Your Transistion Ain't Like Mine

A few months ago I had someone post a comment to a blog post I'd written and ask the question, 'Is transition for an African-American versus a white person really that dufferent?

Yes, it is.

I say that because we start from two very different places on the social scale. A white male to female transperson is coming from a position of privilege, whether they acknowledge it or not. The society revolves around you. Because of that, many feel they have too much to lose if they transition, and tend to do it later in life.

It adds complications once they do so. Many tend to be married and deep into careers. It also impacts passability. The later you do a gender transition on the M2F side, the more testosterone buildup you have to overcome. In addition to that most white women on average tend to be shorter.

An African-American male to female transperson comes from a position in which they are reviled by society. For an African-American M2F it's an improvement in status because Black women tend to run thangs in our community. We also deal with our issues at an earlier age, which helps with passability because there's less testosterone buildup to impede feminization. Another thing that helps enhance our passability is that it's not unusual to see full figured sistahs or sistahs over six feet in height with broad shoulders.

I honestly believe that one of the reasons transpeople receive so much flack is because in addition to confounding rigid gender boundaries and making peeps insecure and uncomfortable with their gender identity or sexual orientation is WMP (white male privilege).

I think some white males find the idea of one of their own willingly stepping down from white malehood and all the perks that it bestows upon them to become a white woman so incredulous that they take it upon themselves to punish this 'deluded' individual for the 'crime' of abandoning white manhood.

The elements of the gay community that bought into Jim Fouratt's rantings tend to believe this as well.

It's more odious to the peeps who feel that 'whiteness' is under attack by the demographic trends stacked against them. They feel that EVERY white male is valuable and must not only stay in that gender role, but help produce their share of babies to perpetuate the race or get assimilated out of existence.

If you think I'm off base about this, then explain to me why white fundamentalists have basically been preaching this message since the early 90's, have a virulent hatred for gay people, have savagely attacked immigration with disgusting racist rhetoric and pressure their wives to leave the work force and have multiple children?

Black transpeople not only get the residual fallout from the attacks on white transpeople, but we get attacked by segments of our own community as well. We have to deal with the sellout ministers preaching anti-gay sermons in order to keep their faith-based bucks flowing into their pockets. That message gets interpreted by the nekulturny elements as 'it's okay' to attack transpeople.

Since we are the most visible spectrum of the GLBT community, and because one of the tragic instances of early transition sometimes results in some kids being tossed out of their homes by 'christian' parents, it leaves many of my sisters more vulnerable to the violence stirred up by these hatemongers.

While we do catch hell from some portions of the African-American community, on the other hand, we receive love and acceptance from the parts of it who correctly believe that our solidarity as African-Americans trumps the BS. They feel that people who have been historically hated for who they are shouldn't be doing the same things to transpeople, who are also being hated for superficial reasons as well.

In the African-American GLBT/SGL community, for the most part we don't have the gays and lesbians vs transpeeps or transpeeps vs. crossdressers battles that roil relations in the white GLBT community. One thing that keeps it in check for all of us SGL community members is the realization that 25% of this country hates us no matter if we're straight or gay.

We African-American transwomen have our own cross to bear when it comes to our images. We transsistahs have the double whammy of getting saddled with the hypersexy vixen image that burdens our biosisters, the angry neck-rolling SWA (sistah with attitude) stereotype and being considered less attractive when we are compared to European beauty standards.

We are also disproportionately saddled with the burden of having African-American transwomen images (along with Latina and Asian transwomen) and sexuality linked in some people's minds to transgender porn and the sex industry.

So no, our transgender journeys are not alike. We have common interests in terms of having our civil rights protected, codified into law and respected. We are both concerned about unemployment/underemployment issues. We have to continually work on educating the public about our issues and understand each other enough to build a larger transgender community as well.

But on others, we must bear that burden alone.

Things I DIDN'T Expect About Transistion

When you start a gender transition, there are some things you have a basic knowledge about or some assumptions that you go into it with.

You expect to lose a few friends and relatives along the way. You know that your body is finally going to morph in the feminine direction with the accompanying gender characteristics. You're aware that you're going to lose some of your male strength level and your breast size will be the roughly the same cup size as the biowomen in your immediate family. Your emotions will get scrambled in the early stages as your mind and body get adapted to the hormones. You anticipate that there will be some awkward moments, some humorous ones, hurt feelings, joy and pain as you get adjusted to living on the other side of the gender fence.

But there are some things about a gender transition that catch you off guard because you didn't expect it.

For me, there were a few.

One of the things I didn't expect was an increase in the frequency of my bathroom visits. The spironolactone that I take as a testosterone blocker is also a diuretic. Translation: It makes me go to the bathroom more often.

I was stunned at how fast my breast development occurred once I started on hormones. I had breast buds and nipple expansion growth within days of taking my first hormones.

I discovered the reason for it when I did followup blood work a month into my transition and it was compared to my baseline numbers. I had a low testosterone count. The testosterone level is measured on a 0-900 scale by your endocrinologist. Biomale testosterone level is usually on the upper end of that scale in the 700-900 range. Biowomen also have small amounts of testosterone in the 50-100 range that basically govern a woman's sex drive.

Mine was at 400 when I started in 1994 and its around 120 now. Slightly higher than what a biowoman would have in her body yet significantly less than what a biomale has in his system. I didn't expect to hear from my endo that my risk for prostate cancer would dwindle to almost zero.

