Houston's Transgender Center

This is old KTRK-TV news video about the transgender center back home, but still worth a look.

And yes, in this case I know one of the peeps profiled in the story.

See Ya, Lou!

Last night was Lou Dobbs' last broadcast on CNN.

All I have to say to that is hallelujah and what took y'all so long to remove the prevaricating bloviator off the air. Truth and balance have been in short supply on his show for several years now.

And it's sad since he has won major journalism awards.

His coverage of the 1987 stock market crash won him the George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting along with an Emmy for Lifetime Achievement that he received from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 2005.



But pimping fact free conspiracy theories and hatred of immigrants is not what an Emmy award winning journalist should be doing on a network like CNN.

He's now free to slither on over to Faux News and pimp all the conspiracy theories he wishes to a more intellectually challenged audience

Diane Sawyer To Become ABC World News Anchor In 2010

And then there were two.

In some news that will make many peeps in Da Ville happy, Diane Sawyer will be leaving Good Morning America and taking over as the anchor for 'ABC World News' in January 2010.

Current anchor Charles Gibson will be retiring at the end of the year after 35 years with ABC. He took over the ABC World News anchor duties after the 2005 death of longtime anchor Peter Jennings and Bob Woodward was injured while reporting in Iraq.

White Sawyer's ascension to the ABC desk and Katie Couric already ensconsed in the legendary CBS News anchor chair that Walter Cronkite once occupied, that means in 2010 two of the three original television networks as of 2010 will have women sitting at their anchor desks.

NBC still has Brian Williams helming their rating leading NBC Nightly News, with ABC a solid second in the ratings.

No word yet as to what's going to happen with Diane's soon to be former gig at Good Morning America, where Robin Roberts is one of the co-hosts.

Maybe ABC will do the logical thing and slide Robin into the lead chair at GMA.

At any rate, congratulations to Diane Sawyer. She's from Louisville, and the peeps here are ecstatic that she's going to get the ABC News anchor chair.

Burr Oak Hits Home

When the news about the horrific happenings at Chicago's historic Burr Oak Cemetery broke a few weeks ago I had this unsettling deja vu moment.

As some of you long time TransGriot readers may know, my roomie Dawn and I both have relatives in the Chicago area. I used to early in my airline days frequently visit them during the early 90's, sometimes with my then best friend and co-worker Eric Shepherd along for the ride to hit some of the house music venues.

I knew that Burr Oak was one of the cemeteries where many prominent Black Chicagoans have been laid to rest. It is also the resting place of Emmitt Till, whose 1954 lynching was the emotional spark that jump started the African American civil rights movement.

When I watched the news coverage of the unfolding events I had a 'where have I heard that name before' alert going off in my head. The reason I was having the bad moment became clear when I called home last Friday and talked to my mother.

My first trip to Chicago was back in August 1986. It was my first airplane ride as we took an Eastern Airlines Moonlight Special flight from Houston Intercontinental to Chicago O'Hare to attend the funeral of my Uncle Leon.

My uncle had passed away on August 2, and the date sticks in my mind because it was the same day as the fatal Delta air crash at DFW.

My mom has a summa cum laude degree in history and is basically our family historian.

She keeps the records of all family events such as our reunions, weddings and funerals and was having the same unsettling feeling I had upon hearing the name Burr Oak earlier this month. Mom decided to pull out and reread my Uncle Leon's program.

When I talked to her, Mom dropped the bomb for me that Uncle Leon was buried in Burr Oak.

I was already concerned, pissed and mortified about the horrific crap that had happened there and greed being the motivating factor for it. It was initially reported that First Lady Michelle Obama's father Fraser Robinson III was buried there as well, but the White House later released a statement that he wasn't.

Unfortunately, there are families like mine all over the country and the Chicago area who do have loved ones buried there. I'm still awaiting word from my Chicago relatives to find out if my Uncle Leon's grave or headstone was disturbed.

Emmitt Till's grave was one of the 300 graves disturbed. After all the pain that the Till family has suffered, to have those painful wounds reopened again in such a disgusting way makes me sick to my stomach.

As Jesse Senior said, there's a special place in Hades for the people who perpetrated this evil. When these wastes of DNA are brought to justice for it, may the Cook County court system and the state Of Illinois throw the book at them so they can spend the rest of their miserable lives rotting in jail.

Arkansas Republican Apologizes For Racist E-mail

TransGriot Note: This kind of bull is one of the reasons why I can't stand Repugnicans

LITTLE ROCK, ARK. — An Arkansas legislator apologized Thursday for an e-mail in which he wrote that "we are being outpopulated by the blacks" and "we are being overrun" by illegal immigrants.

But state Sen. Denny Altes insisted the comments in the e-mail he sent earlier this month to former Fort Smith Mayor Bill Vines were not racist.

