By Arturo R. García

It’s not hard to imagine that, on some level, actor Amaury Nolasco knew his new show, Work It, would catch flack after his character, Angel, told his friend and fellow job-seeker Lee , “But I’m Puerto Rican. I’ll be great at selling drugs.”

If that was the case – and in the wake of the show’s disastrous premiere, Nolasco isn’t saying – then those instincts were right, and then some. Nolasco’s “drug dealers” joke is only the latest problem series creators Ted Cohen and Andrew Reich have brought upon themselves, and now their actors.

As Latino Rebels’ Jose Martí reported, the show, which follows Angel and Lee (Ben Koldyke) as they seek employment by dressing as women, has inspired a protest in Chicago by the Puerto Rican Alliance for Awareness, founded in part by actress Darlene Vazquetelles, who posted:

Right now I am in Chicago filming a movie. The director of the movie is also Puerto Rican and after discussing what happened [this week on ABC] we decided to do something about it.

This weekend we have off from filming so we have decided to do a mini-documentary in protest of what happened. The way we are doing it is by putting every Puerto Rican we know and come across here in Chicago in front of the camera stating their names, occupation and stating that they do not sell drugs.

This will be airing on You Tube. We already have the support of the Puerto Rican Parade Committee of Chicago. We are also receiving videos from all over the USA and Puerto Rico through email which will be included in the video.

Vazquetelles also reached out directly to Nolasco on Twitter:

In her tweet, Vazquetelles asks Nolasco to contact her – if he can – to take part in the PRAA’s project, calling it “sweet and positive.” And the truth is, such a move would be the first positive thing associated with Work It. Before the show even aired, its’ premise – an updated take on Bosom Buddies, with Nolasco’s character, Angel, and another man dressing as women – had set off warning flags for both the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the Human Rights Coalition, who collaborated on a full-page ad in Variety asking ABC to not air the show:

At the very least, “Work It” is offensive and insulting. At worst, the show is downright dangerous and sends a message that transgender people are to be laughed at, or are somehow less-than. This show would be a setback for transgender Americans, and for everyone who believes that all people deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.

The ad ended up gaining traction with media outlets, creating the kind of backlash that could only be counteracted with a premiere that wowed critics.

That, to put it mildly, did not happen; the show was vilified for being “poorly written, broadly acted and apparently produced without any shame,” and “an early front-runner for the worst show of 2012.” And one of the stars of Work It’s obvious inspiration, Bosom Buddies‘ Peter Scolari, while calling Nolasco’s performance  “wholesome and funny” in Entertainment Weekly, observed that “nuance and subtlety are locked in the trunk of the head writer’s car, some of the bits predate the written word.”

Even sportswriters are getting into the fray: Latino Sports’ Cesar Díaz posted a column Sunday saying point-blank he “could care less if ABC issues an apology or not”:

I just want to inform the Creators of ABC’s Show “Work It” that I wouldn’t be good at selling drugs. And neither would the people I associate myself with and the communities we’ve volunteered our time serving over the years. And when I say people, I mean the diverse pool of friends and family who are Latinos and non-Latinos.

Hey, I cover soccer and it’s definitely the one of the most diverse sports in the world today. Of course, I’m realistic enough to know that negative portrayals of our culture will continue to happen but I don’t have to stay silent about it.

One thing we can agree on is that we’re sick of tired of seeing how our culture is time after time distorted by these shows. From the over-exaggerated accents to the menial roles created because our characters appear unintelligent is simply absurd.

Martí also noted that, after tweeting steadily going into the show’s premiere, has kept quiet while the anger surrounding Angel’s problematic remark has grown, a strategy Martí suggests he discard:

A social media blitz is as devastating as any bad reviews, and “Work It” has gotten its sizeable share of such negativity. It is perplexing to us that Amaury won’t even respond to all this. It is a mistake, and we hope he reconsiders, because if there is anything that is true about social media, no one person or profile or brand is better than any other person, profile or brand. Celebrity is no longer elevated. Amaury is now one of us and we want to know.

At this point, Work It‘s days appear to be numbered, and rightly so. The least ABC can do is take note of the anger the show has brought on and cancel it – if nothing else, it would allow Nolasco the chance to take on projects that won’t infuriate multiple communities, and get himself out of the social media morass Cohen and Reich have instigated.

If you’ve seen the latest episode of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl (ABG), you probably caught J’s best friend Cece refer to White Jay’s ex as a “tr***y bitch in heels.” Or J’s co-worker Patty ask her if she’s “gay” because J cut her hair to a tweeny-weeny afro (TWA). Or J’s nemesis, Nina, asking her when did she “catch cancer” due to the new ‘do.

Some fans responded to the overt transphobic insult with an open letter on Crunk Feminist Collective Tumblr:

Dear Awkward Black Girl,

We love the show! We also love your continuous engagement with fans and your commitment to staying on the Web to maintain your vision. What we don’t love is the transmisogyny and misogyny in episode 11.

In episode 11, CeCe calls White Jay’s ex a “tra**y bitch in heels.” The word tra**y perpetuates violence and divisiveness amongst women by relying on the idea that trans women are not “real” women; it suggests that White Jay’s ex is somehow less than the main character J.

The word “tra**y” has a very real history of violence and discrimination, often targeting trans women. It has been used as a slur, as a way to objectify women, and as a way of denying the personhood of trans women on the basis of appearance.

We have seen your responsiveness to the fans of ABG and we hope that by raising this concern you will respond accordingly by not using such language in future episodes. There are so many awkward queer, trans, and disabled folks who love the show and it hurts to see and hear our lives used as punchlines. For those of us, the awkward black, queer folks who have lived at the intersections of our awkwardness, our blackness, and our transness, words like “tra**y” erase our lives, and our humanity. Phrases like “No lesbo” and the use of affected speech to imitate hard of hearing people detract from the vision of creating representations for the rest of us who are all too often maligned in mainstream media.

We look forward to many more episodes of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl that are hilarious without the use of marginalized groups as a punchline. We have confidence that you have the creativity to continue to push comedic boundaries in new ways and educate your audience in the process.

With fierce love,
alicia sanchez gill
Claire Nemorin
Moya Bailey
Kimberley Shults
Anonymous Awkward Others

Another tumblrer reblogged a tweet regarding the creators’ response to the Open Letter.

The initial Tumbl’d responses to this:

“This does not look promising.”

“hoping the response letter does not cause more pain.”

“well, shit. so much for finding a non-problematic show to love.”

