One of the patterns that keeps emerging as I do these TransGriot Perv Watch posts is that they are predominately white, male, Republican and fundamentalist Christian.
In the first Perv Watch post of 2018, I stay close to home, and we discover something that shouldn't have been a surprise to me as we successfully fought to pass the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance in May 2014 and went through the repeal fight in 2015.
One of our HERO haters possibly engaging in the behavior he was falsely accusing the Houston trans community of.
Meet Jared Woodfill, the president of the SPLC certified hate group the Conservative Republicans of Texas. Woodfill is the former chair of the Harris County Republican Party who made an unsuccessful bid to get the chairmanship of the Texas Republican Party
Seems that Jared was named as a defendant in a lawsuit against his law partner, former Republican state rep Paul Pressler Pressler is accused of sexually assaulting Gareld Rollins over a period of 35 years, beginning when that person was just 14 years old.
#StillNotTrans
In addition to Woodfill being named in the lawsuit, it also lists as defendants Pressler's wife Nancy Pressler, First Baptist Church, the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and SBTS president Rev. Paige Patterson.
Pressler claimed this is just an attempt to 'extort money from the Southern Baptist Convention ' and he will fight it tooth and nail.
Umm hmm. Will be interesting to see how this turns out
During a Congressional Black Caucus female members retreat held after the 2016 election, DC pastor Leah Daughtry, who had chaired the 2016 DNC convention, was speaking at that retreat.
She was asked by Rep, Maxine Waters (D-CA) what should Black women do next after they had undeniably proven to the country and the world they were the base of the Democratic Party, having voted 94% for Hillary Clinton nd almost getting her into the White House.
Daughtry recalled saying at the time in a Washington Post interview, "If I could wave my magic wand, I'd have a conference of Black women to come together across the spectrum and say 'How do we leverage the political power we just demonstrated that often gets ignored?"
The CBC women's retreat concluded without any action on Daughtry's idea.
But as 2017 unfolded Daughtry began to get angry as she witnessed the Trump misadministration and its conservative media allies repeatedly attack Black women such as ESPN anchor Jemele Hill, White House correspondent April Ryan, Rep Waters, Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) and the widow of slain soldier La David Johnson.
Watching those attacks, combined with Black women's own simmering anger at the Democratic Party's white leaders and white activists claiming that the party spent too much time in the 2016 cycle with voters of color and not enough with the white rural Trump voters who made it clear they don't love Democrats also didn't sit well with her.
Meanwhile as that problematic conversation was happening in the party, Black women once again demonstrated that they were undeniably the base of the Democratic Party by flexing their political muscle by powering Democratic wins in Virginia and the senate upset win for Doug Jones in Alabama.
But the media coverage that night dismissed the major role Alabama's Black women played in making Doug Jones the first Democratic senator elected from the state in 25 years, calling it a 'victory for women'. The media trying to ignore the fact that Alabama's Black women voted at a 98% clip for Jones while Alabama's white women voted 63% for Republican Roy Moore also exasperated Daughtry.
The dormant idea she'd had resurfaced, and Daughtry began calling Black women to ask if they would be willing to help organize the conference that she'd talked about during that retreat.
She got resounding YES answers to that question, and meetings began to be held in Washington DC at the National Council of Negro Women HQ on Pennsylvania Avenue. The conference that was just an idea a few months earlier began to take shape.
The Power Rising Summit is organized around 'five pillars' or policy areas. Business and Economic Empowerment, Culture, Community and Society, Education Technology and Innovation, Health and Wellness and of course Political Empowerment.
The Power Rising Summit is nonpartisan, and hopes to attract at least 1000 attendees to the event ranging from big name celebrities, grassroots activists, seasoned leaders and students from all 50 states to the ATL from February 23-25.
One of the questions I have as I peruse this Power Rising Summit website is will Black trans women be welcome to attend?
Registration fees range from $25-$100 with scholarships available for participants. They are also working on getting corporate sponsorship to help defray some of the costs of the gathering.
The last time Black women gathered to create an agenda that reflected our unique intersectional concerns was back in the 1970's courtesy of the Boston chapter of the National Black Feminist Organization.