"I apologize and I am sorry if it hurt anyone's feelings. ... I'm sorry if it offended anyone, but I didn't consider it a racist remark," Altes told The Associated Press Thursday.

Altes, who is white, wrote in the e-mail that he was in favor of returning illegal immigrants to their countries, but "we know that is impossible."

"We are where we were with the black folks after the Revolutionary War," Altes wrote. "We can't send them back and the more we (anger them) the worse it will be in the future. ... Sure we are being overrun but we are being outpopulated by the blacks also."

Altes said he was responding to an inflammatory e-mail.

Arkansas GOP chairman Dennis Milligan criticized Altes, a Republican from Fort Smith, for the comments.

"They are disrespectful and denigrating to the practical concerns of how we truly address illegal immigration," Milligan said in a statement released by the party.

A spokesman for Gov. Mike Beebe said the Democratic governor was glad Altes had apologized.

"Controversial topics require level-headed, civil discussion, not divisive and insensitive remarks, such as those made by Senator Altes," Beebe said in a statement released by his office.

The League of United Latin American Citizens called for Altes' resignation, but Altes said he doesn't plan to step down.

Brazil To Provide Free SRS Operations

photos-surgery, Brazilian transwoman Roberta Close







Brazil to provide free sex-change operations

Court rules the surgery is a constitutional right for residents

Updated: 4:47 p.m. ET
Aug 17, 2007
From MSNBC.com

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Brazil's public health system will begin providing free sex-change operations in compliance with a court order, the Health Ministry said Friday.

Ministry spokesman Edmilson Oliveira da Silva said the government would not appeal Wednesday's ruling by a panel of federal judges giving the government 30 days to offer the procedure or face fines of $5,000 a day.

"The health minister was prompted by the judges' decision," Silva said. "But we already had a technical group studying the procedure with the idea of including it among the procedures that are covered."

Federal prosecutors from Rio Grande do Sul state had argued that sexual reassignment surgery is covered under a constitutional clause guaranteeing medical care as a basic right.

On Wednesday the 4th Regional Federal Court agreed, saying in its ruling that "from the biomedical perspective, transsexuality can be described as a sexual identity disturbance where individuals need to change their sexual designation or face serious consequences in their lives, including intense suffering, mutilation and suicide."

The Health Ministry said it would be up to local health officials to decide who qualifies for the surgery and what priority it will be given compared with other operations within the public health system.

Patients must be at least 21 years old and diagnosed as transsexuals with no other personality disorders and must undergo psychological evaluation for at least two years, the ministry said.

Gay activists applauded the decision.

"Transsexuals represent about 0.001 percent of the Brazilian population, but for this minority, sexual reassignment surgery is a question of life and death," said Luiz Mott, founder of the Bahia Gay Group. "It is unjust and cruel to argue that the health system should concern itself with other priorities."

So far the measure has not prompted any opposition.

Brazil's public health system offers free care to all Brazilians, including a variety of surgeries and free AIDS medication. But long lines and poorly equipped facilities mean that those who can afford it usually choose to pay for private hospitals and clinics.

The health ministry said that since 2000, about 250 sexual reassignment surgeries considered experimental have been performed at three university hospitals.

Brazil is generally more tolerant of homosexuality than other Latin American countries, with transvestites featured prominently in celebrations like carnival, but discrimination still exists.

(c) 2007 The Associated Press.

Nikki Giovanni's Encounter With Cho

Professor Had Expelled Gunman From Class

By ALLEN G. BREED
AP National Writer

BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) -- The mood in the basketball arena was
defeated, funereal. Nikki Giovanni seemed an unlikely source of
strength for a Virginia Tech campus reeling from the depravity of one
of its own.

Tiny, almost elfin, her delivery blunted by the loss of a lung,
Giovanni brought the crowd at the memorial service to its feet and
whipped mourners into an almost evangelical fervor with her
words: "We are the Hokies. We will prevail, we will prevail. We are
Virginia Tech."

Nearly two years earlier, Giovanni had stood up to Cho Seung-Hui
before he drenched the campus in blood. Her comments Tuesday showed
that the man who had killed 32 students and teachers had not killed
the school's spirit.

"We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid," the 63-year-old
poet with the close-cropped, platinum hair told the grieving
crowd. "We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We
are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to
invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this
sadness."
In September 2005, Cho was enrolled in Giovanni's introduction to creative writing class. From the beginning, he began building a wall between himself and the rest of the class.

He wore sunglasses to class and pulled his maroon knit cap down low
over his forehead. When she tried to get him to participate in class
discussion, his answer was silence.

"Sometimes, students try to intimidate you," Giovanni told The
Associated Press in a telephone interview Wednesday. "And I just
assumed that he was trying to assert himself."

But then female students began complaining about Cho.

