TransGriot 'R' Rated? What The @*$#?

I read a post on Pam's House Blend this morning about a Blog Rating tool that gives a blog a rating similar to the movie classification system.

For some reason her blog was rated NC-17 and according to Matt Comer's post at InterstateQ.com Pam's wasn't the only GLBT blog that got slapped with 'NC-17 or 'R' ratings. Jasmyne Cannick's received an 'NC-17. My friend Jackie's THINGS According To Me received an 'R' rating, and AC's The Polar Bear Speaks picked up an NC-17 rating.

Just for fun I plugged in the TransGriot URL to see what rating my humble blog would come up with. This is what it spit back at me in response;



This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
gay (8x) lesbian (5x) death (4x) pain (2x) gays (1x)

It tripped me out when it was noted that racist websites such as Stormfront and many anti-GLBT websites got 'G' or 'PG' ratings along with anti-trans Exodus affiliate Reality Resources.

Hmm. Gotta promote that right-wing 'family value' of hatred, eh?

So my inquiring mind wants to know. What rating would other transgender-oriented blogs/websites get according to this 'tool'?

Transadvocate NC-17
Woman In Progress PG
Trans Media Watch PG
Trans Political NC-17
The View From (Ab)Normal Heights NC-17
TransNation NC-17
Stilettos and Sneakers NC-17
The Transsexual Revolution G
IFGE 'R'

Letter To My African-American Transgender Elders

Dear African-American Transelders,

I hope and pray your golden years find you in excellent health, a secure life situation, and satisfied with the way your lives turned out.

But there's a question I've been dying to ask those of you who walked before me.

Why didn't y'all work harder to build an African-American transgender community for mine and the generations to come?

Yeah, I realize that y'all had a lot of thangs on your plate back in the day. Fighting Jim Crow segregation, getting our voting rights, the Civil Rights Movement, dealing with HIV/AIDS and trying to make a living making 70 cents for every dollar a white person earns. That does have a much higher priority than what I'm talking about.

Don't get me wrong, I'm eternally grateful for your contributions and sacrifices that helped make my life as a late 20th-early 21st century African-American better. I'm well aware that in addition to the other challenges you African-American transgender elders faced, I am cognizant of the fact that our community is somewhat conservative on gender issues and pursuing that may have opened you up to violent attacks and even death. I'm also aware of the fact that the HBIGDA/WPATH orthodoxy at the time you transitioned was to fade away and never let anyone know you're transgender.

But damn, I feel cheated.

By going stealth, I feel that my history as an African-American transperson has been hidden from me. I know HIV/AIDS took some of you away from us, but why didn't y'all do a better job of passing that history down to my generation? Where were y'all when I needed multiple transgender role models that share my cultural background to look up to back in the 70's? Why weren't more of you visionary enough like Justina Williams for example to build organizations on a local and eventually national scale that passed that knowledge down and build a networked national community at the same time? I know y'all had the skills to do so. You proved it time and time again during the Civil Rights era.

Why did some of y'all hate us younger transpeeps so much that when we humbly asked you for the information as to the how to's of Transition 101 and longed to be mentored by you the response was stony silence, derisive laughter or derogatory self-esteem deflating comments?

My generation and others are paying for that lack of vision right now. Because you didn't think long term and pursue this in a more politically favorable environment we are now faced with the task of trying to build community and unite separate factions of dispirited peeps in a hostile conservative political environment. Our churches have been infected by a doctrine of hatred for GLBT peeps. It comes from the same white fundamentalist preachers that opposed y'all in your youth and distracts our churches from fulfilling their historic mission of seeking justice for ALL African-Americans.

But you know what? I and my generation can't wallow in what SHOULD have been done decades ago. We are faced with the daunting task of doing it now.

The transkids who are being born right now or who are are transitioning in elementary and middle school will need those resources to lean on. Shouldn't our kids have access to the same or equal resources similar to what our transbrothers and transsisters of European heritage have today that were painstakingly built up over the last twenty years? Shouldn't those resources also be geared toward their culture?

