Subscribe to Breaking NewsVanasco: BET.com’s list of the LGBT ‘Who’s Who’ forgets the ‘T’
, editor in chief, 365gay.com 07.09.2009 3:54pm EDT
Entertainment & Sports
The Bilerico Project points out that BET.com’s otherwise laudable annual list of Who’s Who in the black LGBT community includes no transgender people (it’s not clear to me whether there are any bisexuals).
Who is included?
Thirty-three gay men and lesbians, including Wanda Sykes, John Amaechi, E. Lynn Harris, Angela Davis and Anthony Woods, a West Point grad with a Harvard Master’s degree who was kicked out of the military under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and who is now running in a special election in California’s 10th Congressional District. If elected, he would become the first Black openly gay representative in Congress.
They forgot the “T?” Name 6
Pat, you want six famous trans people? Easy- just Google “transsexual successes” (you can even choose “I’m Feeling Lucky” on Google’s page).
Jennifer- thank you very much for putting this up! We might be the smallest part of LGBT, but we contribute just as much to society as anyone else.
I agree with Pat. Don’t complain if you can’t name any yourself. This looks like a bad attempt to cast something good in a negative light. I guess that shows how you feel about BET Jennifer Vanasco.
Are there any famous black transgendered people? I can’t think of any. This list is for BET after all. I doubt there was any intentional slight here.
Julie, this is the perfect forum for you to list any black transexuals who could be considered for a Black Entertainment award. Use this opportunity to educate us. I learn more from the comments made on this site than I ever do from the articles themselves.
I agree with Sessy and Chris; doubt there was any intentional slight here. Of course transexuals contribute to society as much as anyone else; that was never disputed here.
Christina in AZ
To be honest, I can’t think of all that many majorly famous transgender activists, regardless of race. :\
I think this is a pretty negative spin, to come off a pretty positive story. I’m not sure their criteria, but do we really need Transgender affirmative action in made up award ceremonies?
PS – Ironically my spell check is telling me Transgender is not a word. Perhaps we do need that affirmative action.
How about RuPaul?
And why are Queen Latifa and Tyler Perry missing from this gay and black celebrities list?
I don’t think it was an intentional slight. And I don’t want to attack BET, which has done a pretty great job of trying to explain gay and lesbian culture. I appreciate their efforts, which is why I said “otherwise laudable.”
BUT I also think that it is not enough to pay lip service to bisexual and transgender people by just adding “B” and “T” to an acronym. If you’re going to say it’s an LGBT list, then you should include all four groups – I know that if a list said “gay and lesbian leaders” but included only men, I’d be pretty upset.
That said, I would also welcome the names of African-American bisexual and transgender entertainers, activists, athletes, writers. I’m sure they’re out there. Just because we don’t know their names doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It just means we haven’t been paying attention.
With all due respect, if WE can’t think of any black Transgendered people – I think we should be a little less quick to rush to judgment on people who are at least making an effort to recognize our community in some manner. Perhaps a list of people to be sent to them would be more productive than a column criticizing them.
Peter, RuPaul is a drag performer and not transgender. I don’t believe Queen Latifa is out, and know nothing about Tyler Perry. But the “what about this person” game would take a long time. I was expecting but didn’t see Northwestern University professor of performance studies E. Patrick Johnson. Needless to say, there are many more people that could have been included.
With all due respect (and it seems my first post didn’t stick), if WE can’t think of any black transgender people, maybe we could expend some energy and GOOGLE it rather than be satisfied with limited knowledge! There is, for example, blogger and activist Monica Roberts…Google…2 minutes! BET also can Google!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_Chablis
Isis, America’s Next Top Model contestant.
I think there are good points here…but is this really the most important thing to worry about? Besides BET does nothing to assist our gay community – in fact, they are sort of homophobic.