About five weeks into the semester, students told Giovanni that Cho
was taking photographs of their legs and knees under the desks with
his cell phone. She told him to stop, but the damage was already done.

Female students refused to come to class, submitting their work by
computer instead. As for Cho, he was not adding anything to the
classroom atmosphere, only detracting.

Police asked Giovanni not to disclose the exact content or nature of
Cho's poetry. But she said it was not violent like other writings
that have been circulating.

It was more invasive.

"Violent is like, `I'm going to do this,'" said Giovanni, a three-
time NAACP Image Award winner who is sometimes called "the princess
of black poetry." This was more like a personal violation, as if Cho
were objectifying his subjects, "doing thing to your body parts."

"It's not like, `I'll rip your heart out,'" she recalled. "It's that,
`Your bra is torn, and I'm looking at your flesh.'"

His work had no meter or structure or rhyme scheme. To Giovanni, it
was simply "a tirade."

"There was no writing. I wasn't teaching him anything, and he didn't
want to learn anything," she said. "And I finally realized either I
was going to lose my class, or Mr. Cho had to leave."

Giovanni wrote a letter to then-department head Lucinda Roy, who
removed Cho.

Roy alerted student affairs, the dean's office, even the campus
police, but each said there was nothing they could do if Cho had made
no overt threats against himself or others. So Roy took him on as a
kind of personal tutor.

"At first he would hardly say anything, and I was lucky to get, say,
in 30 minutes, four or five monosyllabic answers from him," she
said. "But bit by bit, he began to tell me things."

During their hourlong sessions, Roy encouraged Cho to express himself
in writing. She would compose poems with him, contributing to the
works herself and taking dictation from him.

"I tried to keep him focused on things that were outside the self a
little bit," said Roy, who has been at Virginia Tech for 22
years. "Because he seemed to be running inside circles in a maze when
he was talking about himself."

He was "very guarded" when it came to his family. But she got him to
open up about his feelings of isolation.

"You seem so lonely," she told him once. "Do you have any friends?"

"I am lonely," he replied. "I don't have any friends."

Suitemates and others have said Cho rejected their overtures of
friendship. Roy sensed that Cho's isolation might be largely self-
imposed.

To her, it was as if he were two people.

"He was actually quite arrogant and could be quite obnoxious, and was
also deeply, it seemed, insecure," she said.

But when she wrote to Cho about his behavior in Giovanni's class, Roy
received what she described as "a pretty strident response."

"It was a vigorous defense of the self," she said. "He clearly felt
that he was in the right and that the professor was in the wrong. It
was the kind of tone that I would never have used as an undergraduate
at a faculty member."

She felt he fancied himself a loner, but she wasn't sure what
underlay that feeling.

"I mean, if you see yourself as a loner, sometimes that means you
feel very isolated and insecure and inferior. Or it can mean that you
feel quite superior to others, because you've distanced yourself. And
I think he went from one extreme to another."

When the semester ended, so did Roy's and Cho's collaboration. She
went on leave and thought he had graduated.

When she and Giovanni learned of the shootings and heard a
description of the gunman, they immediately thought of Cho.

Roy wonders now whether things would have turned out differently had
she continued their sessions. But Giovanni sees no reason for people
who had interactions with Cho to beat themselves up.

"I know that there's a tendency to think that everybody can get
counseling or can have a bowl of tomato soup and everything is going
to be all right," she said. "But I think that evil exists, and I
think that he was a mean person."

Giovanni encountered Cho only once after she removed him from class.
She was walking down a campus path and noticed him coming toward her.
They maintained eye contact until passing each other.

Giovanni, who had survived lung cancer, was determined she would not
blink first.

"I was not going to look away as if I were afraid," she said. "To me
he was a bully, and I had no fear of this child."

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

The Virginia Tech Tragedy

College is supposed to be an overall positive experience. You're finally getting to sort everything out in terms of what you want to do in life, where you're headed and learning and growing as a young adult while having some fun in the process.

For many peeps it's the first time you get to step out, live away from home and get your first taste of adulthood. It's the last time in your life when the only responsibilities you have are to get up, go to class and study your butt off unless you also have a job you're juggling to help pay your tuition.

I guess it's why I enjoy walking around on various college campuses when I do follow Dawn to various fencing tournaments. It takes me back to my own college days in that respect. It's hard for me to imagine what it would have been like to have that peace of mind shattered by a gunman suddenly popping up in one of my classes, firing shots at me and my classmates, then to discover a day or so later that he was a classsmate that peeps had been seeing disturbing behavior patterns about for two years leading up to that horrific incident.

Even the folks who weren't in those Norris Hall classrooms that morning are haunted by 'That could have been me' thoughts. I can only imagine what was going through people's minds as their buildings were on lockdown wondering if the incident was over of if their building was next on the shooter's target list.