I'm not writing this letter to cast blame or start an inter generational war. That's not my intent. I'm approaching you in the spirit of Kingian love and respect for you as my elders. I wanted to convey to you the sense of loss and pain I and many African-American transpeople of my generation feel because we grew up feeling isolated and alone.

I am in the position now of being looked at as a leader and mentor to twenty something transkids. I don't want another African-American transkid on my watch to ever feel that kind of pain again and want to leave behind a world better than what I encountered. I and the current African-American transgender leadership need your help to achieve that modest goal. I would like to gain insight on what happened from your vantage point. We want and need to get your side of the story. We want to embrace the history you have to share with us so that we can pass it on. We've lost too much of our precious history already and our young people need to know about what you accomplished so that they can aspire to do something extraordinary with their lives.

Finally, we wish to lean on your hard won knowledge, be mentored by you in the time that God has granted you to remain with us on Planet Earth, learn from the mistakes as you see them through your generational prism and diligently work to ensure that we don't repeat them.

Respectfully yours,
Monica Roberts
The TransGriot

July 2007 TransGriot Column

Why “Gender Identity’ Is Necessary In ENDA
Copyright 2007, THE LETTER

Any day now Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) will be introducing his version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. We can only pray, wait and see if it mirrors the language of the recently passed HR 1592, the Hate Crimes Bill that is now as of my deadline sitting in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

But one thing I repeatedly heard in several offices I visited during the recent National Transgender Advocacy Coalition (NTAC) Lobby Days May 15-17 disturbed me. Several staffers informed me that Senator Kennedy’s bill DOESN’T mirror HR 1592 by including the words ‘gender identity’ and the definition for it as set forth in Section 3.6 of the House bill. I hope by the time that this column is read that that it tuned out to be just a rumor and the bill does mirror the one that passed the House May 3.

But what if that information IS true?

There are some gay and lesbian people that would be ecstatic if that happened. Some of them have expressed the attitude that the term doesn’t belong in ‘their’ ENDA bill. That’s a fundamentally short sighted, selfish and myopic viewpoint.

It’s not the revulsion in Christobigot brains about who your bedroom partners are that causes the virulent reaction to GLBT peeps (although it is a factor in some of the discrimination experienced by gay and lesbian people), it’s the transgressing of the binary gender system.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen or read about the negative reactions of straight peeps to lesbians who exhibit behavior that’s considered ‘masculine’ or the gay male that exhibits ‘feminine’ characteristics. We transgender people know all too well that transgressing gender binaries sometimes results in death or severe injury.

A few years ago there was an incident in downtown Louisville in which a six-foot tall broad-shouldered straight woman with short hair was verbally abused and nearly attacked by a group of bigoted men who assumed she was a lesbian or a transwoman. The irony is that the woman was a student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which has long pushed intolerance of GLBT people as part of its ministry.

In the Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins Supreme Court case, despite glowing reviews of her major role in securing a $25 million dollar government contract, Ann Hopkins was denied a partnership in the firm in 1982 because she was considered ‘too macho.’

She was even advised at one point in order to improve her chances to make partner she should ‘walk more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely, wear make-up, have her hair styled, and wear jewelry.’ She sued in 1984 and in a landmark care proved gender-based stereotypes played a substantial, motivating role in her employer's refusal to admit her to the partnership. When the Supreme Court ruled in her favor on May 1,1989 Ms. Hopkins was admitted to the denied partnership. She retired from Price Waterhouse in 2002.

Those are just two examples that point out why an ENDA that doesn’t include ‘gender or perceived gender’ language is a flawed bill. It would only cover 10% of gay and lesbian people. One of the lessons we African-Americans have learned from our centuries long struggle with the Forces of Intolerance is that when you draft civil rights legislation you design it as broadly as possible to cover the most people. You also don’t leave the bigot caucus any loopholes or wiggle room to come up with more creative ways to discriminate against you.

An ENDA that includes gender identity would not only cover all segments of the GLBT community, but also include straight people who don’t quite conform to the rigid gender binaries like the Ann Hopkinses of the world.

And that's a win for every American, be they gay, straight or transgender.