From Seattle to Toronto, from Vancouver to New York, many cities across North America have annual Trans Pride Marches. I remember my first time I attended a Trans March. In 2005, two years after I came out, I went to San Francisco’s second annual Trans Pride March. Hundreds of trans and intersex people, along with…
What an agenda I had in the past week or so. June 16 I celebrated the 26th anniversary of my last birthday (my last birthday being my 29th), and enjoyed a diet-busting piece of chocolate cake from North Park’s Heavenly Desserts. Friday June 20, I went to Lake Cuyamaca to fish for trout and crappie….
In 2013, The Department of Defense (DoD) designated June as an annual celebration of LGBT Pride. “The Department of Defense and the Office of Diversity Management have added LGBT Pride Month as an annual observance to be celebrated by military and civilian members of the Armed Forces,” wrote the DoD in an article promulgated by…
In 2007 I became a blogger at Pam’s House Blend, and went on to become what Melissa Harris Perry called “the first national transgender blogger.” In 2008 I became one of the first two transgender reporters who were credentialed to cover the Democratic National Convention. In 2009 I became the first transgender reporter to cover…
In the past week, respected drag performer Lady Bunny weighed in on a topic that seems to still be ongoing in social media. It’s terminology still; it’s over their perception that trans women are trying to ban use of terms such as “tranny” and “shemale.” “Tranny is an abbreviation for transvestite and transsexual, so I’m…
I took a few things I consider positive away from my Pentecostal upbringing, and one of those things was a non-religious concept of how to apologize. In the Foursquare church I was raised in the concept was called “repentance,” but I separate repentance as a tool to apologize from the term’s religious connotations. I think…
When trans people are imagined in the minds of many folk who’ve never actually met a trans person, we often are imagined as one or two-dimensional male creatures dressed as females that are interested in sex and trans related surgeries. Thoughts of trans people having parents, children, jobs and hobbies seem lost to caricature. Well,…
What a weekend it was for the LGBT community this past Mother’s Day weekend. Michael Sam became the first openly gay football player drafted by an NFL team, drag performer Conchita Wurst won the annual Eurovision Song contest and the Arkansas State Supreme Court ruled for marriage equality. But in a development that truly made…
With marriage equality at some point becoming the law of the land, and although conservative Christians and other social conservatives are aware that this is the case, they still rail against it even though the vigor is lost. Time to change what social conservatives focus on in their culture wars. And, it’s trans people that…
Monday, the Department of Defense (DoD) released a new DoD Human Goals Charter, signed by Secretary of Defense Hagel. The last iteration of that document was released in 1998, and included mention of equal equality based on sexual orientation for civilian employees, but not for military servicemembers. The new iteration includes a language based on…