What about the peeps who for some reason decided not to go to class that morning? I know they feel just as hurt as the gun shop owner who sold Cho the weapons he used.

How would I feel about that? How do you put that behind you and move on with llfe, if you ever do? It's also tough at that age to lose a classmate because up until you get past your college years and your ten-year high school reunion you have this false feeling of immortality. You walk around in your late teens and 20's with this attitude that you have plenty of time to accomplish the things you want to do or get your life together.


There are 32 people that have been tragically taken from us including Cho. But to the Virginia Tech students who may be reading this blog, life does go on. In 1966 The University of Texas suffered a similar tragedy. It took a while but people eventually forgot until Monday that a deadly shooting occurred on its campus. It brought back the flood of memories in Austin and on the UT campus of what Charles Whitman had done almost 41 years earlier.

It was interesting to read Nikki Giovanni's account of her 2005 encounter with Cho in her writing class she was teaching at Virginia Tech. I think what needs to happen in the wake of this tragedy is to strenghten the ability of college professors and administrators to compel folks with disturbing behavior patterns to undergo counseling once its verified.

Would that have prevented the shooting? That's a debatable question. As far as the gun issue I'm going to deal with that another time. In this post I want to continue focusing on the 32 people we lost, the folks at Virginia Tech and their families who are grieving and trying to make sense out of an irrational situation.

We will never know what types of contributions those fallen people would have made to our society and others around the world. We can only guess about that as we mourn them, memorialize them and sadly have to move on.

A Rebuttal to Kenneth Eng's 'Why I Hate Blacks' Column

By Kenneth Eng
published in AsianWeek February 23, 2007

TransGriot note: This is the text of the AsianWeek newspaper column written by Kenneth Eng that caused major controversy when it was published on February 23. After coming under fire from African-American and Asian groups, editor Ted Fang has apologized for it and announced that Eng is no longer a contributing writer. My comments will be boldfaced.

Here is a list of reasons why we should discriminate against blacks, starting from the most obvious down to the least obvious.

*Blacks hate us. Every Asian who has come across them knows that they take almost every opportunity to hurl racist remarks at us. In my experience I would say about 90 percent of blacks I have met regardless of age or environment, poke fun at the very sight of an Asian. Furthermore, their activity in the media proves their hatred. Rush Hour, Exit Wounds, Hot 97, et cetera.

For somebody that graduated from NYU, you are breathtakingly ignorant to paint an entire race of people with a stereotypical brush based on two movies and a rap radio station as you did in your recent February 23 column. (Personally I prefer classic R&B and jazz myself.)

*Contrary to media depictions I would argue that blacks are weak willed. They are the only race that has been enslaved for 300 years. It's unbelievable it took them that long to fight back. On the other hand we slaughtered the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War.

I guess you forgot about the story of Joseph Cinque and the Amistad revolt? That wasn't an isolated incident. Many slave ship voyages didn't get too far away from the African coastline before the rebellions started. There were far more successful slave rebellions and revolts than the 'happy darkie' pro-slavery revisionist forces care to elaborate on and the first one happened in 1733. They feared slave rebellions from 1792 onward. Haiti's slaves liberating themselves from French rule in 1803 made them even more 'scurred' of us replicating the feat on US shores.

I see you're also clueless about Harriet Tubman, the Underground Railroad and the various ingenious ways that African-Americans escaped from plantations. They fought for their freedom in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

While were on the war tip, ever heard of the Buffalo Soldiers? The 761st Tank Battalion AKA the Black Panthers? The Tuskegee Airmen? The 54th Massachusetts Regiment? You desperately need to hop the subway and spend some time at the Schomburg Institute.

*Blacks are easy to coerce. This is proven by the fact that so many of them, including Rev. Al Sharpton tend to be Christians. Yet at the same time they spend much of their time whining about how much they hate the 'whites that oppressed them.'
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Christianity the religion that whites forced upon them?

And in which one of your science-fiction universes did you come up with that asinine statement? I'm tired of peeps like you dismissing our very real historical experiences in this country as 'whining'. The Christianity that the slavemasters forced on us was infused with our own religious experiences and traditions we brought with us from Africa. From that Christianity came some of our greatest leaders in the late 19th and 20th century.

*Blacks don't get it. I know it's a blunt and crass assessment but it's true. When I was in high school, I recall a class debate in which one half of the class was chosen to defend black slavery and the other half was chosen to defend liberation. Disturbingly, blacks on the prior side viciously defended slavery as well as Christianity. They say if you don't study history you are condemned to repeat it. In high school I only remember one black student ever attending my honors and AP courses. And that student was caught cheating.

Kenneth, what I don't get is your disjointed rambling about some obscure high school debate and what connection it has with African-Americans in general. But then again racists were never known to have logical linear thinking processes.