Here’s the reply from ABG‘s co-creators Issa Rae and Tracy Oliver, found at Clutch Magazine:

Some of our viewers may have been offended by some of the language in our recent episode. We take this matter especially to heart, considering the CFC and members of the LGBT community were among the first to embrace ‘The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.’

Since our first episode debuted in February this year, ‘Awkward Black Girl’ has received an incredible outpouring of support from hundreds of thousands of fans. We love and appreciate each and every one of our fans! In return, we strive to provide a show that uses irreverent comedy and humor to address the oftentimes uncomfortable situations that many people have experienced at some point or another in their lives.

In creating a series of this nature, we are willing to accept the praise when the jokes work and the feedback when they may not.

Sincerely,

Issa & Tracy

Whereas a few Clutch Magazine commenters thought Rae’s and Oliver’s letter was”respectful” and “very well said,” quite a few commenters applauded Rae for “not apologizing” because that “would change the nature of the show.” Even Crunk Feminist Collective’s Brittney Cooper agreed  that it’s an “excellent” response. And the post and the comments at Very Smart Brothers applaud the response, some of the commenters going so far as telling trans people (and the gay, lesbian, and bisexual people who are cisgender–oh yeah, and a few of us cis, trans, and gender non-conforming folks who love bell hooks) to “get over themselves” and “stop being so sensitive” because ABG “offends everyone,” especially with the liberal use of “bitch” and “n***a.” In fact, one commenter states that ABG using the “tr***y bitch in heels” line as a sign of acceptability for trans folks.

Dare I say it? Yes…

What the hell kind of no-pology is this?!?

Racialicious guest contributor Erika Nicole Kendall tweeted exactly why I felt this qualifies as a no-pology:

See, here’s my thing: if you’re saying that folks in LBGT communities are some of the first fans of your show, wouldn’t you go out of your way to not turn off that fan base  by simply saying something like, “I/We deeply apologize for saying the word “tr***y” on the ep. I could’ve used another word to talk about J’s discomfort instead of making trans people–and, by extension, our transgender fans–the butt of a joke,” instead of essentially stating you stand by a transphobic slur that is used in conjunction to do much more damage than just create “oftentimes uncomfortable situations that many people have experienced at some point or another in their lives?”

Because the word “tr***y” isn’t bantered about just to make trans people “uncomfortable.” As @graceishuman pointed out on Twitter:

 It’s only hilarious if you accept that trans women are by definition a joke. There’s no inherent humor to it beyond that.

The history of the word is that a lot of trans people, especially trans women of color, have had it used against them in the context of violence, sometimes as they were being murdered.

This post at the Tumblr a bell and a pomegranate further explains why the fans who wrote the letter–and the rest of us–found the  ”joke” unamusing:

Well, and naturally, what “may have offended” some people is language—as though that’s the important thing, that a nasty word (a word, to be fair, I cringe at) was used.  But of course it wasn’t—the meaningful portion of the trouble is that the use of “tranny” as an insult to cis women is about participating in the cultural notion that trans women are fake/grotesque/doing womanhood wrong/unworthy of respect and that it is shameful/disgusting for a cis woman to be similar to one.  It’s about functioning as a placeholder for certain policing discourses about the comportment and appearance of women in general by deploying the extreme danger of trans oppression as a veiled threat while subtly shoring up that oppression.(*)  That’s why people are troubled by the word in the first place, and why the first critiques of it were brought up—not because it is an inherently evil word, but because it participates in negative, damaging stereotypes about trans women.  It could have been any word.  The problem is that “tranny” is deployed as a shorthand for that cultural idea.  If they’d substituted in a nicer, less-charged word as shorthand to suggest that a given woman was like a trans woman and therefore fake/grotesque/doing womanhood wrong/unworthy of respect, it would still be transphobic.

When we focus over-much on contaminated words, we sometimes miss—and allow the people who use them to sidestep—the larger problem of what those words represent and why they’re hurtful in the first place.

(*) You know, in the same way that young straight men calling each other “faggot” don’t literally mean “I think you are attracted to other men,” but “you are not behaving as I think a man should and if you don’t get in line I am suggesting you be treated as is appropriate for the disgusting people indicated by this word, who also don’t get in line and who you know are visibly punished for it.”  In the same way that “whore” and “bitch” are deployed—they suggest that there is a category of people who you are culturally aware have fewer rights/more vulnerabilities to violence/etc. and that if you do not behave as expected you might be relegated to that category and treated accordingly.  Capitalism does it by threatening people who have money with the constant specter of poverty and homelessness—and then uses that to enforce cultural norms of behavior.  Sexism does it by threatening that men might be treated like “bitches” and “pussies.”  And cissexism/transmisogyny does it by threatening cis women with worlds like “tranny” and “shemale.

As for ABG‘s use of the words “bitch” and “n***a” as a reason why it should be OK for the creators to, therefore, use the words “tr***y,” I’ll say here what I said on a radio interview about those white feminists who defended the sign “Woman Is the N****r of the World” at SlutWalk NYC’s march: unless Rae and/or other people on ABG‘s creative team is a trans person, the word isn’t for them to use because they are outside of those communities. And, even at that, if there is a trans person on the crew, that person’s presence still doesn’t give permission or license for ABG‘s cisgender cast and crew to use it because the other trans folks didn’t vote on that person to give that imprimatur to use the slur.

Even Patti’s comment about J being “gay” because of J’s short cut pivots on both homophobia and transphobia, namely that Black lesbians are stereotyped as “looking” a certain way that is “outside” of the hetero male gaze (and, by extension, hetero male sexual/romantic consideration), namely having a short afro, which is construed as “trying to be manly,” thus policing J’s femininity. Of course, Nina’s comment comment about “catching cancer” is simply ableist.

But I also feel like this is the part in the post where I need to repeat what we say quite a few times around the R: just because a person belongs to one or more marginalized group(s) doesn’t mean that person has an innate empathy for people in other marginalized groups. And “doing it for the art”–or to not be “politically correct”–adds insult to injury. Again, to quote Erika, in response to another tweeter:

…the non-responsive response they wrote, the onslaught of people defending them and saying “you didn’t do anything wrong” as if Black people forgot what it feels like to have you[r] very existence turned into something undesirable and slur-worthy…let’s just say it’s DUMB disturbing.

So, as much as I love J’s misadventures, I can’t quite walk down this transphobic, homophobic, and ableist path with her and her crew in this ep.

Image credit: Get on the Sofa

The May 2011 cover girl for ESSENCE magazine this month is none other than one Wendy J. Williams, the woman the Black gossip blogs love to hate and misgender.

Like I’ve said in previous posts on this subject, some of you Black folks need to buy a vowel, pick up a science book and get a clue that transpeople exist in all colors and sizes and aren’t going anywhere.