However, my risk for breast cancer has doubled.

Another medical surprise was revealed to me during a subsequent check up as well. My blood pressure and stress level dropped dramatically despite being in a high stress airline job. That one's easy to explain. I wasn't living a double life anymore. I was finally becoming on the outside the person I was on the inside and was damned happy about it.

I discovered by accident that my reflexes and hearing improved. One day I knocked a half full cup of Kool-Aid off the edge of my dining table in my apartment and without thinking quickly snatched it in mid-air. Saved me from cleaning the spill out of my carpet. My guess is this might be a biological thang because mothers have heightened sensory awareness in order to protect their children from approaching danger.


I didn't expect to gain the ability to have multiple orgasms or realize just how good they feel. ;) That was a wonderful surprise. Another interesting discovery was that some biowomen desire to have intimate relationships with pre-op transwomen. I found it ironic that I got hit on my more women after I started transition that I did before as The Twin. I wasn't in gay clubs either when these propositions happened.

Oh well, you never know what people like when you get them behind closed doors.

One of the other surprises was also in a social setting. It's one I chafe at and it took me awhile to get over. Being interrupted when in a converation with a man, having to explain myself and having my intelligence questioned or dismissed. It was a frequent occurrence in business situations as well.

I sarcastically lamented one day to my sistafriends that I lost ten points on my IQ when I transtioned as far as men are concerned. My sistafriends replied that I got it wrong. I didn't lose points, I GAINED twenty points when I transitioned.

I also discovered that some African-Americans have a long way to go in terms of being 'ejumacated' on transgender issues. Despite long time exposure to trans issues thanks to articles in Ebony and Jet, drag shows, balls and pageants and famous crossdressers in our midst such as Flip Wilson (Geraldine Jones), RuPaul, and Tyler Perry's Madea, I quickly found that some of our peeps are WORSE than white fundamentalists. I felt that my brothas and sistahs, given our own civil rights struggles would be more tolerant of transgender people.

Despite those surprises, I adapted and now happily thrive in my life as a Phenomenal Transwoman.

Transparent

I just finished reading Transparent by Cris Beam. It's an interesting nonfiction book about several Los Angeles Latina and African-American transkids covering a period from 1998 to 2005.

One of the people featured in the book, Foxxjazell was familiar to me. I just wrote a blog post last month on her increasing popularity in California's rap scene as a transgender rapper. It was interesting to read her background story.

Some of it was sad, some triumphant. Some of their stories hit home and triggered some emotional memories concerning some things I was dealing with in my own childhood.

Cris Beam also weaves transgender history, science, and knowledge throughout the book. If you want to get some insight on some of the issues we deal with and how they affect these transkids, you may want to pick this book up and add it to your collection.

In The Spirit

Over the weekend I was checking out the seminar topics that were presented during the just concluded Southern Comfort Conference when this one caught my eye.

Fractal Femininity (Masculinity); Changing Gender a Better Way; from the Inside Out that was taught by Dr. John O'Dea. I chuckled to myself as I read that.

One of the things that African-American transpeeps have known for years is that transition is an inside-out process. Anybody can acquire the body if you have enough cash to do so. But since we only earn .70 for every dollar a white person earns, we by necessity had to focus on the internal process first.

I'm a voracious reader, and one of the first things I did after I started transition was subscribe to Essence magazine. It has a wonderful column called In The Spirit by Susan L. Taylor that focuses on many of the spiritual, emotional and other issues that African-American women deal with in their daily lives. She also published a book by the same name that deals with the spiritual side of womanhood.

By listening to the advice that was given to me by my sistafriends, doing tons of reading, having Dr. Cole tell me the same thing and simple observation, I learned that femininity is internal and between your ears, not the genitalia configuration between your legs.

It's a lesson that was reinforced by observing the way some white transpeople approach transition. I noted there was way too much emphasis on SRS and and not enough time focused on dealing with the emotional aspects of femininity. One of the reasons that WPATH calls for the one year Real Life Test is to give you time to get the mind and your new body configuration in sync and get comfortable with it. It's also getting you prepared for dealing with the reality of living as a woman in a male-dominated society.

Too many times I saw peeps blitz through the process, then get upset or wonder why they were still not accepted as women even though they had gotten surgery. It's because while they may have the bodies, the thoughts and actions are still consistent with the masculine behavior patterns they grew up with and didn't address before hopping that flight to Thailand or wherever they had the snip-and-tuck done.

One of the keys is a basic one. Loving yourself. You have to not only feel comfortable in your own skin, but look in the mirror and love the reflection staring back at you. Sometimes that's a tough job with all the negativity that can get hurled at us on a regular basis, but if you have enough self love, you can deal with almost anything the world throws at you.

You also have to believe in a higher power. Be it God, Allah, Jah, Yahweh or whatever you call the higher power, you must acknowledge that there are forces at work that are greater than yourself. You must come to the realization that you are a child of God that is created in His image and that as a transperson, you are part of the divine plan as well despite what fundie 'christians' have to say.

Finally, dealing with the spiritual side of womanhood is an ongoing process. The paths we take toward that spiritual growth and enlightenment are varied. But in the end the goal is still the same. You want to continue evolving to be a better person than when you started your journey.

Southern Comfort 2007

I'm a little bummed that I had to miss Southern Comfort this year mainly because of my work schedule. It's one of my favorite transgender events to attend since it's held in the ATL.