If you didn't see any African-Americans in your honors or AP classes, then you must have attended school in the 'burbs or went to a private one. I was in gifted and talented classes in junior and senior high along with many of my friends. Education was stressed in mine and many other households in my neighborhood.

George Santayana was right. If you don't study the past you are condemned to repeat it. That's why we just spent 28 days commemorating our history. African-Americans are painfully familiar with that statement more than anyone else in this country because we've seen the effects of neglected or ignored history disproportionately impact our community. For example, our experiences during Reconstruction in the late 19th century have eerily replicated themselves in the late 20th-early 21st century.

It is rather troubling that they are treated as heroes, but then again whites will do anything to defend them.

And it is rather troubling that this kind of virulent racism is alive and well in the early 21st century, especially in someone who is a 21 year old college graduate. I'm even more angered over the fact that you chose Black History Month to write such disgusting tripe.

We are heroes, Kenneth. I'm descended from peeps that survived The Middle Passage. Despite violent opposition, nattering naysayers and countless obstacles placed in our paths over the last 400 years that would have broken less sturdy peoples, to quote Maya Angelou, 'and still we rise.'

If Anna Nicole Smith Were Black, Would She Be Getting Such A Glorified Post Mortem? No

photo-Anna leaving the Supreme Court


Wednesday, February 21, 2007
By: Tonyaa Weathersbee, BlackAmericaWeb.com

Maybe it's out of respect for the dead that Rush Limbaugh hasn't called ex-stripper and Playboy centerfold Anna Nicole Smith a "ho," the insult he leveled at the black stripper who accused three Duke University lacrosse players of raping her in a bathroom.

But I suspect that when people like Limbaugh see white women who behave like Smith, they see her through the prism of quirkiness and outrageousness. With black women, they're quicker to turn the morality lens on us.

And when they look at us with that lens, they tend to freeze us in it.

First of all, let me say that it is always a sad thing to hear of anyone dying before their time, whether that person is a 19-year-old black guy who gets gunned down by gang bullets or a 39-year-old blonde bombshell like Smith, whose excesses finally caught up with her. Sadder still is that Smith leaves behind a five-month-old daughter, Dannielynn, who will never know her mother.

But when you strip away the spin and apply the morality standards to her life that black women, and especially poor black women, are lambasted for not living up to, you find someone who fell far short of those standards.

Yet in spite of that, she's being iconized.

Let's see. Smith began her climb to fame as a stripper. She posed naked in Playboy, and achieved her greatest fame as a Guess? Jeans model. She had no great artistic talent to dwarf those superficial beginnings, so she built her life on trying to find bizarre ways to stay in the spotlight.

By the end of her life, she had become a drug abuser and had given birth to a daughter out-of-wedlock. Three men are claiming to have fathered her daughter -- one of which includes a married man, Prince Frederick von Anhalt -- who claims they had an affair since the 1990s.

While no one will know, at least for a while, who Dannielynn's real daddy is, what is clear is that Smith was a tad promiscuous. She did triple the things that got Janet Jackson vilified for exposing a nipple ring at the 2004 Super Bowl, but even her death won't make her go away.

The headlines and newscasts have been dominated by her. Journalists are combing her old stomping ground in Mexia, Texas to uncover clues about her childhood. She's being dubbed as a "tragic beauty," and, laughably, being compared to Marilyn Monroe -- even though her closest brush with movie fame came in a "Naked Gun" spoof.

Yet when I think about how Smith lived her life, and all the empathetic airings of the circumstances surrounding her death, I have to wonder: If she were black, would there have been a rush to euphemize her? Would writers be struggling to find meaning in her life, a life that was basically driven by her need to be in spotlight?

The answer I keep coming up with is no.

Even a black woman as talented as Jackson wasn't able to make outrageousness work for her. Her wardrobe malfunction, for example, sent America into a tizzy for months. No one saw it as gutsy, or even accepted it as a mistake as much as they saw it as immoral, as all that was wrong with America.

She couldn't apologize enough for it. And people wouldn't let it go.

Some pundits even blamed her and "Nipplegate" for galvanizing morals voters and causing John Kerry to lose the 2004 presidential election.
Anytime she visited a new place, few media smart-alecks could resist admonishing her to keep her clothes on.

I wonder what those so-called morals voters are saying now, as the tawdry details of Smith's daughter's paternity continue to eat up much more air time than the 2004 Super Bowl did.

Now, none of this is to say that black women ought to be out there fighting to get famous for being loose or promiscuous. But as I constantly am bombarded with the details of Smith's life, I can't help but to think about how race and wealth is lived in this country. I think about how Smith receives adulation and empathy in spite of the way that she lived her life, and black women like Jackson, as well as the Duke stripper, receive only contempt and are held up as examples of black immorality if they take off their clothes in public or have babies out of wedlock. And while I'm all for black women holding themselves to high behavioral standards, I still don't like it when we're held to a double one.