Note for the ignorantly clueless:  Some of my transsisters are petite size 8 pump wearing fashion divas, so don’t get it twisted..

We are all blends of genetic material and characteristics from mommy and daddy.   A little less testosterone in the womb and some of you so called ‘men‘ attacking Wendy would be rocking her dresses and pumps.

You also need to get a clue that it’s not cool to do what whiteness has done to the images of Black women for centuries and participate in the denigrating of the mothers of humanity. It’s even more repugnant to me as a proud African descended transwomen to see Black people (or alleged online Black people) deliberately misgendering Black women they don’t like.

But some of you are too stupid or insecure about your own gender identity and sexual orientation issues to get that point.

Cue transphobic BS from Bossip in 5…4…3…2…1…

Y’all can hate on Wendy and hurl transphobic slurs at her all you want, she’s got more money in her bank account than you pathetic losers hiding behind your computer terminals misgendering her.

Photo Credit: TransGriot

I fucked up.

In my post about the transphobia stinking up the Mr. Cee/Brooke-Lynn Pinklady arrest, I referred to Brooke-Lynn as a trans woman.  This I gathered from the reports and from how I was taught to recognize how the media tends to misgender trans women and other female-presenting people, complete with the public humilation of referring to their government names, vicious transmisogynistic slurs, and misuse of pronouns.

Come to find out that I was wrong.  In this video (NSFW alert: language) that Bossip just released, Brooke-Lynn not only self-identifies but also discusses the arrest:

A transcript is under the cut.

Hi everybody this is Brooke-Lynn Pinklady. I’m sure by now everybody’s heard of me, and what supposedly happened. And I just wanted to set the record straight and let everybody know that nothing in deep happened in that car. Pretty much I feel like this is an internet blog that got totally out of hand, and a lot of things of things I’ve read are totally not true about me and my character. I can’t speak on his behalf. Basically, I’m not a transsexual, I’m a drag queen – I don’t do this all the time, I don’t dress like this all the time. Those of you who have seen my face (inaudible) probably know that. I feel like the media has this like, made me out to be this person, I feel like, just to get at him for some reason, make it a story, and that’s definitely not true. I’m definitely not a prostitute. I’m not in any way or shape or form easy – I don’t do things like that. I don’t have sex for money. I don’t need to have sex for money. I make enough money on my own.

Pretty much the situation I have right now is, I’m kind of trying to rebuild my life and try to get over the situation, you know, life goes on, and try to do bigger and better things, and not let this bring me down – all of the things that people are saying or doing. Basically – I don’t know, I’m not really upset. I was really devastated when I seen all the things that were online, I was really like, “who could do something like this?” I was really upset. I feel like people nowadays will do anything and everything for money. This whole thing was like, I feel, like a big-ass entertainment scheme. And I don’t understand why I was brought into it, just to be … The whole thing is just crazy to me. I decided to do a video in drag because … oh, ’cause everybody’s seen it, I didn’t see the need to do it every other way. Basically people are trying to make me into this infamous celebrity now. And although that would be nice, I would rather not be known for something I didn’t do. Or even if I was to do it, who wants to be known for something like that? It’s really not my thing. I did an interview and people are talking, wanting me to host parties, host events. And that would be nice and all that, but I don’t want to make this something to be proud of.

But like I said, none of these things that you’re reading are true. None of these fake-ass blogs are me, definitely. I don’t have a Twitter. Actually, I have a Twitter, but I don’t use it. But the little stupid-ass Twitters that you’re seeing, please don’t believe it, ’cause it’s not me. I don’t do shit like that. I don’t got time for infinite drama. I don’t got time for people on the internet that feel the need to run their mouths. It’s not my cup of tea. I don’t deal with shit like that. If you see me, say it to my fucking face, and that’s all I wanna say.

I don’t even know what else to say. I know one thing’s for sure: I’ve totally lost all respect for NYPD. That’s for damn sure. Like I said, I feel like people will do anything for money nowadays. Literally anything, and it’s just ridiculous. Who would wanna bring out somebody’s name just to make you happy, or make you rich. I realize that you have to live with yourself, and so do I so we’re not gonna deal with that … I kind of don’t know what else to say. I’m gonna reactivate my Facebook in a couple of days. I just wanted things to die out, ’cause I was getting so many adds, and it was just crazy. Everybody looking at me, asking me questions, men hitting me up, I was like, “Yeah.” Tomorrow I’m probably gonna make a Twitter of my own, and I’m not gonna reply to any of these little things that I’ve been hearing, ’cause like I said, it doesn’t matter to me what anybody on the outside thinks, ’cause at the end of the day, you don’t know me, and you never will know me. The only people that know me and how I am is the people that I’m close to – which is my family and my true friends. Throughout this experience, I feel like I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned who I can trust and who I can’t. I found who my real friends were in a situation like this. Granted, I never thought anything like this would ever happen to me. The whole thing is just weird to me … but I want it to be gone.

The whole thing needs to stop now, and people need to move on with their lives, ’cause really it’s none of anybody’s business what [inaudible] at the end of the day it’s really not … initially, when I made this video, I was gonna act like a complete faggot, or whatever you wanna call it – like a total, complete bitch. But … I don’t know, I just feel like I should be a bigger person about the situation. I don’t have the time to respond to ignorant-ass people who don’t know anything about me or who the situation is. Basically, my thing is, where I’m gonna leave it is, don’t believe everything that you hear, don’t believe everything that you read, because people exaggerate to get better stories. And, at the end of the day, if that’s what you think is gonna make your pockets fatter, do you. But just know when you do things like that and write shit about people that’s not true, it kinda shows what kind of person you are, that you sell yourself out for money, end of the day. I’m gonna move on with your life and just do the things I wanna do. I’m trying to sing, rap – all of these things that I wanna do, and I’m not gonna let anything deter me. Stupid shit like this is definitely not gonna affect me anymore. It’s crazy that I even have the strength to do this video … This is my first time even being at a computer in a few days – in a week, actually. I was just so not wanting to see the little bullshit on it … my privacy has been totally invaded, and I don’t know how I feel about the Internet anymore. This kind of scarred me, I feel like. Anyway, to those that know me, love you. Shout out to Pinklady. Shout out to all my friends that helped me through this – I couldn’t have done it without you, and family. Hopefully you’ll be seeing me in the future – there’ll be good things coming out of it, and not bullshit … Bye!

So, on behalf of myself and for Racialicious, I deeply apologize to you, Brooke-Lynn–and to anyone else I upset–for my own misgendering and for any other hurt I caused with not respecting how you self-identify.