The Combahee River Collective of Black lesbians and feminists disillusioned with second wave feminism and and the civil rights, Black Power and Black panther movements gathered from 1974-1980. That gathering of Black feminists resulted in the 1977 Combahee River Collective Statement that is considered the bedrock principles document for Black feminism.
The Power Rising Smmit is building on that legacy. It'll be interesting to see at this 21st Century gathering of Black women what action plan and statement comes out of this eagerly anticipated conference.
I loved Ann Richards when she was my governor, and it seems as though Cecile Richards is cut from the same straight talking cloth her mom was.
At the Las Vegas Women's March she said something that Black women have been saying to ourselves for years now in terms of it is not just Black women's job to do the heavy lifting work of saving this country.
We Black women, cis and trans have known since the 60s that the GOP ain't shyt. The rest of y'all have been slow to resistant to getting in formation with us to vote the GOP bastards out at all levels of government. Thanks to Richards, the conversation can get started about the elephant in the room in terms of this problematic pattern.
And it's past time you #TrustBlackWomen. While Cecile Richards' words were welcomed by Black women activists and leaders, we will be watching the deeds of white women in 2018, not just your words.
53% of white women voted for Trump. 63% of you for the detestable Roy Moore. It's not just a recent patten, it's a historic one going back to the suffragist moment in which you threw women of color under the bus to get the right to vote for yourselves.
In my home state of Texas, during the 2014 election cycle, despite having two women on the ballot running for governor and lieutenant governor in Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte, 66% of Texas white women overwhelmingly cast their ballots for Greg Abbott.
What were Texas Black and Latinx women doing? As usual, handling their business. Texas Black women were putting intersectionality into pragmatic action as 94% of them supported Davis, and Texas Latinas voted 61% for Davis.
So yeah white women, Cecile Richards is right. Y'all must do better. You must tackle that internalized misogyny and your transphobia and make true sisterhood a reality, not a dream..
It can't be just Black and Latinx women doing all the heavy lifting to make this country better while you keep throwing a monkey wrench in the process by voting overwhelmingly for Republicans who oppress all of us.
Y'all have some work to do in Texas and elsewhere in 2018, and it starts today .
One of the conversations my mother and I were having a few nights ago was about finding the silver linings in this Trump misadminstration. One blessing that Mom pointed out is that it is revealing to us in real time who the racist peeps are.
Because the bigots feel so comfortable expressing themselves since his upset win happened back in November 2016, ,the bigot eruptions have been coming with regular frequency
The latest Bigot Becky to find out the hard way that the Internet is forever is Dr. Heather Wick of Burlington, VT.
She posted on her Twitter feed the comment asking if Trump was bringing back slavery because she could use a maid.
Hmm wonder if she's part of the 53% of white women who voted for this incompetent sexual predator?. It's also laughable that someone took the time to write this article trying to claim she was bipolar.
Being bipolar, like white women's tears, doesn't give you a get out of jail free card when you say or post problematically racist crap online or try to pass it off as 'a joke'
Talking about slavery in that manner damned sure isn't isn't 'funny to those of us who had enslaved ancestors less than 150 years ago . It also isn't funny when you have white supremacists currently working in the White House like Stephen Miller, and a racist one as the POTUS.
Just in time for Black History Month, Laverne Cox continues to blaze trails and make me and other Black trans peeps proud of her.
Her latest history making endeavor is to become the first out trans woman of any ethnic background to be featured as a cover girl for Cosmopolitan magazine.
Cosmo South Africa decided to focus their February issues on the TBLGIQ+ community and love, and tapped Laverne to be on the cover of it.
In her letter to the magazine, she also continued to speak about trans women dating and finding love.
'Trans women need to be loved out in the open and in the light,' she said. I agree with her. I also believe that if their wasn't a stigma toward dating trans women and the people who love us could do spenly, it would go a long way toward cutting our murder rates and the domestic partner violence we see.
But that's another post.
This one is all about celebrating Laverne's historic Cosmo cover achievement.
Hope she also gets some solo covers on ESSENCE (she's done two group covers) and EBONY magazines this year as well
This is a commentary about yesterday's as a friend called them 'Becky Marches' because of the lack of diversity in them or erasure of trans women.