One that makes the lower standards fine as long as they come in creamy blond packaging.

Transcending MLK’S Dream

Local activist Tracee McDaniel speaks her truth in an attempt to spark change

By Ryan Lee
Friday, February 09, 2007
From the Southern Voice

MOMENTS BEFORE TRACEE MCDANIEL prepared to approach the podium outside The King Center on what would have been the revered civil rights leader’s 78th birthday, she began to second-guess the speech she was about to give.

She wondered if the hundreds of people who gathered in the Sweet Auburn district to commemorate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. last month were ready to hear a new message about tolerance, about expanding King’s dreams of equality. For a minute, she questioned if she was ready to be the one who delivered it, or if it might be better for her to at least tone down her words.

“I finally just decided, it’s too late to be changing the speech now,” says McDaniel, who is the first transgender individual to speak at the rally that concludes Atlanta’s annual MLK march. “I thought the message needs to be expressed, and I was just so happy and excited that I was the one who was asked to do so.”

McDaniel received a call from organizers of the MLK march about 10 days before the event inviting her to speak, and ironically was in the middle of studying about MLK and Coretta Scott King for a public speaking and communications course at Georgia Perimeter College.

“I had been doing research and I read about their inclusiveness of the TLGBQ community as a whole, to make sure everyone is represented when it comes to equal rights,” McDaniel says, adding that she was somewhat nervous addressing the mostly black crowd.

“I would say it’s more challenging to build bridges with the African-American community basically because of what we’ve been taught and conditioned to believe over the years,” McDaniel says. “I just relied on the fact that Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King included openly gay members in the civil rights movement.

“It was one of the most important speeches of my life,” she adds.

That legacy of inclusion is part of what motivates organizers of Atlanta’s MLK march to permit all of its partner organizations — including In The Life Atlanta, a black gay group — to select a speaker to participate in the post-march rally, said Rev. James Orange, who organizes the march on behalf of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

“We always have gays and lesbians participating in our rally because it’s their right to be there, too,” Orange says. “We’ve always tried to allow each of [the partner organizations] exposure.”

ABOUT FIVE YEARS AGO, MCDANIEL would’ve had a difficult time imagining herself talking with anyone about being transgender, let alone giving a speech in the shadow of The King Center. She moved from Los Angeles to Atlanta in 2003, around the time she was considering ending the silence in which she lived for more than 15 years.

“I was in the closet because I was fortunate enough to be one of the ones who could pass,” says McDaniel, who recently turned 40 and has been living as a woman since her late teens. “It was easier that way, just to blend in.”

McDaniel recognizes parallels between her experience and light-skinned blacks who avoided discrimination by passing as white, and says she realized it was time for transgender individuals to begin making more noise in order to be treated fairly by mainstream and gay society.

“I feel like we’ve been placed last on the list of everything,” says McDaniel, who has immersed herself in community activism since arriving in Atlanta. She is the transgender liaison for the Atlanta Human Rights Campaign’s diversity committee, serves on the Atlanta Police Department’s GLBT advisory group and is an associate board member for the Atlanta Pride Committee.

Last year she founded the Juxtaposed Center for Transformation, a transgender non-profit agency.

“I had to be comfortable expressing who I am and not apologize for who I am or being born transgender,” McDaniel says of how her activism sparked changes in her own life.

The nascent Juxtaposed Center for Transformation is creating an infrastructure that McDaniel hopes will make it a safe place for transgender individuals to receive group support, legal advice, counseling and referrals. She also expects the organization to chronicle transgender history, including the key role of transgender people in the Stonewall Riots.

MCDANIEL CONSIDERED HERSELF female for as long as she can remember, and her feelings were well known throughout her family, albeit never discussed. Throughout McDaniel’s childhood her mother made her read Bible verses condemning homosexuality, filling McDaniel with anticipation of leaving Sumter, S.C., when she turned 18.

Upon striking out on her own McDaniel stepped inside a Myrtle Beach mall that forever changed her life.

“I was walking through J.C. Penney and instead of walking to the male’s department I went to the female section where I’ve been shopping ever since,” she says. “I went home for [a grandmother’s] funeral and I did not change my dress or make-up, and my mother and I were having a conversation.

“I remember telling her the family was going to talk about the way I presented myself,” McDaniel remembers. “She told me if anyone had anything to say, they better keep it to themselves.”

Despite their earlier struggles, McDaniel says her mother eventually told her she loves her because she is her child, not because of her gender.

“Now my mother calls me her daughter when she’s introducing me to new people back home,” McDaniel says.

Feeling the Gender Gap Firsthand

Having Worked in Science as a Man and a Woman, Ben Barres Has Experienced Its Gender Divide From Both Sides
By JUJU CHANG
From ABC News.com

Sept. 27, 2006 — Ben Barres is a world-renowned neurobiologist, whose quiet demeanor is off-set by the twinkle of intensity in his eyes.

