Chill Out Calling Women You Don't Like Trannies

TransGriot Note: I had a LOT to say about this topic. My April TransGriot newspaper column was also devoted to the subject as well.

photos-Paris Hilton, fetus at six weeks, Harisu, a Hooter's protest, Dana International, Caroline 'Tula' Cossey in her For Your Eyes Only scene, Lauren Foster and Chanel Dupree.

I'm getting annoyed with people who use the term 'tranny' as a pejorative to insult female celebrities.

There are a lot of things that you can creatively come up with for example to insult Paris Hilton. You can criticize her for being a spoiled rich kid, carrying herself in a tacky manner, not being an intellectual giant or her penchant for not wearing underwear. But her tormentors find it easier since she is 5'8" and wears size 11 shoes to call her a 'tranny'.

News flash to her haters: Don't insult the transgender community by disrespectfully calling Paris, Ann Coulter and any other woman you don't like trannies.

Time for me to school y'all on something. There's a very fine line in vitro between being born male and being born female. That's why transpeeps exist.

We all start life in the womb as a FEMALE fetus. About the eighth to twelfth week of pregnancy is when the fetal hormone wash takes place that starts your fetal development path either down the male road or the female one and imprints your gender identity upon your developing brain as well.

So what am I getting at? My basic point is that NO ONE is 100% male or female. We are all a blend of characteristics from our parents. In addition to that, while male and female genitalia are different in form and function they also have a common origination point that starts divergent development once the hormone wash takes place.

Now that I've finished dropping the science, let's get back to talking about this trend of insulting biological women by calling them trannies.

As my gender therapist Dr. Collier Cole once told me, 'Women come in all shapes and sizes'. They range in size from 4'10" to 6'10", body shapes from slim to full figured, clothing sizes from size 0 to size 20 with wide ranging shoe sizes as well.

That applies to transwomen as well. I have trans girlfriends that when I look at them do a double take when I ponder the fact they were once on the other side of the gender fence. Conversely there are biowomen who make me want to perform the Crocodile Dundee Sex Test on them when I see them out and about in the world.


But I don't think that's why Paris Hilton is being slammed with the comment along with Ann Coulter and others. It's because they have parts of their physical makeup that don't conform to societal gender expectations. The fact that they also are controversial in their own ways easily tempts their critics to lapse into slamming them using the term.




If you haters are insinuating by using the term as an epithet that these women are ugly, then I suggest you roll up to Chicago one Labor Day weekend and check out the Miss Continental pageant or if you're visiting Thailand the Miss Tiffany Pageant. Transwomen are far from ugly or 'men in dresses'. Caroline Cossey, Lauren Foster, Tracy Africa and others have worked as models and Caroline was a Bond Girl in the movie For Your Eyes Only.



Israeli transwoman Dana International won the Eurovision song contest a few years ago. Korean transwoman Harisu is a spokesmodel for makeup and sanitary pads companies in Asia. So if transwomen are so ugly, why are they banned from competing in the Miss Universe and other mainstream pageants?


I'm not posting on this topic because I'm hypersensitive about it. Far from it. One of the things I harp on with transpeople is to have the ability to find humor in our transitions and life situations where it exists.

But I draw the line at non-trans people brandishing the word 'tranny' as an epithet in a feeble attempt to be funny or just mean-spirited.

Chill with that, okay?

April 4 Blues

April 4 tends to be a bittersweet day for me. It not only signals the fact that I am four weeks away from celebrating another birthday, it also happens to be the day that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

That happened 39 years ago, and I still vaguely remember some of the TV coverage of the events. Of course there's the famous Moneta Sleet, Jr. AP photo of a black veiled Coretta Scott King holding their daughter Bernice (the same one spewing GLBT hatred from her post as associate pastor of New Birth Baptist Church, but that's a post for another time).



What I try to do when I start feeling sad about this day, I remember Dr. King by reading his writings and speeches and thanking God for the yeoman's work that he did during his 39 years on planet Earth. I rededicate myself to doing my part to help keep the dream alive and trying to conduct my life based on Kingian principles.

I also spend some of this day contemplating what the world would have been like if Dr. King had been able to live a normal lifespan. He was planning the Poor People's Campaign at the time of his death in Memphis, so I can postulate that he would have not only continued to condemn the Vietnam War, but also contined working for economic justice as well.

Dr. King probably would have decried the current war in Iraq, the increasingly mean-spirited and selfish way that this country gets under conservative rule and called out the Democrats for their weak response to it. I also can't imagine Dr. King remaining silent over what has happened to New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina.

I can also visualize Dr. King continuing to be an eloquent spokesperson for democracy, education and the Christian faith. I can see him taking to task those 'creation science/intelligent design' peeps, fundamentalists using the Bible to mask their hatred and being an eloquent defender of the principle of separation of church and state.

Dr. King would have taken the African-American community to task for some of the things that have been happening over the last 39 years as well. He'd be critical of the negativity and misogyny of hip-hop, some of our peeps not caring to vote or get an education and the weak response of the Black church to the HIV/AIDS crisis here in the United States and in Africa. Finally, I believe he would have had harsh words for those African-American ministers who preach hatred of GLBT peeps from the pulpit.

The world and our country definitely would have been a much better place with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. around over the last 39 years to remind us that we can do better that we are right now.

No Joke-This Sistah Can Coach

Not many people have heard of Rutgers University coach C. Vivian Stringer, but the peeps in the NCAA women's coaching ranks definitely have. She's the first coach male or female to take three different schools to the Final Four. (Rick Pitino of Louisville has matched that distinction on the men's side.)

When you mention the elite coaches in the NCAA women's ranks her Big East rival Geno Auriemma of Connecticut or Tennessee's Pat Summitt will come to mind. But C. Vivian Stringer has earned the right to be mentioned in the same breath as well. Her record during her 35-year coaching career is 750-215 (.749) which ranks third all time behind the 900 wins of just retired Texas Longhorn coach Jody Conradt and Pat Summitt's 913.

Stringer is called 'The Master Builder' for taking unknown and unheralded programs and molding them into elite level contenders. She did it first with Cheyney State, an HBCU located just outside Philadelphia. They made a surprise run to the national semifinals during the first NCAA sanctioned women's tournament in 1982. A decade later she coached the University of Iowa to a 1993 Final Four appearance. In 2000 she coached Rutgers to its first Final Four in Philadelphia but that team fell in the semifinals to Tennessee.



In what Stringer considers her most satisfying coaching job she's guided a Scarlet Knight team that has no seniors, three juniors, five freshmen and two sophomores to a second Final Four appearance. This team lost four of its first six games in November and December before putting together a 24-4 finishing kick that's taken Rutgers to the brink of a championship. They knocked off No. 1 seeded Duke and outlasted Arizona State to reach this year's tournament final in Cleveland.

It continued a magical season in which they finally knocked off their perennial Big East nemesis UConn after falling to them in the Big East tourney finals for two consecutive years. Rutgers takes on LSU in today's national semifinal with the victor playing either Tennessee or North Carolina for the NCAA championship Tuesday night.

She is a three time winner of the National Coach of the Year award in addition to a long list of honors she's received. She has a Olympic gold medal courtesy of her assistant coaching stint with the USA Women's team at the Athens Games in 2004. She was also named by Sports Illustrated magazine as one of the '101 Most Influential Minorities in Sports' in addition to being inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2001.

But the honor she wants most is to walk away from Cleveland April 3 as the second African-American coach to win an NCAA women's championship.