On March 30 hip-hop producer Calvin “Mr.Cee” Lebrun—he of Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready to Die fame–was busted by New York City police allegedly receiving oral sex from a sex worker. Reports said Lebrun supposedly received the sexual favors from “a man” .  This got some people feeling some kind of homophobic way, complete with saying that “we all should have seen this coming” because of his alleged “golden showers” kink.  As Sister Toldja wrote earlier this week :

To be totally fair, this isn’t the average gay rumor; not only was the other person in the case allegedly paid for the act, the writer who dropped this gossip also claimed that Mister Cee has a thing for urinating on female strippers. So while much of the chatter is about Mister Cee being (allegedly) infected with The Gay, folks are aghast by this pee thing, too. Considering our attitudes about sexuality, that’s no surprise.

With homophobia and anti-kink sentiments roiling—and Lebrun and his supporters doing the NYPD Hip-Hop Conspiracy Step —hip-hop artist and critic dream hampton provided some level-headed analysis about the situation:

While highly regarded in the hip hop industry and in New York, Mister Cee is not necessarily famous. Still, his arrest gave opportunity to talk about the persistent poking around hip hop’s “closet,” where speculation about sexual orientation is practically a sport. Charlamagne actually elevated the conversation by asking why a married 44-year-old man was seeking sexual favors from a 20-year-old, professional or otherwise, and if that, then why in a parked car? I argue that none of this would be a discussion, viral or anywhere else, had Cee been arrested with a 20-year-old woman, be she prostitute or not. I also don’t believe, 2011 or not, that hip hop is a safe space for anything other than aggressively heterosexual public behavior or affirmation. While obviously lesbian women MCs and personalities remain silent if not closeted about their sexuality, there is even less space for men to appear bisexual or homosexual.

I believe that Mister Cee’s sexuality is a personal matter, one he must reckon with himself and his wife. But Charlamagne’s co-host Angela Yee took the position widely held by heterosexual women—that closeted bisexual men are a health hazard, exposing trusting women to AIDS and more. While I’m not dismissive of those concerns, particularly in a marriage, where condom use is expected to be abandoned, I do know that we heterosexual Black women don’t exactly offer safe spaces for bisexual men to express their desires.

I’m also far more concerned that the transgendered 20-year-old who allegedly serviced him be safe, particularly if he is a sex worker. I wished aloud on my own Twitter feed that the discussion about Mister Cee would be one about decriminalizing sex work and focusing on harm reduction rather than speculating if Mister Cee is closeted.

Hampton is right in this respect.

The sex worker who is said to have provided the service, it turns out, is–based on the clues and cues I have picked up on from the media as well as personal education around trans issues and media literacy–a trans woman named Brooke-Lynn Pinklady not a “transvestite” that the first link’s source and other news and gossip sites—both cisgay and presumably cisstraight–thought to misgender as “a man.” (Even hampton refers to her as a “transgendered male.”) There’s a difference—a big difference—between a cis man, a “transvestite,” and a trans woman. (And, for the 50-11th time, the word is not “transgendered.” As several trans activists have point out, no one says “gayed” or “heteroed.” It’s “transgender” or “trans.” And I’m not going to go there about the word “trannie.” Suffice to say: don’t. It’s a slur. Don’t.)

To make the whole matter much worse, several outlets—and even the NYPD, never known at the bastion of tolerance, let alone acceptance and advocacy of trans people–refer to Brooke-Lynn by her government name instead of, like this post, honoring her as how she presents gender-wise.  Since too few people accorded her any sort of respect around her gender identity, we’re getting transphobia–specifically transmisogyny–twisted in the homophobia. Because of the constant misgendering of Brooke-Lynn as a “he,” out comes the assumption that Mr. Cee supposedly had sex with a “man.” No, Mr. Cee had sex with a woman, full stop—regardless of how he sexually identitfies. As Monica Roberts at TransGriot writes:

Many of us still have ID’s with mismatched name and gender code info or are in states that despite us having legal name changes, refuse to change gender codes until the person undergoes GRS.

…

SRS is not the end all and be all to determining gender identity or when a person transitions to the other gender.

As far as I’m concerned, the second you swallow you first hormone or take your first shot of testosterone, begin living in the opposite gender and make moves to harmonize your body with that gender role that may or may not include surgical options, you ARE that gender.

Many transpeople who would like to have it either aren’t able to afford genital surgery or have health issues that prevent it. There are many transpeople successfully living in our new gender roles despite possessing neoclits in our panties.

To break this point down for you: gender is between your ears, not your legs.

With that said, let’s bring this back to hampton’s concern.

According to a landmark report from the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force , sixteen percent of trans people of color (TPoCs) who responded to the organizations’ survey have turned to selling sex and drugs in order to survive. Furthermore, the report states:

• Respondents who were currently unemployed experienced debilitating negative outcomes, including nearly double the rate of working in the underground economy (such as doing sex work or selling drugs), twice the homelessness, 85% more incarceration, and more negative health outcomes, such as more than double the HIV infection rate and nearly double the rate of current drinking or drug misuse to cope with mistreatment, compared to those who were employed.
• Respondents who had lost a job due to bias also experienced ruinous consequences such as four times the rate of homelessness, 70% more current drinking or misuse of drugs to cope with mistreatment, 85% more incarceration, more than double the rate working in the underground economy, and more than double the HIV infection rate, compared to those who did not lose a job due to bias.

I agree the cruel parlor game of Suspecting Teh Gayz, especially on spurious reasons like being down with kink, needs to cease within some Black communities as well as a conversation around decriminalizing sex work needs to open up.  I also think what happened with Mr. Cee is a perfect opportunity to talk about transphobia, gender identity, and gender policing, too—which, as an ex-friend pointed out to me, tend to be the “what’s really going on” when some want to go homophobic because they want to judge what a “real man” or a “real woman” is supposed to look like and act like.

We’re wrecking too, too many lives with this basic disrespect.

Photo Credit: thesmokinggun.com

I was recently approached by a friend to write for one of those political-social justicey type blogs. For days I pondered over what to write. I searched the depths of my various identities. Pooled together my recent experiences of life-fucked-up-ness. Many frustrating attempts later I resigned myself to the reality of my writing interests. I have no energy to delve into the many reasons life is much more complicated for us trans folks or us queers or us people of color.

These days my mind is on other things.

Like fucking and the many reasons life is much more complicated for us trans men who like to fuck bio-men. It’s weird how this may in some ways be the focus of my life currently: sex.

