The Body's The Easy Part

I remember how I felt when I first started taking hormones. There was a peaceful, calming feeling that started to wash over me when my body began its long delayed feminine development phase.

I started checking myself out on a full length mirror and practically got giddy with excitement as I saw curves starting to form on my hips. I remember how tender my nipples were when they started expanding and the breasts started budding and filling out. I was happy when my skin started smoothing out, clearing up and the body hair growth started slowing down. I remember when my hair finally got long enough to where I actually could do my first perm on it.

The initial body morphing, however was the easy part of the transition. Being a woman is more than just having the body. Femininity is more spiritual and mental. It's also an ongoing process. I'm thirteen years down the road and I'm still learning and evolving in terms of being on this journey called womanhood.

One of the mistakes I see some transwomen make is trying to rush the process. It took your mothers, aunts and sisters a decade just to go through the process of having their bodies morph into their adult feminine forms. While they are adjusting to that, they are being socialized into the feminine gender role by all the female members of their families and with the encouragement of society at large.

We transwomen go down a different path. We make that journey in many cases under trying circumstances. We don't have a decade to get comfortable with our bodies, we have to do it on the fly. Our families resist us in terms of trying to force us into a gender role that's incongruent for us. Society fights us tooth and nail since its tendency is to fear what it doesn't understand.

And yet through all of that, to paraphrase Maya Angelou, and still we rise.

Somehow, despite all of that, we manage to get through the trial by fire and become the women that we were born to be. Sometimes I get a little upset about the drama I've gone through (and STILL go through), the insults, the snide remarks and daily slights just to be me. I feel cheated sometimes when I pass by a little girl, a woman with kids in tow or a sistah I'm casting an admiring look at because she's working an outfit. I wonder how different my childhood would have been if I'd been born in the correct body from Day One.

When I talk to my sistah friends, I get brought back to reality. I've been told by them numerous times that I'm the blessed one. One of my sistah friends told me that she'd rather be me because she wouldn't be dealing with cramps and Aunt Flo once a month.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the street, I guess ;)

So Far So Good

I flipped the TV on ESPN last night to watch the FIBA Americas Championship Tournament. I wanted to see how well the number one ranked Team USA was doing in its ongoing mission to return the Olympic gold medal in basketball back to the birthplace of the sport.

The FIBA Americas Tournament started in Las Vegas on August 22 with the top ten teams in the FIBA Americas Zone competing for spots in the Olympics. In addition to Team USA, the defending 2004 Athens Olympic champion Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Venezuela and the US Virgin Islands are also there. The tournament will run through September 2.

The winner and runner-up qualify for the Beijing Games next summer. Third through fifth place get a last chance shot to qualify for Beijing in a July 2008 World Olympic Qualifying Tournament FIBA tournament that will be conducted before the opening of the Games August 8.

Well, so far so good for Team USA. They went 4-0 in Group B play by beating down the Brazilians 113-76. That Brazilian team has Leandro Barbosa of the Phoenix Suns, (this tournament's leading scorer averaging 27 points per game) Carmelo Anthony's Denver Nuggets teammate Nene Hilario, and Marcus De Souza of the New Orleans Hornets on it. Kobe Bryant put the defensive clamps on Barbosa and held him to 4 points on 1 for 7 shooting.

They have cruised so far in this tournament. They beat Uruguay 112-69, the US Virgin Islands 123-59 and Canada 113-63. Coach K has Team USA playing suffocating defense, hitting threes, cleaning the glass and playing solid fundamental basketball.

The hitting threes part is especially critical in FIBA play since the three point line is two feet shorter than the 23 foot NBA line. The lack of consistent three point shooting is why we've gotten our butts whipped in international play on the men's side since 2000. It's a major reason why three point gunners extraordinaire Michael Redd and Mike Miller are on the squad.

They start off the quarterfinal round by playing the Nolan Richardson coached Mexican team tomorrow.

Black First-Transgender Second

There's a lot of things over the last thirteen years that have changed about me.

I went from long hair just past my shoulders to the short style I currently wear. I have a wig collection that rivals Kim Fields' Living Single character Regine Hunter. I've gone from wearing predominately red toned lipsticks to neutral colors and plums. I'm more outgoing and happy as a person. My body now matches my gender identity.

But the one common thread through all those various changes is a fundamental one:

I'm still Black.

When you're a transgender person of color it's the one time when being an ethnic minority is an advantage. I say that because people tend to focus on your skin color first before all the other issues that make you the unique individual that you are come into play.

I make no bones about the fact that I am a proud African-American and I'm not going to apologize for that. Neither am I going to allow some sadly misguided elements of the African-American community to stupidly assert that because I'm transgender I'm not a 'real' African-American. The only thing that changed was my body configuration. That doesn't disqualify me or any other African-American transpeeps from our rightful place at the African-American family table.

I've had to call out some of the ignorant peeps here for sarcastically referring to me as 'Monica Black' because my monthly newspaper column in THE LETTER deals with GLBT issues from an African-American perspective like my blog does.

I love ESSENCE, EBONY and Jet magazines and read them faithfully. I love everything about my people's history, our culture and never tire of learning more about it. I love the flavor we live our lives with. I love the sprituality threads that run through our culture.

It's just that for me to truly be the best person I could be and do my part to uplift the race I had to deal with the gender issues once and for all. I submit that the only thing tougher than being a Black woman or a Black man in American society is being emotionally a Black woman or a Black man in a mismatched body.

I'm evolving into my role as an African-American woman with a transgender history. I'm ecstatically happy and proud of that. I thank God for finally infusing me with the courage and faith to step out and make those necessary adjustments in my life.

I've been blessed with the writing skills and the talent to translate my life experiences into flowing prose. I'm working toward publishing some of the novels I've been working on. I want to continue to evolve into a positive role model for the transkids that are sorting out this issue and let them know that your dreams don't have to die because you transition.

But just because I transitioned doesn't mean I escaped the BS that Black people face in this country. I still grew up in the 'hood. All I did was swap one set of gender related issues for another one. I still get followed in upscale department stores. My intelligence is still discounted. I still get called the n-word by the ignorant folks in addition to having the b-word included in the epithets they spew at me. Being transgender adds another layer of drama to the mix as well.

The one thing that would make my life and other African-American transpeople's lives infinitely better is to be unconditionally loved and accepted by our own people. We get enough Hateraid from 'errbody' else and we don't need added drama from our own peeps as well. We've got a lot of work to do just to get to the point in which unconditional love and acceptance automatically happens, but it's something that I pray will happen in my lifetime.

As we work together as a communty to make that a reality, please bear in mind that I STILL am and always will be Black first, transgender second and proud to be both.