This year's version started on September 10 and is running through the 16th. The bulk of the convention will be transpiring today, Friday and Saturday with the start of the seminar tracks and the upcoming formal dinner on Saturday.

Southern Comfort, now in its 17th year, is the largest transgender event in the US. It's where we get together to transact our community business, have fun, get reacquainted with old friends, meet new ones, and learn a little something while were there. From humble beginnings it quickly became a must attend event during the 90's. It's even been featured in a documentary by the same name.

I first started attending SCC in 1999 and returned in 2000 for an NTAC board meeting we'd scheduled during the event. I skipped a few years letting my finances recover from my move to Louisville before I attended another one in 2004. The 2004 event was the first one I attended at the midtown Atlanta hotel they moved to after SCC outgrew the neighboring Buckhead area hotels that hosted it.

The 2000 Southern Comfort was the most memorable one for me. It was the year that SCC not only set their attendance record, but we had a record 26 African-American and Latino transpeeps attend SCC as well.

That attendance sadly has been the high water mark in terms of an African-American presence at SCC. One of the things that has been embarrassingly obvious to the SCC planners is that while they realize that they are sitting in the Black GLBT mecca, (a fact I and Dawn Wilson pointed out when we were participating in numerous SCC planning meetings over the years) the event has been shunned by the local community.

One of the major problems that contributed to the attendance gap at SCC is one that's common for many national transgender conferences. They are geared towards a middle to upper middle class clientele, in locations with little to no access to public transportation and hotels that aren't cheap or in suburban locations.

Even though SCC offers scholarships and 'sweat equity' programs to help defray costs, it's still in a hotel that's not cheap and the conference registration is separate from the hotel charges. The financial barrier helps to promote in the African-American community a perception that 'we're not wanted', and the end result is a convention that's 99% white.

Despite that feeling from time to time of being the Lone Sistah, I sometimes took advantage of being in the ATL and just got away from the hotel to see Atlanta's sights and attractions. I strolled through Piedmont Park after the 2004 SCC barbecue. Me and several other African-American attendees bounced to a nearby restaurant and had fun getting to know each other,

Since SCC is a Who's Who of people in the transgender universe, I've had the pleasure of meeting a lot of those well-known peeps as I was becoming one of them myself. In 2004 I had a wonderful conversation with Calpernia Addams. I had the pleasure of dancing with Jamison Green at the 2000 formal dinner and finally meeting TAVA founder Monica Helms. I got to meet and hang out with Dawn at the 1999 event. It's also fun to interact with the hotel staffs and guests as we're chillin' in the lobby or at the bars.

SCC is important on many levels. It's a event that transpeople plan and execute with military precision. It sends the message to the rest of the world that we aren't as invisible as some of you wish we would be, we aren't going away, and we aren't the ogres that your pastors tell you we are. It's a time and place where many transpeople first come out because it's an event where they feel safe, begin to build those support networks and gather the information that is crucial to a successful transition. It's one of the reasons why I came up with the idea of doing a similar conference for African-American transgender people that we made happen in 2005 and 2006. As a matter of fact, the job fair that SCC is promoting this year came from us coming up with the idea for our 2005 TSTBC conference.

And most importantly, SCC helps to instill pride in who we are as transgender people.

Transwoman Calls For Greater Tolerance Of Gender Diversity In Singapore

Trans woman calls for greater tolerance of gender diversity in Singapore
11th September 2007 16.50
by Gemma Pritchard
from Pink News, UK

A transsexual woman from Singapore has embarked on a mission to help turn around the "culture of shame" surrounding transsexuals in Singapore.

Unlike many other transsexuals in Asia who prefer to live privately because of the social stigma of sex change, British-educated Leona Lo has chosen to live a normal life, but in public.

Leona, a 32-year-old communications specialist who heads her own public relations company, told Agence France-Presse (AFP):

"Somewhere out there, not just in Singapore but throughout Asia, there are lots of young people who are suffering the way I suffered years ago."

These days, she draws on her experiences of gender identity crisis, rejection and discrimination to challenge social mores on behalf of the so-called silent community.

"It's this entire culture of shame that gets under your skin. It's not something that you can isolate and demolish because it is so much a part of our culture," she says.

While a few transsexuals are gaining prominence in Asia, notably China's Jin Xing, most continue to live in silence.

In May,a 32-year-old South Korean transsexual entertainer (Harisu), whose sex alteration led the country to change its family registry laws, married
her rapper boyfriend.

Parinya "Nong Toom" Charoenphol' s rags-to-riches story was made into a movie, Beautiful Boxer.

Former Chinese People's Liberation Army colonel and now woman Jin Xing is a prize-winning dancer and choreographer.

Discrimination is the biggest challenge faced by transsexuals, Leona says, recalling repeated rejection by prospective employers in Singapore despite her academic credentials.

"Singapore may be a cosmopolitan city, but many things are still swept under the carpet,"

No reliable figures on the number of transsexual men and women in Singapore, or the region, are available, mainly because those who feel they have been born in the wrong body prefer to endure their situation in silence rather than embarrass their families, Leona told AFP.

"It's because a lot of transsexual women face discrimination at work and experience failure of relationships that a lot end up in suicide, depression. They end up on the streets as prostitutes," she says.

This is why she has taken time away from her thriving public relations consultancy promoting beauty products to wage her campaign.

After much persuasion, one local university allowed her to speak to an audience of students but she is finding to find a way share her thoughts with the corporate world.

