our SUF winner this week is Greenbrier, TN mayor and fire chief Billy Wilson, who was arrested by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and charged with stealing $60,000 of Toys For Tots money.  It's a charity that provides toys to poor children and helps families pay utility bills during the holiday season and is not affiliated with the more widely known US Marine Corps sponsored one (thank God)

The GOP is always claiming there's a War on Christmas, and they are the peeps waging it.

And yeah Rep. Paul Ryan, question for you. Is Billy Wilson a Maker or a Taker?  What I do know is that he's lower than an amoeba for stealing money that will help needy children and their families and there's nothing he can say to justify it. 

Billy Wilson, shut up you grinch, er fool.     
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