Shaun Dawson (00:02.798)
Hey y'all, you're tuned into Assigned Sex Unarchived. I'm your non-binary cousin, Shawn Dawson, and this is a safe space where we're honest about what it means to show up as Black, trans, and genderqueer. Today, I want to talk about transphobia in Black communities. The jokes, the fake “concerns” and the silences that turn into harm for trans and gender‑nonconforming people. I’m going to call some things out and be honest about how it feels to try to love your people while they refuse to see you. Let’s get into it.

Diamond Stylz (00:34.932)
All oppression is connected. Stonewall was about rebelling against police brutality. We all have that in common. We have this arm of white supremacy that is up against us.

Shaun Dawson (00:46.562)
The moment of transphobia that radicalized me was hearing about the murder of Islan Nettles. She was in Harlem minding her business and a man started flirting with her. His boys realized she was trans, started clowning him, and I guess that embarrassment turned into rage.

speaker-1 (01:01.358)
This episode contains subject material that may be disturbing or upsetting including hate speech, transphobia, strong abusive language, and depictions of violence against trans people. Listener discretion is advised.

Reporter-1 (01:20.238)
Investigators say the 21-year-old fashion design student was walking with two other transgender women near 147th and 8th Avenue in Harlem in August of 2013 when they were approached by a group of seven men. They say Dixon got into an argument with Nettles, punched her with a closed fist, knocking her unconscious. They then say he continued to punch her as she lay unconscious, bashing her head into the concrete.

Shaun Dawson(01:45.688)
That was my first clear example of how Black trans women are punished for existing and how fragile masculinity is. And that was definitely the moment where I knew I didn't just want to talk about these issues. I wanted to put real faces, real stories, real lives in front of people so they just couldn't look away.

Diamond Stylz (02:05.514)
I think that every community has a level of transphobia in it. When it comes to Black men, it's so many levels to why men uphold patriarchy. And for me, I think we are just a casualty of that. They're scared, they're fearful, they're so policed in so many different ways that when they lash out, when they haven't worked through the trauma, when they haven't worked through their exploration, when they don't have anybody to talk about this without being judged, usually we are the ones who have to be the therapist, has to be the experimentation, have to be the person there who gets the negative. Sometimes when it's somebody who is traumatized and trying to deal with this stuff and explore these things, we're using the casualty.

Shaun Dawson (02:52.194)
When I first started the doc, I didn't call myself trans. I knew I wasn't fully cisgender. I've always felt more non-binary, but in that confusing way where you're like something's off and then you swallow it because it's just too much. I think i swallowed it because didn’t see myself in the usual “trans story” people talk about, so I just labeled myself as cis‑adjacent ally with this weird relationship to gender I couldn’t name yet.

speaker-2 (03:25.545)
When I meet transgender folks, the definition that I go by is that it's an umbrella term. And within the umbrella, there are binaries, right? There's a male, there's a female. And then actually within the umbrella, there are no binaries. There are people who don't think they're male or female, and they don't fit in any of the binaries. Hundreds of years ago when the Native Americans existed, they actually believed in like two spirit or I'm one spirit, and they didn't define gender in male or female. And so I like to think as transgenderism as within this umbrella where your spirit defines who you are.

Shaun Dawson (03:56.91)
As I worked on the doc and listened to Black trans and gender‑nonconforming people talk about dysphoria, safety, being misgendered, all of that kind of started to sound familiar to me. The more time I spent with their stories, the harder it was to pretend I was just an outsider documenting someone else’s life. It stopped feeling like “their” experience and started feel more like “our” experience, including mine.

So when I say I wasn’t trans‑identifying at the time, what I really mean is that I hadn’t given myself permission to claim that yet. I didn’t really know how to fit “nonbinary” under “trans” in a way that felt real to me. The doc didn’t turn me trans, it just made it harder for me to lie to myself. Islan’s story, and the fact that Black trans women keep getting killed, made it impossible for me to keep ignoring my own gender while other people are literally dying over theirs.

Lil Duval (05:04.802)
That ain't a girl, I met a boy. That means I met a boy. We not having sex. We not having sex. This might sound messed up and I don't care, she dying. I can't deal with that.

Candace Owens (05:24.056)
This insistence that we allow children to think that they can pick and choose their genders. That's definitely a psychosis. Like this was not a thing, people were not struggling in kindergarten, we were not arguing about bathrooms. This is all just made up. You're asking me to be crazy. You're asking me to look at a grown man and imagine that he's actually a woman and that if he goes and gets work done that he magically becomes a woman. So it's insanity. Otherwise you'd have to defend Rachel Dolezal.