On September 14 she is to launch her autobiography, From Leonard to Leona: A Singapore Transsexual's Journey to Womanhood.

From Singapore, Leona plans to travel across Asia to bring her message for greater tolerance of gender diversity.

Leona says the association of transsexuals with prostitution in Singapore harks back to the 1960s when there was a flourishing culture of drag queens, including some transsexuals, on Singapore's Bugis Street.

As Singapore transformed rapidly into a modern Asian business centre, the government cracked down on Bugis Street. Transsexuals were lumped together with homosexuals, transvestites and prostitutes.

It was in this environment that Leona grew up.

"I did not think I was gay. I just felt that I was a woman trapped in a man's body," says Leona, who has a younger sister.

At age 15, Leonard discovered a book about transsexualism, which sowed the seeds of her eventual decision to undergo a sex-change operation in 1997.

"I discovered that book in the library and I said 'Oh my God! There are actually people like me!" she reminisces.

"That changed my life and I discovered that I could go for the sex change operation."

As an able-bodied man at the time, Leona entered Singapore's compulsory two-year military service at around 19.

Pressures of being forced to be "macho" during the training led to a nervous breakdown and drove her to attempt suicide by drug overdose, she says.

In 1996 Leona went to study in Britain, where a more tolerant university environment allowed her to cross-dress for a year as part of her preparation for sex-change surgery.

In 1997, she checked in to a Bangkok surgery for the operation.

"I was afraid. I could go in and I could die. But I knew at that point that I was going to change my life forever," she recalls.

"I had carried that burden within me for so long and I couldn't live anymore without doing it."

Leona endured a lot of pain during the procedure, which took 14 days, but the feeling of having a new identity was "wonderful, euphoric!" she told AFP.

She warns other transsexuals who might be considering sex change surgery that getting a new identity "is not a magic wand" and they will have to live under a culture of shame and discrimination.

Family support is crucial. Her mother was the first person she told after the operation, and her father had already learned to accept her for who she is. "By that time, they had already decided that they would rather have me as a woman than lose me as a child," she says.

She hopes now to become a wife and mother.

"I look forward to a fulfilling relationship with a loving man, getting married and adopting three children.

"I've also reached a critical juncture where I'm more self-assured and finally able to lay to rest the painful aspects of my past and move confidently as a woman."

He’s My Daughter

By ELIZABETH TAI
September 9, 2007
from The Star(Malaysia)

photos-transwoman Sarika, a Malaysian transwoman entering a non-profit organization in Kuala Lumpur

Appalled by how transsexuals are generally mistreated by society and even their families, the third winner of FreedomFilmFest07 hopes to change mindsets by showing how a mother’s love and acceptance can make all the difference.

IT was an assignment that seemed straightforward enough: do a video clip on transsexuals in Malaysia for a news website. But after meeting and interviewing transsexuals and learning about their lives, Indrani Kopal, 28, could not get them out of her mind.

The Cambridge International Dictionary of English defines a transsexual as a person who feels that they should have been born the opposite sex, and therefore behaves and dresses like a member of that sex, or a person who has had a medical operation to change their sex.

In real life, that’s much harder to do. The transsexuals Indrani met told her stories of how they were harassed and abused by strangers when they walked down the street. Some were turned out by their loved ones. As a result, many became sex workers because they could not fend for themselves as no one was willing to employ them. And this led to the arrests by the police.

Indrani quickly realised that her short video clip for Malaysiakini was not enough. She kept in touch with the many transsexuals she had come to know and looked for the chance to tell their stories in a bigger and more profound way.

She first thought of highlighting the injustices faced by transsexuals, because “in the Asian region, our country is the worst for transsexuals to live in,” but that angle did not feel right nor new to Indrani.

Then, she got to know Sarika Samalakrishnan, 23, a university graduate who works in a human resource department of a company.

After hearing numerous tales of how transsexuals were turned away by their families, she was astounded to find out that Sarika’s family accepted her for who she was.

“Her mum went to the extend of buying her clothes and cosmetics! I was amazed, and thought, ‘Wow, that’s a cool mother!’ And I thought, why not document it?” said Indrani.

Indrani knew that she had found the perfect angle for her documentary.

And when the FreedomFilmFest judges received her documentary proposal, they thought the same and Indrani became one of three winners who were awarded a RM5,000 grant.

Her documentary is called She’s My Son. It wasn’t easy to juggle her busy work as a video journalist and find time to film and direct her project as well.

But nothing prepared her for the crisis that hit the production. Three weeks after pre-production in April, one of Sarika’s sisters feared that the documentary would make Sarika’s “issue” public and thus harm the chances of their younger sister getting married.

Sarika had to withdraw from the documentary.

“It was a moment of complete panic for me,” said Indrani, shuddering at the memory.

For two weeks, Indrani frantically searched for a new talent. Then Sarika introduced her to Suganya, 30.

“I wasn’t so sure about her at first. Then, at a party held by transsexuals, Suganya came to me and said, ‘Don’t worry, you will love my mother.’ And when I met Suganya’s mother Samsed, I realised that she was godsend. Everything I had in my mind, she just laid it out. She was expressive, confident, and cooperative,” said Indrani.

The relationship between Suganya and Samsed, 49, was just beautiful, she added.

When Suganya went through a sex change operation recently, the whole family celebrated it.

“It was a huge ceremony for them and they invited their relatives to the party,” said Indrani.

One thing you will not find in her documentary is religious debate because Indrani feels that the focus should be on families instead.