It was an essay from Lucy Siale posted to her Facebook page. It needs to be signal boosted because some of you white women who marched yesterday aren't understanding why I and many Black women cis and trans aren't feeling the Women's March, and Lucy's essay expresses the emotions of many Black women who just aren't into the Women's March for a lot of reasons.
****
TO THE WHITE WOMEN MARCHING TODAY, I’M TALKING TO YOU.
The Women’s March has become a disappointing event for me. Today, I did not see community. I did not see a movement dedicated to RADICAL change. did not see effective pieces of action taken to aggressively fight against the systems of oppression at work.
I saw a lot of white women who haven’t come out since the last women’s march. I saw signs dedicated to female genitals—excluding trans folks. I saw cis-sterhood, not sisterhood. I saw hundreds of white women marching in Walnut Creek, one day out of the year. I saw too many people who came out today because it’s easy, and socially acceptable, and it inevitably contributes to white, mainstream, non-intersectional feminism.
Y'all need to admit it. It’s easy for you to show up today and get some likes on Facebook, but it gets more complicated when you’re asked to show up for Black lives, or undocumented immigrants, or trans women of color killed by police. so you don’t.
You don’t show up, you stay silent for the other 364 days of the year, and you, in turn, contribute to the white supremacy and oppression that disenfranchises communities of color.
That’s not what my future looks like. This is not what I dream of. This is not what I march and fight for. It’s important to show up today, but more importantly, EVERY day. We need to mobilize our communities and unite under plans and organizations that prioritize the people over profit.
Why am I angry? Because the women I saw today have been MISSING over the past year. Your absence as allies contributes to white supremacy. Your silence advances the oppressor. Your lack of commitment fails to revolutionize our movement.
We have to do better—we have to be better and expect more from ourselves. While you return to your lives of privilege after today, women of color will continue to occupy these streets—as we always have. These streets that you claim once a year are stained by the blood of indigenous folks; this is the permanent home of resistance to those of us who can’t afford to take a break after this march.
So today, one year later, I ask you to join us. REAL change didn’t ever come easy. #PowerToThePeople
Upsets played havoc with my Divisional Round picks to the point where the only game I got right was the Tennessee- New England one to go 3-5 picking games in these 2017-18 NFL playoffs.
Then again if Maurice Williams had tackled Stefon Diggs I would have gotten the Minnesota-New Orleans game right, too
So it's onward to Championship Sunday. Only two games that will determine which one of these final four teams gets to play at US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis for Super Bowl LII.
So let's get to it.
AFC Championship Game #3 Jacksonville Jaguars at #1 New England Patriots on CBS
The Jags shocked the world by racing out to a 21-0 lead on the Steelers in their Divisional Round clash before the Steelers woke up, narrowed the deficit to 28-14 at halftime, and putting up a fight in the second half that had the Jags hanging on for dear life to preserve the 45-42 upset win.
The Jaguars qualified for their first AFC title game since 1999 as a result.
Meanwhile New England was methodically punching their ticket to their seventh consecutive AFC title game by beating down the Tennessee Traitors Titans 35-14 in Foxborough.
But the Jags ain't 'scurred' of the Patriots, and Jalen Ramsey is actually trash talking them online. Also sitting in their football operations room is Tom Coughlin, who engineered two Super Bowl upsets of the Patriots, one of which ruined their bid for a perfect season.
So if the Jags pull off the upset, you'll know one reason why including their defense which has been doubleplusgood in forcing turnovers all season.
But unfortunately for the Jags, Blake Bortles is their quarterback and the Pats have future Hall of Famer Tom Brady. It's been a nice ride for Jacksonville, but NFL football reality is about to pimp slap them in the face.
I can't go against the Cheatriots Patriots at home where they are 18-3 in the playoffs after last week's win. Patriots (boo hiss) to hoist the Lamar Hunt Trophy after the game .
.NFC Championship Game #2Minnesota Vikings at #1 Philadelphia Eagles on FOX
The Vikings needed a miracle play for the ages at home as time expired to get past the New Orleans Saints 29-24, advance to their first NFC Championship game since 2009 and keep their bid to become the first NFL squad ever to play in a Super Bowl in their home stadium alive.