With an M.D. from Dartmouth and a Ph.D. from Harvard, Barres is a respected scientist who is known on the Stanford University campus as a great mentor, especially to women.

Barres, a staunch feminist, is deeply offended by the insinuation that women are less talented in science. That may be because Ben Barres spent 40 years of his life as Barbara Barres.

Growing up, Barbara Barres was a tomboy and math whiz who wound up at MIT, despite the fact that her high school guidance counselor discouraged her from applying there.

It was the 1970s, when only 11 percent of MIT's students were women, and Barres described the atmosphere as occasionally sexist.

Once, Barbara Barres solved an equation the professor had designed to stump the class, and was the only one who got it right. But the professor didn't believe a woman could solve the puzzle.

"He looked at me with sort of this disdainful look and said, 'Well, your boyfriend must have solved that for you,'" Barres recalled.

Barbara Barres didn't get credit. And yet, it was the accusation of cheating that got under her skin, not the blatant sexism.

"It was only years and years later that it occurred to me, 'Gee, this was sexism,'" Barres said.

It's possible the sexism didn't register because Barbara Barres never really identified with women. "I certainly did not feel comfortable wearing makeup, wearing jewelry. High heels, things like that, were agony," Barres said. Ironically, the only problem she couldn't solve was deeply personal.

As Barbara Barres in college, she dated only briefly, Barres said. "If anything, I have weak attractions to men. But I really don't have strong attractions to either sex," Barres said, describing himself now as a contented bachelor. His passion, aside from science, is roasting his own coffee, which fills his kitchen with a rich aroma.

Receiving More Accolades as a Man

Today Ben Barres seems comfortable in his skin, but his was a long journey toward self-discovery. It took a breast cancer scare and a mastectomy when Ben was still Barbara to make Barbara realize she'd been living in the wrong body for 40 years.

"I remember that my doctor was kind of horrified at my suggestion that he cut 'em both off while he was at it, and another doctor, a year later, saying, 'Well, don't you want to have reconstructive surgery now?' And I was like, 'No, I am not gonna let anybody put those things back on me.'"

It's been 10 years since Barbara Barres became Ben Barres, with hormones and surgery. And Barres' unique perspective has turned him into a fervent crusader in the debate over whether gender matters in science. In one of the first lectures after his sex change, Barres spoke at MIT.

"Afterward, somebody who was familiar with the work of Barbara Barres apparently was heard to comment, 'Gee, that Ben Barres' work is so much better than his sister's.'" The person said this, evidently not realizing that Ben and Barbara were the same person.

That's a telling anecdote about the way men and women are perceived in the field of science. "There is a presumption that work being done by a man is better than work being done by a woman," said Barres.

When former Harvard president Lawrence Summers caused a firestorm last year by suggesting that women are less innately talented in science than men, Barres called it verbal violence and felt he had to speak up.

"If people treat women as if they are less good, that treatment in itself causes them to be less confident, to choose to leave science," Barres said, adding, "I am always amazed when Larry Summers and others make this comment, because it so flies in the face of the data. A little bit less arrogance would go a long way."

In an impassioned response just published in the journal Nature, Barres references a slew of academic studies that found that women who applied for grants had to do more than twice as much work as men did, and that women at MIT were not getting equal resources, such as lab space.

His point: The gender gap in science has less to do with subtle differences in brain power and much more to do with bias.

Last week, a panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences said women in science and engineering are hindered not by lack of ability but by bias and "outmoded institutional structures."

The report recommends altering procedures for hiring and evaluating scientists, changing typical timetables for tenure and promotion, and providing more support for working parents.


Barres helps to fight bias by lending his hand to the respected Pioneer Award program, the National Institutes of Health's most prestigious prize. As a judge, he worked to make the application process more open, which led to important results.

Barres said the number of women and minority winners shot up from zero percent to nearly 40 percent. "The very best part was that we only discussed who was the best scientist and what was the best science."

And in Barres' perfect world, that's all that should matter.

Obama Launches 2008 White House Bid

By NEDRA PICKLER, The Associated Press
Jan 16, 2007

WASHINGTON - Sen. Barack Obama launched a presidential campaign Tuesday that would make him the first Black to occupy the White House, and immediately tried to turn his political inexperience into an asset with voters seeking change.


The freshman Illinois senator - and top contender for the Democratic nomination - said the past six years have left the country in a precarious place and he promoted himself as the standard-bearer for a new kind of politics.

"Our leaders in Washington seem incapable of working together in a practical, commonsense way," Obama said in a video posted on his Web site. "Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions. And that's what we have to change first."