I spent many years afraid of what my body liked and desired. Shying away from any encounter that sexualized me (in the ways that I’d like). Now I seek out those encounters, almost relentlessly. My fellow TQ contributor says the appeal in the hook-up scene lies in the adventurousness of it all. Sure adventure is nice. Me? I just like to fuck. I like the pleasure of it. The anticipation leading up the moment when you first lay eyes on your fuck du jour. When your eyes take all of him in, compare the real thing to the photo that made everything kinda pretty or at least appealing enough to get you off your behind and board a train and a bus or head out to the middle of nowhere. Yes, the lure of the perfect fuck is what keeps me hitting those sites again and again. The disappointment of a bad fuck is merely collateral damage, because when you do find a great lay, it’s like being reborn into a gentler, calmer you. A you that’s able to breath and exhale unimpeded again. I like to refer to this particular moment as the post-fuck haze. I never allow myself to feel slutty for fucking or wanting to fuck as often as I can. Even saying, writing the word “fuck” is liberating. It represents the stark difference between where I was, the frigid fearful place I was anchored in for years, and where I stand now- able to look at my pussy and like it, able to drive pleasure from my engorged clit and boast about it, where before I might have felt shame. Able to say and get turned on by words like “cock”, “cum”, “wet”, “horny”.

How do you write about these things, people, in a social justice-y type blog like the one my friend approached me about? How do I show the empowerment that comes about from sleeping around? How do I also show the pain and befuddlement it also offers? The many nights of logging onto sites and waiting for a bite and nothing comes, because the ideas of a “guy with a pussy” is just too “kinky” for some. The many attempts at putting feelers out there, wanting someone to grab hold of something and give it a gentle tug. Having to explain over and over and over to gay men who haven’t even so much as heard the word “trans” before that I have a pussy not a cock, that the only cock I do have comes with my strap and it’s an impressive 9×5 inches, that when I’m fucking you with said strap you would hardly know the difference.

I’ll admit the hook up scene can be a painful, lonely place for a trans man. When I first started exploring the scene, it certainly wasn’t all milk and cookies. Like that night when I couldn’t host, and me and that dude traipsed all over downtown trying to find a motel to fuck in. The last place we tried was the men’s bath-house that barred me entry because I had “F” on my license. I was so eager to bust a nut by the end of that evening, so ready for shit that never even went down. Luckily, not long after, my roommate and I brokered a deal and my hosting situation changed. I celebrated by having a weeklong fuckfest. That was a damn good week.

So what else can I write about but these stories? So much needs to be said about trans guys fucking. I haven’t even unpacked the many conversations I had with the men I have had sex with. Why they like the idea of a guy with a pussy. How many of them refuse to accept their complicated sexualities or sexual appetites. Now that’s a good topic to explore in another journal entry…

Interview by Jorge Antonio Vallejos; review by Janet Romero Leiva; cross-posted from Black Coffee Poet

I am inspired to write, create, read.

To allow myself to feel…more, everything.

This, after reading Shaunga Tagore’s The Erasable Woman.

The Erasable Woman– the title alone tells you how brilliant this collection is – filled with poetry that will make you want to look at your naked body endlessly, redefine your feminism, visit your grandmother, learn the language of your ancestors, bring awareness to violence, be a better person. Yes, all this and more from a magical master’s thesis…I have never read a thesis in poetry and I am honoured for this to be my first.

For me, poetry is all about how I feel when the words on the page echo through my throat and into my body.  It’s about the images that sketch themselves into my memory and long to be translated on to paper/canvas/wood. If it was possible to do both simultaneously at this very moment (writing and drawing), it’s what I would be doing…after re-reading (for the 3^rd time) The Erasable Woman, or perhaps while re-reading it.

Tagore’s writing creates this incredibly desire to want to feel every sensation in your body, from how it feels to be touched along your collarbone to the flowing of nutrients into your bloodstream. There is nothing you want to miss about how your body is responding to her words, how her words are stirring feelings you cannot afford to dismiss because if you happen to forget to acknowledge the body part/the feeling/the sensation, you will have missed a beautiful/painful story.

Filled with loss and longing, love and laughter, strength and determination, The Erasable Woman brings me back to some of my most loved queer poets/writers…Gloria Anzaldua, Chrystos, Audre Lorde, Anna Camilleri and Quo-li Driskill. Tagore has created a place where we can once again desire…for stories and histories re-told, for justice and justified anger, for hungry love and feared satisfaction.

Two of my favourite pieces in this collection are a slam on feminism in academia and my 12 year old body in the bathtub. In the slam, which is an academic must-read, Tagore speaks to all ‘those’ well intentioned feminists who have managed to convince themselves (and sometimes us too), that letting people of colour into academia is a favour that can only be re-paid by silent acceptance of the rules they have created for us. Let’s just say she very eloquently tells them where to go! And then there is the 12 year old girl in the bathtub discovering the wonder of her own body and how water on skin feels and fills her, how a sunday ritual becomes a daily desire for that which is unnamed, unacceptable, unspoken…yet so satisfying.

And as if this is not enough, we are privileged to see how this beautiful poet translates some of her words into images because two of the pieces include photographs/drawings (bodysnatchers and postcard stories). This adds a level of intimacy to the collection that allows the reader to experience poetry from a visual lens…which is incredible!

Now comes the part I suspect you might not want to, or be prepared to hear. So remember I mentioned that this is Tagore’s master thesis? Well it’s true, which translates into it not being in book form available for purchase…yet. This means if you ever hear of her reading somewhere, you must go! It also means you/me/we need to support local poets/writers by buying their work…so put your money where your politic is!

Listen….

and you will discover that though The Erasable Woman might appear to be about one thing, as you read it you will come to realize that just when you expected a piece to continue talking about race or class or sexuality or language, the next word, next line, will take you in a direction you did not expect to go…but you’ll be so grateful you were there for the ride!

The film “Bijli” opens with an off-key rendition of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s haunting Sanu Ik Pal Chain Na Aave. The poetry of the song describes a man who cannot find a moment’s peace without his beloved.  Some might consider this analogous to Bijli’s predicament as a woman trapped in a man’s body: constantly ill at ease without his other “half.”  Bijli is Fayaaz, the drag alter ego of this Pakistani-born dancer, who presently resides in New York City.

This short film by filmmaker Adnan Malik is a 15-minute foray into a man’s struggle with gender identity, religion, and social acceptance set against the bustling metropolis of Manhattan.  While Begum Nawazish has gained popularity internationally and in Pakistan, carving out a niche for himself as a “credible” entertainer, Bijli tells the story of a man who by day passes off as an ordinary New Yorker and by night transforms into “Bijli,” dancing on stage to Bollywood numbers in sequined chiffon, dainty wigs and fake eyelashes.  The word “bijli” is Urdu for electricity or electric current and is a name bestowed upon the dancer by a writer who, for lack of a better word, found her “electrifying.”