“The root of the problem is the family. If the family respects a transgendered child, then they will educate society (into accepting transsexuals). Why do you want to blame the authorities when you can educate the family? And who can educate the family? The media.”

The real star of the documentary, she said, is Samsed.

“I want people to know that there are mothers who accept their transsexual children,” she explained. “When I was young, I didn’t give them any attention. I thought they were normal, but I wasn’t aware of what was happening to them in society.”

Society needs to realise that transsexuals have the right to live, to have shelter, to earn money and have an education, she added.

“Even if only one person changes after the documentary, I think I’ve completed my objective,” she said.

The Twin Has Left The Building

I was perusing Christine Daniels Woman In Progress blog the other day. She has a segment in which she takes some of the questions and comments she receives from readers and answers them.

One of the questions asked by a reader was how she felt about Mike (her name prior to transition). That got my brain churning about the subject as well.

She doesn't miss Mike and I don't miss 'The Twin' (what I call my 'imitation of a male life' phase) either.

The Twin was a smart, nice but painfully shy person up until the point I transitioned in 1993. The Twin had very few close male friends but lots of female friends back in the day. I had two special women during my school years that wanted to be more than that. One I'm still in contact with and we've known each other since junior high, the other I met when I started high school. I had several when I worked at CAL that wanted to be more than friends there as well and I think about them from time to time.

I was spending so much time trying to suppress Monica that it didn't leave myself any time and energy to just focus on doing what I needed to do to make my dreams happen, much less figure out what I wanted to do. I also discovered that the harder I fought to suppress the urge to be her, the stonger that desire to be her became.

I was so painfully shy that early in my time at JJ in the fall of 1977, my father found out about a dance being held at my high school when the sponsors of it called the station and asked him to DJ it. I wasn't planning on going and adamantly told him that. He was going to force me to attend it until my mother intervened.

The other thing that was holding me back romantically was that I had more than a clue by the time high school rolled around that I was dealing with transgender issues. I just hadn't accepted the truth yet and was fighting it, even though I was crossdressing four times a week, adding makeup to my routine, painting red, pink or clear nail polish on my toes and when my class schedule didn't have PE on it would sometimes wear panties and panty hose to school under my jeans just to keep Monica placated. I almost did drag during my senior year for homecoming week and wish I had.

It's also ironic that in my graduation photo I was wearing face powder. The shine from my face was so overpowering to the point where my photographer Juanita Williams pulled her powder compact out of her purse and applied some of it to my face.

The internal tug of war during my teen years over who would control this body was dragging my grades down as well. I had a 3.8 when I left junior high but had slipped to a 3.0 by the time my senior year hit. I still managed to graduate with honors despite that.

Despite all my drama, the low self-esteem days and futile attempts to build a Berlin Wall around my heart, The Twin was still getting attention from biosistahs. That was true at UH and after I left college and started working for CAL.

The time at CAL was a mixed bag as well. I loved my job and the travel perks but it was torture as well. Here was a situation in which I worked at a place on a daily basis surrounded by beautiful, smart, college-educated professional sistahs and Latinas (yes, The Twin got attention from Latinas as well) and all I could think about was how jealous I was because I WASN'T them. Don't even get me started on the beautiful women, female co-workers and celebrities from all over the world that transited my gates during the 14 years I spent at IAH.

When I lost my virginity at 26 I was upset afterwards because I was jealous of the sistah I was intimately pleasing at the time. I was also coming to the realization during the 80's that I didn't want to drag a biosistah into my situation.

But don't think they didn't give it their best shots. ;) Just as the Berlin Wall had ingenious people engineer sucessful escapes past it, I had various women during the 80's and early 90's who attempted to breach the wall around my heart and managed to capture it for a little while as well.

Up until the time I finally had enough, had my two year relationship from Hades end and made the moves to transition, I felt guilt over my perception that I was taking a nice Black 'man' out of circulation. But I eventually realized that if I wasn't comfortable in that role, it wasn't fair to have whatever sistah who was romantically interested in having The Twin as her hubby deal with something she wasn't going to be prepared for either. But one thing I did confess to the women that were interested in me during the 2000 reunion and after I transitioned at CAL was that I should have let them decide whether The Twin was worth their time.

I'm now a happy (about 98% of the time), healthy, contributing member of society ready to do her part and contribute her talents to uplift the race.

The Twin wasn't all bad. I have some wonderful memories growing up. I traveled, found myself in some interesting situations and did a lot of fun things when I wasn't depressed. I hope that the biowomen that did get the opportunity to meet, love and go out with The Twin enjoyed those times. I hope they found The Twin to be an honest, loving, kind, straight-shooter of a person. Those are qualities that I broght with me when I transitioned. I also hope that they considered The Twin to be a gentleman and a loyal friend in a world that doesn't have very many of those.

So do I want to go back to being in The Twin's shoes? Nope, I love the three inch pumps and stylish clothes I'm strutting my stuff in just fine. In fact, if it were possible for me to go back in time I would have transitioned in high school or my early college years.

As I told my family and friends and reiterated a few years ago, The Twin has left the building and ain't coming back.

The Body's The Easy Part

I remember how I felt when I first started taking hormones. There was a peaceful, calming feeling that started to wash over me when my body began its long delayed feminine development phase.