The Eagles needed a dramatic goal line stand to preserve a 15-10 win over the Falcons at home to advance to their first NFC championship game since 2008.
Now these two teams who have had more than their share of playoff frustration over the years battle each other for NFC supremacy at Lincoln Financial Field with a trip to Super Bowl LII on the line.
The Vikings and Eagles have been the two best teams in the NFC all season. The Eagles lost QB Carson Wentz fo the season in Week 14, and are having to ask Nick Foles and their defense to get them through another high stakes playoff game at home in their bid to win their first NFC crown since 2004 and their first NFL championship since 1960.
Meanwhile Case Keenum (Go Coogs!) and the Vikings are coming off the high of stunning the Saints at home and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Can they beat the Eagles on the road, earn their first NFC title since 1976 and make history by becoming the first NFL team to play in a Super Bowl in their home stadium?
Yes they can. I made the mistake of misunderestimating Case Keenum and should've know better after seeing him play at UH. I won't make that mistake again
Skol Vikings!. Vikings to hoist the George Halas trophy for the first time since 1976 after the game
Would have been nice if on this January 20 date the University of Houston and UCLA would have played at NRG Stadium on the 50th anniversary of 'The Game of the Century'.
But alas, just like ten years ago, we couldn't get UCLA to agree to play that game,
We ended up on this historic day playing and beating #7 ranked Wichita State for our first win over a Top 10 ranked team since 1996.
Probably why UCLA was 'scurred' to play us
During halftime of the UH-Wichita State, several members of that 1968 Cougar squad were honored with framed photos to commemorate the 50th anniversary of that seminal game.
It was a game that set the stage for how we view college basketball today and fueled March Madness. The 1968 game at the Astrodome was not only the first time a collegiate game was played in a domed stadium, it was also nationally televised in prime time.
It also drew the then largest crowd of 52, 693 people to watch the unbeaten number one ranked Kareem Abdul- Jabbar led Bruins take on the also unbeaten and number two ranked Cougars led by Elvin Hayes.
The Coogs upset the Bruins that night 71-69 to end their 47 game winning streak and avenge their 1967 NCAA championship semifinal drubbing at the hands of UCLA.
While we have seen the number of trans feminine characters increase on our nation's television and movie screens in the last few years, with some of those characters being played by actual trans actors, what we haven't seen is a corresponding increase in trans masculine characters played by actual trans masculine actors .
We've had my Texas homeboy Scott Turner Schofield 's historic recurring role on the CBS soap The Bold and the Beautiful playing Nickin conjunction with the Maya Avant Forrester character played by a cis feminine actress.
We've had Toine Wilkins, a Black trans masculine character on the OWN network show Queen Sugar played by Brian Michael Smith
Now gracing your television screens is Dr. Casey Parker, who made his debut Thursday night on the long running ABC show Grey's Anatomy played by Alex Blue Davis.
"What's cool about the show, the episode and Krista's vision for this character is he's about way more than being trans," Davis said. "I cried at the table read, it was very moving for me. I've been waiting for a moment like this on TV my whole life. I'm so honored I got to say that line on TV because it's a long time coming."
Alex's previous television acting credits include episodes on 2 Broke Girls and NCIS: Los Angeles before getting this role
"TV is opening up to a greater range of roles (for trans characters); laverne played a lawyer on Doubt, and I'm playing a doctor-- both roles haven't really been seen before (for trans characters), Davis says.
"People can see trans folks in a new light: these are people who walk among us and are human beings who have lives. They're not defined by being trans."
That's precisely what we want, be we trans actors or trans folks getting to watch a guy or girl like us on screen. We want to see characters that are like the peeps we know in Trans World and that are in our our everyday lives..
Congrats Alex for getting that role and also realizing the importance of it, especially in light of the act it's coming during a time when we have to fight a hostile administration and its fundamentalist allies seeking to eviscerate us from public life and discourse.
Today is the one year anniversary of Dear Orange Misleader's inauguration as POTUS that I thankfully missed because I was in a meeting at $CC17 at the time it happened.
I felt this presidency was going to be a disaster, said four days before his election that the humanity of trans people was on the ballot, and I haven't been wrong about that.
