One of the things that's an irritant to many African descended transpeople is not only the lack of media attention we get vis a vis our white brothers and sisters, but the frequent use of people who aren't African-American transpeople as representatives to speak for us. The gay media has a bad habit of referring to RuPaul as a transgender person when he's not. The fact that he's (allegedly) Black on the outside and has a penchant for dressing up in feminine attire doesn't make him transgender. He's also not highly regarded by many people in the SGL and transgender community for his unwavering support of a certain obese white gay man who does a blackface minstrel show.
I was insulted along with the Dallas transgender community when their local gay newspaper, the Dallas Voice ran to him to defend their use of the word 'tranny' in news stories they write.
The Dallas transgender community has been calling out the Voice recently about their penchant for repeatedly using the word in their news stories, but they aren't the only gay media outlets that are guilty of this.
Once again it's a simple principle. You don't get to make the call about what does or doesn't offend me or my community, we do. Common sense would dictate that if you don't belong to the transgender community and we tell you that 'tranny' is an offensive term, then don't use it.
By the way, if you need to find actual transgender women of African descent to comment on an issue, how about calling the National Black Justice Coalition, GLAAD, your local transgender organizations for references or shoot me an e-mail?So please stop calling on him as an 'expert' on what the Black transgender community or our community in general is thinking because there are others who are far more qualified to do so than this serial apologist for Chuck Knipp.