I started checking myself out on a full length mirror and practically got giddy with excitement as I saw curves starting to form on my hips. I remember how tender my nipples were when they started expanding and the breasts started budding and filling out. I was happy when my skin started smoothing out, clearing up and the body hair growth started slowing down. I remember when my hair finally got long enough to where I actually could do my first perm on it.

The initial body morphing, however was the easy part of the transition. Being a woman is more than just having the body. Femininity is more spiritual and mental. It's also an ongoing process. I'm thirteen years down the road and I'm still learning and evolving in terms of being on this journey called womanhood.

One of the mistakes I see some transwomen make is trying to rush the process. It took your mothers, aunts and sisters a decade just to go through the process of having their bodies morph into their adult feminine forms. While they are adjusting to that, they are being socialized into the feminine gender role by all the female members of their families and with the encouragement of society at large.

We transwomen go down a different path. We make that journey in many cases under trying circumstances. We don't have a decade to get comfortable with our bodies, we have to do it on the fly. Our families resist us in terms of trying to force us into a gender role that's incongruent for us. Society fights us tooth and nail since its tendency is to fear what it doesn't understand.

And yet through all of that, to paraphrase Maya Angelou, and still we rise.

Somehow, despite all of that, we manage to get through the trial by fire and become the women that we were born to be. Sometimes I get a little upset about the drama I've gone through (and STILL go through), the insults, the snide remarks and daily slights just to be me. I feel cheated sometimes when I pass by a little girl, a woman with kids in tow or a sistah I'm casting an admiring look at because she's working an outfit. I wonder how different my childhood would have been if I'd been born in the correct body from Day One.

When I talk to my sistah friends, I get brought back to reality. I've been told by them numerous times that I'm the blessed one. One of my sistah friends told me that she'd rather be me because she wouldn't be dealing with cramps and Aunt Flo once a month.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the street, I guess ;)

Black First-Transgender Second

There's a lot of things over the last thirteen years that have changed about me.

I went from long hair just past my shoulders to the short style I currently wear. I have a wig collection that rivals Kim Fields' Living Single character Regine Hunter. I've gone from wearing predominately red toned lipsticks to neutral colors and plums. I'm more outgoing and happy as a person. My body now matches my gender identity.

But the one common thread through all those various changes is a fundamental one:

I'm still Black.

When you're a transgender person of color it's the one time when being an ethnic minority is an advantage. I say that because people tend to focus on your skin color first before all the other issues that make you the unique individual that you are come into play.

I make no bones about the fact that I am a proud African-American and I'm not going to apologize for that. Neither am I going to allow some sadly misguided elements of the African-American community to stupidly assert that because I'm transgender I'm not a 'real' African-American. The only thing that changed was my body configuration. That doesn't disqualify me or any other African-American transpeeps from our rightful place at the African-American family table.

I've had to call out some of the ignorant peeps here for sarcastically referring to me as 'Monica Black' because my monthly newspaper column in THE LETTER deals with GLBT issues from an African-American perspective like my blog does.

I love ESSENCE, EBONY and Jet magazines and read them faithfully. I love everything about my people's history, our culture and never tire of learning more about it. I love the flavor we live our lives with. I love the sprituality threads that run through our culture.

It's just that for me to truly be the best person I could be and do my part to uplift the race I had to deal with the gender issues once and for all. I submit that the only thing tougher than being a Black woman or a Black man in American society is being emotionally a Black woman or a Black man in a mismatched body.

I'm evolving into my role as an African-American woman with a transgender history. I'm ecstatically happy and proud of that. I thank God for finally infusing me with the courage and faith to step out and make those necessary adjustments in my life.

I've been blessed with the writing skills and the talent to translate my life experiences into flowing prose. I'm working toward publishing some of the novels I've been working on. I want to continue to evolve into a positive role model for the transkids that are sorting out this issue and let them know that your dreams don't have to die because you transition.

But just because I transitioned doesn't mean I escaped the BS that Black people face in this country. I still grew up in the 'hood. All I did was swap one set of gender related issues for another one. I still get followed in upscale department stores. My intelligence is still discounted. I still get called the n-word by the ignorant folks in addition to having the b-word included in the epithets they spew at me. Being transgender adds another layer of drama to the mix as well.

The one thing that would make my life and other African-American transpeople's lives infinitely better is to be unconditionally loved and accepted by our own people. We get enough Hateraid from 'errbody' else and we don't need added drama from our own peeps as well. We've got a lot of work to do just to get to the point in which unconditional love and acceptance automatically happens, but it's something that I pray will happen in my lifetime.

As we work together as a communty to make that a reality, please bear in mind that I STILL am and always will be Black first, transgender second and proud to be both.

God Has A Sense of Humor

God has a sense of humor.

When I say that, I'm talking about the observation I made that while my prayers were being answered on God's time to become the woman I needed to be, I was being put in all these interesting ironic situations during the time I was struggling with the gender issue.

Some of those situations weren't so humorous or funny at the time they occured, but with the accumulation of wisdom and as the years go by I've learned to laugh at them.
It seems like during that time period in the late 70's and 80's the more I fought the gender issue during my 'imitation of a male life phase', the more I got hit with a situation where I was confronted with it.

One of my favorite cousins I grew up with is transgender. It was a fact that was kept away from me by my parents (that I'm still a little upset about). What they didn't know is that I found out anyway that something was up.

I got confronted during my junior year in a health class by a female sophomore student who'd gone to Johnston Jr. High with my cuz. When Dena asked me in class if John was my cousin and I acknowledged that he was, she called him the 'f' word that rhymes with maggot. I ripped her a new anus for dissing my cousin.