On CNN today a discussion about Trump's first disastrous year in the White House ended up with CNN contributor April Ryan finally getting tired of Jack Kingston's ongoing attempt to defend Trump from being called what he is, a racist.
Sister April let him have it. And here's the video to check it out.
Tomorrow should have been a day in which women across the Houston metro area gathered to march from the Buffalo Bayou Waterworks Building to Houston City Hall, rally, network and build momentum toward flipping this state blue during the November 6 elections
That's not going to happen because the white fauxminist organizers continued last year's problematic pattern of refusing to #TrustBlackWomen and erasing trans women. Because they didn't correct last year's mistake and invite Houston Black feminine leaders to the table to help plan the event, it is not going to be a gathering of all the women in the Houston area.
Houston's Black women, cis and trans are sitting this one out and planning their own event on March 3 at Emancipation Park.
The white women running it declined to work with Houston Black feminine leaders from the outset, and don't .even get me started about their lack of outreach to the Houston trans feminine community.
Did you not get the lesson that if your feminism isn't intersectional, you're doing it wrong?
Obviously you didn't, and that's why I and many Houston Black feminine leaders and our allies WON"T be at your little party
I find it laughably ironic one of your slogans for the Houston march is 'Hear our vote' when the women voters that have been speaking the loudest are the votes of the Black women who are the base of the Democratic Party.
It is Black women's votes that powered Hillary Clinton toward capturing the 2016 Democratic nomination and nearly got her the presidency. It was Black women's votes that powered the blue wave wins in Virginia and Alabama in 2017, and that will carry the Democrats to victory in November because far too many of you white women are voting for Republicans like Trump and Abbott.
So when y;all kick that march off, I'll have something else to do.
Tomorrow will be the one year anniversary of the shameful moment in American history that we replaced the first Black president of the United States with an ignorant racist buffoon
We're still here since Dear Orange Misleader hasn't triggered World War III yet, but still have to suffer through another two years of this misadministration.
Let's get to this week's Shut Up Fool Award nominees
Honorable mention number one is guess who? Donald Trump for just pck an outrage.,
Honorable mention number two I go north of the border for to Canada. The minimum wage in the province of Ontario went up to $14 on January 1, and Tim Hortons franchise owners Jason and Susan Holman reacted by cutting benefits to their employees, and when they complained, told them to blame Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne for it and 'not to vote Liberal' in June.
For my TransGriot Canadian readers who live in Ontario, piss off the Holman's by voting Liberal
Honorable mention number three is that two bit three block rapper Offset, who thinks he's all that because he's dating Cardi B's problematic azz. He opened up his mouth to say he can't vibe with queers.
Dude, trust, none of them want to vibe with you either.
Honorable mention number four is Mat Blood, who is now 'ashamed' after being dared by friends to to do so, was videotaped shouting 'F*** N*****s! into a bullhorn with a Nazi flag draped over his shoulders.
Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumbbbbbb. Ruining your life on a dare. And you so-called master race fools have the nerve to call Black people stupid.
Honorable mention number five is DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, for lying under oath during a congressional hearing and her Scandinavian descended azz trying to claim she didn't know if Norway was a predominately White country and t=Trump called Haiti and 54 African nations s***hole countries.
Honorable mention number six is the NY Times Editorial board, who is still trying to make excuses for their fellow white people racistly voting for Dear Orange Misleader
This week's Shut Up Fool winner is Harley Barber, who got her Trump voting behind expelled from her Alpha Phi sorority and the University of Alabama for posting a racist video on Martin Luther King Day, being Becky Badass and doubling down on the racism, and then when the hammer fell down on her, crying white women's tears about what she'd done.
Maybe you'll get a job on FOX Noise and a full ride at Liberty University.
But what you did learn this week is that racism costs.
This time my fellow nominees are Mark S. King's My Fabulous Disease, Autostraddle, Gays With Kids and The Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents. It's also the first time I've ever gotten nominations for this award in consecutive years.
When you start a blog, the first consideration is not awards but filling an information need that you notice isn't being addressed for your community. I've been blessed to be able to do that on TransGriot's electronic pages for 12 years now.