Fayaaz’s parents died when he was very young and the film makes no mention of a sibling or close relative, which makes the mystery of his coming to the U.S. all the more intriguing.  Bijli especially holds fond memories of his mother.  “She loved me.  She cared for me like a little girl.  She gave me clothes, earrings and bangles on Eid, as if I were her daughter.”

Like many transgendered individuals, Fayaaz is in constant battle with his Islamic upbringing and the crisis of gender that has society in his native Pakistan conveniently shuffle him into the folds of the have-nots and promiscuous.  While Begum Nawazish has a solid education to rely on, empowering him to rise above his circumstances, Fayaaz does not have this luxury.  Not being formally educated, he comically describes his “allergy to English” as a child and how he learned the language only after he left Pakistan.

Although faced with prejudice in various social settings, Fayaaz shrugs it off as part of life and the challenges that God places upon him.  “I am not hesitant about going to a mosque for prayer.  Except there is a natural shame in me,” he says.  This is a somewhat contradictory because shame is why he does not pray with fellow worshippers.  Fayaaz also wants to avoid the resulting awkwardness with anyone who may have witnessed any of his performances.  If a Muslim who visits a mosque after a night of watching him dance does not feel shame, why should he feel any different?  The social stigma associated to “mujras” or dancers like Fayaaz are deeply rooted in Pakistani society, considered inherent to Mughal culture and not accepted in a “true” Muslim community.

Fayyaz appears most vulnerable while wearing the traditional red headdress of a bride’s outfit and responding to the producer’s off camera comment.  “One day I’m bridal” he says in broken English, perhaps referring to a time when he too will have the opportunity to wear one.  “I think so,” he answers when prompted again by the producers.

“Adorning myself like a woman is not a hobby, it is a fulfillment of my soul’s desire.”  As Bijli, Fayaaz appears happy but to a discerning viewer his perky responses and good will to man attitude at times it feels like a façade, as if overcompensating for the harsher reality of being a transgendered Muslim transvestite.  Had he remained in Pakistan, things might have been different and perhaps his little slice of Americana makes all the difference between misery and basic survival.

Fayaaz insists he is not gay and this is probably the only time the producer’s voice is most prominent otherwise the questions asked off camera.  “My soul is like a woman’s.  My feelings and desires are also like that of a woman.  I even see my body as a woman’s body.  But I must accept that God has made me a man.”  Although for all intents and purposes a man, Fayaaz has been in relationships with other men where he “presents himself as a woman and not a man in drag.”

On the whole, the movie humanizes him, but one leaves feeling sympathetic to his plight in that he wants more out of life, perhaps a partnership of sort—to be loved and cared for.  The movie conveys this. What it does not convey is whether that someone should be a man or whether a snip at the doctor’s office might do the trick.

Fayaaz turns the tables on the producers at the end of the clip with a query of his own.  “If you see me at a party, and are attracted to me, even though you realize I am a man in drag, what would you do?”  The silence on the other end is palpable, followed by a sad tune which plays briefly until bookended by the same Khan song heard in the beginning.  “In everyday situations, I can’t reveal the woman inside of me.  But at least at parties and performances, I can become that woman.  What is the point of living in fear?” he asks.

Dean Spade is a genius activist lawyer and legal scholar. (For instance, he is the founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit law collective that provides free legal services to transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming people who are low-income and/or people of color. And just look at this photograph! In other words: CRUSH-WORTHY.)

In his essay “Dressed To Kill, Fight To Win,” published in the first issue of feminist genderqueer collaborative arts zine LTTR, Spade challenges the notion that undergoing or adopting certain bodily practices preclude a person from a “rational” or radical political position.

Against discourses of the authentic, real, or natural, he challenges the notion that persons who change their appearances, their bodies –with commodities, with clothes, with surgeries– are necessarily duped or self-hating; he further argues that there is no necessary or singular correlation between one’s aesthetic practices and political commitments. (In the most familiar “dilemma” of this sort, can a feminist wear heels? In another, does a femme have to? And yet another, can a feminist wear hijab? Answers: Yes, no, yes. You get the drift.)

Although Spade writes about trans surgeries in particular, his analytic cautions are useful for thinking through other bodily practices in general and –yes, this again– the unreliable stories these tell about our psychic interiors or political convictions.

Does it matter what I’m wearing, what I look like, how I wear my body? All our lives, we receive conflicting commands to ignore appearances and not judge books by covers, and to work incessantly to conform our appearances to rigid norms. The result, I think, is that as we come to reject and unlearn the ways we’ve been taught to view our bodies (fatphobia, racism, sexism, gender rigidity, consumerism, ableism) we become rightfully suspicious of appearance norms and fashions and seek to form resistant practices. But what should those resistant practices be?

I think sometimes being anti-fashion leads to a false notion that we can be in bodies that aren’t modified, and that any intentional modification or decoration of your body is politically undesirable because it somehow buys into the pitfalls of reliance on appearances. This critique is true, lots of times what we mean to be resistant aesthetic practices become new regulatory regimes. Certain aspects of activist, queer, punk fashions have fallen victim to hierarchies of coolness that in the end revolve around judging people based on what they own, how their bodies are shaped, how they occupy a narrow gender category, etc. Perhaps it is inevitable that the systems in which we are so embroiled, which shape our very existence, should rear parts of their ugly heads even in our attempts at resistance. But does this mean we should give up resistant aesthetics? Isn’t all activism imperfect, constantly under revision, and isn’t that why we continue doing it? In my view, there is no “outside”-none of us can stand fully outside capitalism, racism, sexism and see what is going on. Instead we stand within. and are constituted by these practices and forces, and we form our resistance there, always having to struggle against forces within ourselves, correcting our blindspots, learning from one another. So of course, our aesthetic resistance should do the same.

More importantly, when we appeal to some notion of an unmodified or undecorated body, we participate in the adoption of a false neutrality. We pretend, in those moments, that there is a natural body or fashion, a way of dressing or wearing yourself that is not a product of culture. Norms always masquerade as non-choices, and when we suggest that for example, resisting sexism means everyone should look androgynous, or resisting racism means no one should modify the texture of their hair, we foreclose people’s abilities to expose the workings of fucked up systems on their bodies as they see fit.

(Read more at LTTR.)