A few weeks later I dozed off in my chemistry class because I wasn't feeling well and I awoke just in time to avert an impromptu makeover about to be conducted by Brenda Hayes and Virginia Tucker. They and many of my female classmates had noted my long eyelashes and fairly androgynous features of my face. Many have told me since that they felt I was on the wrong team as well.

I kept running into transwomen when I was hitting the various clubs I was partying at in H-town during the 80's. There was one night that me and two friends were at Georgi-O's in 1984 and I was talking to a UH classmate working the door entrance. Two beautiful transsistahs walked in while I was standing there and showed their ID's to my friend to verify they were of legal drinking age. I noticed both ID's had 'M' in the gender code areas. Later that evening one of my friends decides to hit on one of the girls and disses me in the process, so I didn't bother telling him what I learned at the door. I was calmly eating my breakfast at Denny's with his cousin when he discovered her secret during his attempted romantic interlude at the nearby Mitchell Inn with her.

I had girls constantly remarking that talking to me was like talking to their homegirls. A few even slipped up during those phone conversations and used, "Girl, let me...."

Even distance from Houston couldn't keep me from bumping into transwomen. I spent July 1988 doing corporate training in Denver when I worked for CAL. Three days after I arrived I was in the hotel restaurant about to grab some breakfast before heading to class when I observed a guy and a transsistah walk into the restaurant holding hands.

I kept running into them at my various jobs. When I was working at the Dome, during a high school football doubleheader in 1981 I had three sistah drag queens strut by the concession stand I managed with a crowd of kids behind them. I noticed that two of them were on hormones. Just after they passed me and wandered toward the Dome's West exit one of those kids snatched the wig off one of the girls heads.

The business next door to the check cashing place I briefly worked at employed a transsistah for a while. I had a DJ party gig in which two drop dead gorgeous transsistahs came in the venue to enjoy the ambiance and house music me and my DJ partner Eric were throwing down. I had various flights over the years where I ran into various female illusionists, peeps on their way to compete in pageants, do out of town gigs or just traveling.

It took me a while, but I finally got the message. ;)

R-E-S-P-E-C-T My Womanhood

TransGriot Note: From a May 2004 TransGriot Column
Copyright 2004, THE LETTER

Aretha Franklin sang about, and I expect it.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

I'm glad that there are other transsistas that feel the same way that I do and are willing to speak out about the disrespectful attitudes that we encounter while operating in the world around us.

Here's some advice to the 'gentlemen' that try to rap to us. If you wish to get to know me or any transwoman, just treat us as you would any other sista that you meet for the first time. Unzipping your pants and asking "How big is your d**k is a real turnoff. It's one of the things that annoys me on the occasions that I do go out to GLBT clubs.

Another thing that upsets me is to have some guy walk up me, grab his crotch and ask, "How much?" If you did that with a genetic sista, she'd slap you, and my reaction to that insulting query won't be as nice either. Just because some of my T-sistas may partake in paid extracurricular sexual activity doens't mean that you can assume I'm sitting in a GLBT club for the same reason. Nor can you speculate what genitalia I may or may not possess between my legs because I happen to be in a gay patronized establishment. The fact that I spent my formative years in a male body doesn't give anyone the right to disrespect me. You may not like me, but you will respect me as a human being. I expect nothing less.

I grew up in a male body, but I'm not a man. I am a woman. I'm deliriously happy to finally be able to say that. The way that I look at life, love and interact with people on this planet is filtered through a feminine perspective. I like going out on dates, getting flowers, and hanging out with brothers as much as my genetic sisters. I can talk about what happened this week on THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS just as easily as I discuss politics, sports or various other topics that pique my interest.

I went through a lot of drama to make my external appearance match the way I've felt internally since childhood. I did not travel down this pothole filled road to become someone's sex toy. I'm finally comfortable with my body and I'm ready to take my place in this society as an African-American woman. I want to contribute my talents to uplift my people while being cognizant and proud of the fact that I am transgendered.

Diana Ross said it best in an October 1989 Essence magazine interview. 'I never considered it a disadvantage to be a Black woman. I never wanted to be anything else. We have brains. We are beautiful. We can do anything we set our minds to.'

Well, I set my mind on becoming the beautiful Black woman that I am today. I didn't have the advantage of being taught from birth what genetic women learned about femininity from their mothers or grandmothers. My femininity has been acquired by observing my mother, gradmothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, and various women that I
admire. I also have the examples of myriad transgendered and non-transgendered ladies to inspire me to greater heights.

All that I and my transgendered sisters are doing is striving to become the best women that we can be. If we happen to turn some of you on in the process, then that's all good, too.

Wanna Pass? Build A Sistah Circle

I believe that one of the ways to be the best sistah you can be is spending lots of quality interaction time with peeps who have lived that gender role since birth.

In order to successfully transition to womanhood, I think it's critical to build up a network of supportive friends who are not only biowomen, but transwomen as well called a sistah circle.

The first order of business in building that sistah circle is finding the biowomen members of it. They should be people who are so secure in their own femininity that they aren't tripping about your transwoman status. They need to be intellectually curious, spiritual and will 'keep it real' for you in terms of their experiences growing up. They will also check you when you start whining about how lucky they are to be born female.