Mine is not the first trans themed blog to be nominated. Dr. Kortney Ziegler's blac(k)ademic was the first to be nominated for a GLAAD Media Award n 2013. My first nomination for TransGriot didn't happen until a year later in 2014.
While a lot of the work in building TransGriot to this point was on me, it still would amount to nothing unless you readers liked what I had to say about many of the issues I talk about and share those posts in your influence circles.
I've been pleased to hear that some of the people sharing those posts are high school teachers, college professors and politicians . I've also been told by five people so far that reading posts on this blog dissuaded them from committing suicide.
So in a sense, TransGriot's existence is not only literally saving lives, but educating people about our trans lives
Congrats to all the nominees, and we'll see in a few months whether my third nomination in the Best Blog category is finally the one in which I get the historic win.
'I am deeply concerned when we are-- just having celebrated the birth of of Dr. Martin Luther King, who spoke about the effect of racism in this country and words that are motivated by racism. For so many reasons they are harmful. They have led to death. At their mildest form, which is not mild, it suggests to one group of people that they are inferior, and to another that they are superior, to their fellow man.' -Sen Kamala Harris
Sen. Cory Booker wasn't the only member of the Senate Judiciary committee that called out Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen about her memory lapses and ignoring that the US has a white supremacist terror problem.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) also called out Secretary Nielsen about her concerns about the Trump misadministration racism before pivoting to taking about DHS policy.
One of the things that was also a catalyst towards me founding TransGriot 12 years ago was wondering where was the information and stories concerning trans people from the second largest continent on planet Earth?
I knew African trans people existed, but the information about international trans folks was largely focused on Europe, Asia and Latin America and not Africa.
That bothered me as a child of the African Diaspora, and I made it a mission of this blog to seek those stories out and bring them to my readers. #WeExist, especially on the African continent
It is a sincere joy for me during my travels and online surfing to not only encounter trans people from the Mother Continent, but hear about their journeys and stories.
In many cases, like Audrey Mbugua of Kenya, her fight to be herself has established legal precedents in her nation. Another African trans person in Victor Mukasa of Uganda sued and won a lawsuit against his nation for harassing him but unfortunately had to flee his homeland to eventually live in the United States
African trans people have persevered in the quest to be eir authentic selves even in the face of severe societal disapproval, and those stories need to be heard by their African descended cousins on this side of the planet.
It also drives home the point that it is not 'unAfrican' to be transgender.
Here's a video about 26 year old Angela Coleman, who is probably the first out trans person in the nation of Ghana
On August 7, 1995 she was involved a survivable SE Washington DC traffic accident. She was unfortunately denied medical care by DC Fire Department EMT Adrian Williams and at the hospital where she was eventually transported and died as a result of the medical transphobia she experienced.
Tyra Hunter is not the only case of documented medical transphobia that resulted in death. There's the case of Robert Eads, whose story is told in the documentary Southern Comfort. Hedied of ovarian cancer because 20 doctors refused to take him on as a patient and treat the disease when it was detected in the early stages and he had better odds of surviving it
These are mine and my community's nightmare scenarios as trans persons when it comes to medical care, and it's why we cheered when the Affordable Care Act was passed with provisions in it to end medical discrimination and medical transphobia aimed at transgender Americans.
Now Dear Orange Idiot, in his never ending attempts to pander to white fundamentalists who hate the trans community, is proposing that medical personnel be allowed to deny treatment to transgender people on the basis of their religious beliefs.
Not no but hell no will we allow that to happen
What Trump is proposing is allowing the Health and Human Services civil rights office to protect healthcare workers who don't want to provide abortions, treat transgender patients, help them transition or any other medical procedures they have a religious or moral objection to like artificial insemination a woman who is part of a lesbian couple who wishes to have a child.
. This is the use of religion to hurt people because you disapprove of who they are," said Harper Jean Tobin of the National Center for Transgender Equality. "Any rule that grants a license to discriminate would be a disgrace and a mockery of the principle of religious freedom we all cherish."
For for faith based bigots who are in the medical professions, if you didn't want to serve and provide care for all people as you Hippocratic Oath and various professional ethics orgs require you to do, then you should have NEVER gotten into those health care professions in the first place.
If Health and Human Services goes there, see y'all in court.