I love this last paragraph, in which Spade is critical of perspectives that assign to bodies “natural” qualities or “real” characteristics that are proper to them, which assumes a fiction of “whole” or “neutral” body as a disciplinary and normative ideal. He instead asks us to consider how such a stance assumes a “superior” perspective that erases or dismisses other modes of explanation or engagement with these bodily practices.

(For example, Kathleen Zane writes in her essay on certain cosmetic surgeries: “Understanding how, for non-privileged classes of women, forms of personal power or ways to manipulate disadvantageous social circumstances can be creatively engaged, we may confront the power and privilege that accrue from our espousal of our particular oppositional strategies.” From “Reflections on a Yellow Eye: Asian I (\Eye/)Cons and Cosmetic Surgery,” in Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age, edited by Ella Shohat.)

Instead of condemning cosmetic or trans surgeries, straightened hair, hijab or high heels as “unnatural,” we would be better served as feminist theorists of culture to ask: Which kinds of bodily practices are normalized as “appropriate” to feminine persons, and to masculine persons, and how? What values (of race, nation, gender, economic status) do these practices normalize? What ideologies are embedded in these often-literal inscriptions upon differentiated bodies? How have these discourses and practices changed in historically and culturally specific ways?

Spade ends his essay with this utopian note about the look of radical possibility:
So a part of this fashioning we’re doing needs to be about diversifying the set of aesthetic practices we’re open to seeing, and promoting a possibility of us all looking very very different from one another while we fight together for a new world.

**TRIGGER WARNING**: The following post is about physical and sexual abuse in detention, and focuses on a trans woman who has chosen to speak out about the abuse she endured. Her choice is incredibly brave and her story is deeply distressing.

Restore Fairness has a post about Esmeralda, a trans woman from Mexico who came to the US to seek asylum, only to endure sexual abuse in an American immigration detention centre.  Her story, like many others, speaks to the way that the immigration system intersects with other forms of oppression, often in an unspeakably cruel and dehumanising way.

The Restore Fairness article states:

Transferred far away from their homes and families, stories are rife of how detainees are denied visitation, access to lawyers, medical care, and are subject to physical and verbal abuse. Many vulnerable people, including asylum seekers, pregnant women, children, lawful permanent residents and even U.S. citizens are among those detained.

Listen to Esmeralda’s voice of courage and take action now to fix a broken detention system.

The article also links to the website of Just Detention International, an organisation that works to end the sexual abuse of detainees in the US and internationally.  Esmeralda’s story is in included among their Portraits of Courage, a section of their website where people who have survived sexual and physical abuse in detention, are speaking out – often in spite of the threat of severe retalitation – to try and put a stop to the horrific abuses that go on in detention.  Not surprisingly, many of the people who took part in Portraits of Courage are queer people of colour.

So I heard a while ago that celeb transman Thomas Beatie is a mixie much like myself. He too has a white mama, an Asian daddy, and originally, an Asian surname. He too was born with all the plumbing to make and be pregnant with a baby. And like me, he too made the decision to get folks to recognize him as male.

So I get the whole need to change your gender thing. However, I’m not sure why Beatie changed his name to something rid of all associations to his Filipino heritage. I too had the option to change my name to rid myself of my Asian ethnic associations, however, I didn’t based on the fact that so often trans folks of colour are told they are doing a white thing by being trans. As if every culture has the same rules around gender binaries and the act of crossing them is only done by those white enough.

Coincidentally, when I was born, my white mother gave me a Japanese name without knowing the implications (highly-gendered at that) that went along with it. Taking this into account, I chose a Japanese name for myself. I chose one which, just like my mother in her choosing of my original name, I didn’t expressly know the meaning of. I did so in line with honoring my white mother and my mixed origins.

I wanted to keep my Asian association when renaming myself, to let people know that just because I’m trans doesn’t mean I’m white. There is a rich history of third gender or other wise non-male and non-female specific people within many cultures, including pre-Spanish Philippines. For example, in the islands known now as the Phillipines, Binabe were high order religious authorities of mixed-gender, just as gender-transforming deity Kuan-yin in Chinese Taoist tradition is still highly esteemed today.

And the only article that stuck with me from my first year women’s studies class pointed to various 17th-century Chinese reports of people who were born male and ended up female or vice versa, yet were considered to be in line with the fluid nature of yin and yang. They were not considered perverse or worthy of ridicule as many people of gender-transitioning experience are subject to today.

In many cultures of colour, pre-colonial history includes these societies valuing these people specifically because they are outside the norm of gender, often chosen for positions of spiritual power and authority. However, rigid reforms in gender occurring in the white west, coupled with the need to topple indigenous authority figures influenced European colonizers to seek out and destroy these people. Violent and strategic colonization means that history validating Thomas’s and my trans experience as Asian genderf*ckers now is hard to come by. Transphobia is rampant in former colonized places, as a legacy of colonialism. We have colonialism to thank for much of the violence we experience, particularly as racialized trans folks. (For more on the Binabe, take a look at this book on Philippine Gay Culture.)

And now, because of this erased history, it is our very Asianness that is often used against us to make transphobic and racist comments, “Oh it must be hard with your Baachan more so than on your mom’s side,” “Hey, we don’t do that kind of freaky shit, we’re Asian.” Which makes me sad.

I don’t feel that Thomas sold us mixie-Asian trans guys out. There are many reasons around a person’s name choice and I don’t know his exact ones.

It is true, however, that I’m sad people don’t know the world’s most famous trans man is also Asian.

__
A version of this article was originally published at 8Asians.

One of the cool benefits of the recent Johnson Publishing Company deal with Google that allows digitizing of the iconic African-American magazines JET and EBONY is that it not only provides a record of Black history as it happened, it also is a cultural time capsule as well.

One of the things I’ve always pondered is African American transgender people and our history. I know I and other African-American transpeeps didn’t just pop up out of thin air. We have a long fascinating history that just begs to be told.

One of those fascinating stories starts unfolding across several JET issues during 1953. Coincidentally it starts around the time Christine Jorgensen had become a household name after the December 1, 1952 news story broke about her surgery and just before her February 12, 1953 return to the United States from Denmark.

It centers on a 26 year old professional female illusionist and shake dancer from Pittsburgh whose birth name was Charles Robert Brown but later changed it to Carlett Angianlee Brown.

Carlett was in a relationship with a 24 year old US Army sergeant stationed in Germany named Eugene Martin. She’d served in the Navy, and during her service time was checked out for an issue with recurring monthly bleeding through her rectal area.

The medical exam revealed that she was intersex and had some feminine plumbing. The surgeons wanted to remove it, but she declined to have that done and opted for SRS instead.