Bear in mind that this is a two way relationship. You have to 'keep it real' for the biowomen as well in terms of sharing some of the painful parts of your background, the intimate details of your life and answering whatever questions the biowoman has about the medical aspects of transition that you feel comfortable discussing.

The transwoman aspect of your sistah circle is important as well. Sometimes there are just issues that no matter how understanding, smart and down your biowoman friend is, they require another transwoman to break it down for you so that you can understand it. But don't just automatically assume that your biowoman friend may not understand your transgender related problem. She may surprise you.

If you're blessed to find those types of friends, you're on your way.

As you continue your transition journey you'll want to add to your evolving sistah circle biowomen who are married, unmarried, single, divorced, younger, older, straight, gay, in or out of relationships, mothers or have a combination of these characteristics. You'll want the same kind of breakdown for the transwomen that are part of your sistah circle as well.

So why am I talking about sistah circles? Because women have similar networks of intimate interlocking friendships that not only help them sort out the mysteries of womanhood and life in general, but help them get through the challenges of being a woman in a man's world.

My sistahfriends have been invaluable to me in terms of my growth and understanding of the spiritual nature of femininity. They have not only helped me put together my femme presentation, they have checked me when I haven't been on point with it as I need to be. They also smack me back into reality when I start whining about the bull I have to deal with because I wasn't born female.

I bring to the table as a sistah circle member not only my analytical abilities about relationships, willingness to learn everything I can about being female and the desire to have the friendship last a lifetime, I'm also a powerful ally in helping them decipher the mysteries of male behavior.

By building sistah circle friendships, you also help the transgender community. You demystify us in their eyes and help 'ejumacate' them about our lives. Your biowomen friends can potentially be our best allies when disinformation about transpeeps comes up in their daily interactions with other non-transgender persons. They can enlighten peeps about what the real deal is when it comes to transgender peeps because they know one personally.

It also never hurts to have a loyal person in your corner, period.

So go ahead. introduce yourself to that biowoman or transwoman whose outfit you like, who carries herself like the Queen of Sheba or has a magnetic personality you admire.

You have nothing to lose and may gain a friend for life

Transpeeps and the Po-Po's Still Have Drama

There's been a long history in the United States of tension between the police and the transgender community. In fact, the August 1966 Compton's Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco and the June 28, 1969 Stonewall Riots that are considered the start of the United States GLBT civil rights movement have a similar root cause:

GLBT people finally getting fed up with being harassed by police.

So it didn't suprise me when Amnesty International released on September 22, 2005 the first in a series of reports that documented what we in the transgender community have known, talked about and experienced for years. Despite the major gains we've made over the last 40 years in having our civil rights recognized and respected, the problem of police harassment still persists.

Called Stonewalled: Police Abuse and Misconduct against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people in the United States, the Amnesty International report revealed that transgender people experienced some of the most egregious cases of police brutality.

AI heard reports of transgender individuals being subjected by police to discriminatory profiling as sex workers; “policing” of transgender individuals bathroom use; sexual, verbal and physical abuse; inappropriate and illegal searches to determine a transgender individual’s “true” sex; and a failure to protect transgender individuals from abuse while in detention.

A subsequent report was released in March 2006 called Stonewalled: Police Abuse and Misconduct Against Lesbian, Gay and Transgender People in the U.S. that documents serious patterns of police abuse, including incidents amounting to torture and ill-treatment. It also points out that GLBT persons of color are particularly vulnerable to this abuse and it is compounded by the systemic racism and homophobia prevalent in many US police forces. GLBT peeps are also singled out for selective enforcement of "morals regulations," bars and social gatherings regulations, demonstrations and "quality of life" ordinaces.

How serious is the problem? In San Antonio, one of the four cities profiled in the September 2005 report, veteran police officer Dave Gutierrez was convicted and sentenced on January 19 to 24 years and four months in prison for raping and assaulting then 21 year old transwoman Starlight Bernal during a June 10, 2005 traffic stop.


It's also come to light that the investigation into transwoman Nizah Morris' death in Philadelphia is pointing disturbing fingers at the police. The recent classification of transwoman Erica Keel's death as an accident has exacerbated tensions between the Philadelphia police department and the transgender community to the point that it became an issue in the Philadelphia mayor's race.

The negativity affects us in multiple ways. The police failing to act, or being openly (or covertly) hostile to transgender people affects their attitudes toward solving crimes committed against us.

That lack of action emboldens people who wish to bring harm to us. They assume that the police, their ministers, society and the justice system are on their side and they'll get away with committing the crime against us. Previous cases in which people were prosecuted for committing murders against transgender people that received little or ridiculously low sentences feed into that perception. The 'trans panic' defenses that attorneys use to get their clients off also don't help along with the reluctance of prosecuters to use hate crimes statutes if they happen to have one in their jurisdiction that covers us. That has the unfortunate effect of encouraging crimes to be committed against us, not deterring it.

The drama between us and the police means that many transpeople are reluctant to report crimes when they occur because of the fear you'll get even more harrasment from the officer that's supposed to help you. If you think I'm kidding, ask JoLea Lamot's family what happened on November 24, 1998 when her mother Nancy called 911 on JoLea's behalf because they feared she'd accidentally overdosed on some medication.

The late Marvin Zindler used to say on his reports back home that 'it's hell to be poor'. It's also hell to be transgender. One message that needs to be made loud and clear is that we transpeople are taxpaying citizens as well. We don't need the po-po's adding to the drama we already get just for living our lives.

Serving and protecting the public also includes us as well.