Obama filed paperwork forming a presidential exploratory committee that allows him to raise money and put together a campaign structure. He is expected to announce a full-fledged candidacy on Feb. 10 in Springfield, Ill., where he can tout his experience in the state legislature and tap into the legacy of hometown hero Abraham Lincoln.

In a brief interview on Capitol Hill, Obama said the reaction has been positive and added, "we wouldn't have gone forward this far if it hadn't been this positive."

Obama's soft-spoken appeal on the stump, his unique background, his opposition to the Iraq war and his fresh face set him apart in a competitive race that also is expected to include front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Obama has uncommon political talents, drawing adoring crowds even among the studious voters in New Hampshire during a much-hyped visit there last month. His star has risen on the force of his personality and message of hope - helped along by celebrity endorsements from the likes of Oprah Winfrey, billionaire investor Warren Buffett and actors Matt Damon and Edward Norton.

"I certainly didn't expect to find myself in this position a year ago," said Obama, who added that as he talked to Americans about a possible presidential campaign, "I've been struck by how hungry we all are for a different kind of politics."

The 45-year-old has few accomplishments on the national stage after serving little more than two years in the Senate. But at a time when many voters say they are unhappy with the direction of the country, a lack of experience in the nation's capital may not be a liability.

"The decisions that have been made in Washington these past six years, and the problems that have been ignored, have put our country in a precarious place," Obama said.

He said people are struggling financially, dependence on foreign oil threatens the environment and national security and "we're still mired in a tragic and costly war that should have never been waged."

Clinton is expected to announce her presidential campaign within days, but her spokesman said there would be no comment on Obama's decision from the Clinton camp. Back from Iraq, she abruptly canceled a Capitol Hill news conference minutes after word of Obama's announcement, citing the unavailability of a New York congressman to participate.

Other Democrats who have announced a campaign or exploratory committee are 2004 vice presidential nominee John Edwards, former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich. Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Joe Biden of Delaware and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson also are considering a run.

Obama's decision was relatively low-key after months of hype, with no speech or media appearance to accompany his online announcement. He said he will discuss a presidential campaign with people around the country before his Feb. 10 event, and he wasted no time calling key activists Tuesday.

New Hampshire lobbyist Jim Demers talked with Obama for about five minutes. "He is extremely pumped and excited that this campaign is coming together," said Demers, who accompanied Obama on his visit to the state last month.

Obama's quick rise to national prominence began with his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and his election to the Senate that year. He's written two best-selling autobiographies - "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream" and "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance."

Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, where his parents met while studying at the University of Hawaii. His father was black and from Kenya; his mother, white and from Wichita, Kan.

Obama's parents divorced when he was two and his father returned to Kenya. His mother later married an Indonesian student and the family moved to Jakarta. Obama returned to Hawaii when he was 10 to live with his maternal grandparents.

He graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the first African-American elected editor of the Harvard Law Review. Obama settled in Chicago, where he joined a law firm, helped local churches establish job training programs and met his future wife, Michelle Robinson. They have two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

In 1996, he was elected to the Illinois state Senate, where he earned a reputation as a consensus-building Democrat who was strongly liberal on social and economic issues, backing gay rights, abortion rights, gun control, universal health care and tax breaks for the poor.

The retirement of Republican Sen. Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois in 2004 drew a raft of candidates to the Democratic primary, but Obama easily outdistanced his competitors. He was virtually assured of victory in the general election when the designated Republican candidate was forced from the race by scandal late in the election.

Obama insisted during the 2004 campaign and through his first year in the Senate that he had no intention of running for president, but by late 2006 his public statements had begun to leave open that possibility.

Associated Press Writer Dennis Conrad contributed to this report.

NBJC Joins Black Leadership Forum

From Jasmyne Cannick.com

It’s official. The National Black Justice Coalition is now a member of the Black Leadership Forum, Inc, making NBJC the first same-gender loving organization to be invited as a member.

Based in Washington D.C., the mission of the Black Leadership Forum (BLF) is to promote creative and coordinated Black Leadership, diverse in membership but clear on its priority, to empower African Americans to improve their own lives and to expand their opportunities to fully participate in American social, economic and political life.

Founded in 1977 in Washington, D.C., as a confederation of civil rights and service organizations, by a nucleus of 11 leaders of organizations which included the National Urban League, National Urban Coalition, NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, National Council of Negro Women, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Martin Luther King Center for Non Violent Social Change, Congressional Black Caucus, National Conference of Black Mayors and the National Business League.

NBJC is a national civil rights organization of Black lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people and our allies dedicated to fostering equality by fighting racism and homophobia.


NBJC advocates for social justice by educating and mobilizing opinion leaders, including elected officials, clergy, and media, with a focus on Black communities. Through educational initiatives we promote policies that support racial justice and equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Americans.


NBJC envisions a world where all people are fully empowered to participate safely, openly and honestly in family, faith and community, regardless of race, gender-identity or sexual orientation.