In the process of weighing her SRS options with three surgeons in various countries, she discovered that the laws of those countries at the time didn’t allow foreign nationals to obtain SRS.

Dr. Christian Hamburger, the endocrinologist who supervised Christine Jorgensen’s transition, advised Carlett that if she gave up her US citizenship she could have it done in Denmark. Germany’s then justice minister advised Brown that if became a German resident and took the steps to become a German citizen, she could have it performed there as well.

So Carlett decided to do just that. She applied for her US passport and made arrangements to travel to Bonn, Germany in August 1953 and meet Dr. Hamburger there for her initial checkup before having SRS.

Carlett’s game plan once she completed SRS was to get married to Sgt. Eugene Martin

“I just want to become a woman as quickly as possible, that’s all. I’ll become a citizen of any country that will allow me the treatment that I need and be operated on,” she said at the time.

Fast forward to June 25 issue. Carlett has now traveled to Boston and signed papers at the Danish consulate renouncing her US citizenship. She’s doing some bookings in the area to help pay for her looming August 2 overseas trip in August and even hit Filene’s to shop for her wedding dress.

She now has her US passport with her new name of Carlett Angianlee on it and all systems are go to become the ‘First Negro Sex Change’.

Then fate intervened. Crossdressing back in the 50′s could earn you a trip to jail, and the Boston po-po’s promptly arrested and jailed her overnight for doing so as the July 9 issue reported. Carlett was still undeterred and was still planning to leave for Denmark and her date with history.

She then postponed her departure in order to get a feminizing face lift in New York with Dr. George J.B. Weiss, as the August 6 issue reported. It even mentioned that Carlett’s face lift was going to cost $500 dollars.

Then she was hit with the news that she was ordered not to leave the United States until $1200 in back taxes were paid. The October 15th issue reported that she ended up taking a $60 a week cook’s job at Iowa State’s Pi Kappa frat house that a friend helped her get in order to earn the money to pay off those back taxes.

At that point the trail through those back issues of JET in terms of Carlett’s fascinating story starts turning cold. As of yet I haven’t found out if she ever did earn the money to pay off the back taxes, make that trip to Europe, have SRS, get married or even how the rest of her life turned out. If Carlett is still alive she’d be well into her 70′s.

But thanks to JET, mine and future generations will get to read it.

In 1906 Kelly Miller stated, “All great people glorify their history and look back upon their early attainments with a spiritual vision.”

Because the half century of transgender history so far has been predominately written by people who don’t share my ethnic heritage, it has only covered one facet of the story.

We know for example that Lili Elbe was the first person to undergo gender transition in the 1930′s, that Christine Jorgensen in 1953 was the first post-war one that garnered huge media attention, and about the exploits of other transwomen from Coccinelle to Renee Richards to Dana International.

But it’s only in the last few years that the stories of pioneering non-white transpeople have been coming to the forefront. Fortunately, some of those stories were recorded in the pages of our iconic magazines JET, EBONY and Sepia. Thanks to the Johnson Publishing Company agreement with Google that resulted in JET and EBONY being digitized and placed online in their book search feature to peruse, some of those stories are now coming to light.

As a transperson of African descent who comes from a family of historians, I want to know and revel in my history. Just as I’m keenly aware of the varied historical accomplishments of my people, I want to know the same things about Black transpeople as well.

I am one of three African-Americans who has won the IFGE Trinity Award. Dr. Marisa Richmond is the first African-American transperson to be elected as a major party convention delegate for her state. I know that Avon Wilson was the first African-American and first person to go through Johns Hopkins gender program in 1966.

But what irritates me at times is that I don’t definitively know (yet) who was the first African-American person to transition.

I’ve been encouraged lately to see some tantalizing clues surface pointing to an answer to that question.

About the same time that the media was fixated on Christine Jorgensen, an article appeared in the June 18, 1953 issue of JET magazine.

It began following the story across several JET issues of Pittsburgh’s Carlett Brown. Because Denmark’s laws restricted the surgery to Danish nationals, Carlett took the drastic step of renouncing her US citizenship in order to be able to have SRS done in Denmark and have her HRT supervised by Dr. Christian Hamburger, Christine Jorgensen’s endocrinologist.

I’ll have to write up her fascinating story in another post since I’m still reading through more than a few issues of JET to find out how the story ended.

A Sepia magazine article and two 1965 National Insider tabloid articles claim New Orleans born Delisa Newton, who was 31 when she transitioned is that person.

Sepia magazine was a Fort Worth, TX based competitor of EBONY/JET similar in style to Look magazine that published from 1948-1983. The African-American Museum in Dallas, TX has the picture files of Sepia Magazine in its archives.

It seems appropriate that one of the contenders was born in New Orleans. Delisa was billed as ‘The First Negro Sex Change’ in that 1966 article, but they probably weren’t aware of Avon Wilson yet. I’d also have to check with what’s left of the New Orleans transgender community to see if Delisa is still alive.

These are the articles in question pointing to Delisa Newton. I have yet to find those Sepia magazine articles online or see them.

* Delisa Newton. “My lover beat me”. National Insider, June 20, 1965: 4-5.
* Delisa Newton. “Why I could never marry a white man!”. National Insider July 18, 1965: 17.
* Delisa Newton. “From Man to Woman”. Sepia. 1966.

JET also had a small blurb in its March 16, 1967 issue about 28 year old Philadelphian Carole Small. She was working as a female illusionist-singer in Germany and was reported to be in Denmark getting SRS. Assuming she’s still alive, she’d be approaching her 70th birthday.

Carole was quoted as saying in that article, “Black women in America are among the luckiest on the face of the earth and it will be marvelous to be one.”

Your late 20th century-early 21st century sisters echo those sentiments as well. It would be nice for us to know exactly who was our first and hear about how their lives progressed post surgery.

In order to continue progressing toward our glorious future, we must know about our past in order to get a better understanding of our present.

As I keep perusing these older issues of EBONY/JET, I’m discovering they did a much better job of covering gender issues back in the day than I’d been aware of.

The episode entitled ‘Just A Friend’ from the fourth season of ‘The Jeffersons’ was groundbreaking in many respects. It was the first time that an African descended transwoman character was shown on TV who didn’t fit the stereotypes we all know and loathe.

It was also broadcast in 1977.

While I didn’t care for the part where George tried to pass off Leroy as Edie, for the most part the episode is on point. You also have to remember at the time ‘The Jeffersons’ was a Top 10 rated show that many African-American homes watched.

So if they weren’t aware of the trans issue affecting African descended people, they were after that broadcast.