Boosie Badazz (05:50.382)
Get your mutant ass out! I'm not going to speak on it because they're going to judge me, but Trump, thank you, bro. Thank you for getting men...juwanna manns. We sick of y'all fucking juwanna manns. Thank you for getting juwanna manns out of women's sports.

Jess Hilarious (06:14.158)
Only women can have babies. I just want to you know that.

Dave Chappelle (06:18.166)
They have to admit that's fucking hilarious predicament. It's really fucking funny. If it happened to me you'd laugh, wouldn't you? That wouldn't be funny if it happened to me? I think it would be. What if it did? What if I was Chinese, but born in this nigga body? That's not funny?

Shaun Dawson (06:39.502)
I really feel like transphobia in the Black community is tied to this idea of protecting blackness while pushing Black trans and gender nonconforming people out of it. All Black people, we grow up hearing that the world already hates Black men and that it disrespects Black women. So there's this pressure to prove that you're a real man or a real woman. And I feel like that turns into this strict no softness, no queerness, you can't be different rule where people use gender roles like a shield and then they turn around and use that same shield to justify transphobia.

Lil Scrappy (07:20.514)
You gonna be ruined. can't no Black man stand up and say, you know, my whole life, I felt like a woman, you know what saying? But I was just holding it down for my little, my little, my, my kids and my bitch. You know what I'm saying? We say that shit, we gonna get assassinated, bro. Like, you know what saying? By us.

Shaun Dawson (07:39.51)
I think a lot about the little gender and those everyday expectations that society puts on us all the time, especially in Black spaces because so many of them are just dressed up transphobia. For me, it's less of the, like, men don't cry and women don't do that and more stuff like...a black man is supposed to provide, supposed to always be the protector, the rock of the family, the one with the money and the muscles and no fear.

And if you're a Black man who's soft, broke, disabled, femme, or trans, people act like you're embarrassing the whole race. On the flip side of that, Black women get hit with the strong, independent, Black woman thing. Like, you're supposed to take pain, raise everybody's kids, never need help, never be vulnerable, and definitely never be gender nonconforming. So if you're a black woman or a black trans femme who's

Sensitive, needy, asking for a little bit of care, people treat you like you're doing womanhood wrong because they've already decided that Black women are built like brick walls. To me, that's toxic masculinity and bioessentialism working together. Toxic masculinity says Black men can only be hard and aggressive and Black women can only be endlessly strong support systems. So anything outside of that is going to get punished.
Bioessentialism shows up when people point to your body and say stupid shit like, you got a dick so act like a man or you got to have a vagine so act like a woman. Like your whole body is locked in by whatever's between your legs. Then they hide behind biology and tradition. But what they're really saying is that they don't see you and they definitely don't respect you.

Dave Chappelle (09:36.404)
I am not saying that to say trans women aren't women. I am just saying that those pussies that they got....you know what I mean? I'm not saying it's not pussy but it's like beyond pussy or impossible pussy.

Shaun Dawson (09:59.68)
And the real woman trope is violent on so many levels. When people say real woman, what they really mean is cisgender with the right kind of body and you're able to have kids. Anybody that falls outside of that is considered fake. And the wild part is, black women have never really been let into that box because those beauty standards on real women rules were built for white women. So you get this constant mind game where Black women are called out as being too loud, too strong, too masculine to be a real woman while black trans women are told they can't even be a woman.

speaker-3 (10:36.824)
Her shoulders are wide, her face is very, very masculine. She looks like a tranny. And so you ask yourself, are the children a beard for Obama? And of course, Michelle Obama or Michael Obama.

Ciara Wilson (10:50.926)
There's one thing about me being a man or something like that before I was something when I was born I got a change. Hermaphrodite or something like that. And they said that I went on Oprah and did it. And I'm like ok..c'mon now

reporter-2 (11:01.966)
Follow me for a minute. Serena is Woman of the Year for GQ. Now, here's the language. You can see, Men of the Year is crossed out. Woman, scribbled in, but there's quotation marks. And that's where people are getting mad.

Shaun Dawson (11:15.682)
Being trans in the Black community can make you feel like, like you're always half in, but also half out. Because people will scream "Black Lives Matter," they'll post all about Black liberation and then in the same breath, they'll laugh at you, misgender you, they'll say you're confusing the kids and making black people look terrible. For me, and I think for a lot of the Black trans folks I know, it can feel like you have to pick either be real about your gender or be fully embraced as one of the Blacks. Like you're not allowed to be both at the same time. And I feel like that kind of rejection does more than just hurt your feelings. It shows up in all areas of your life. You could be isolated. You could be staying on people's couches, staying in unsafe relationships. And you're going through all of that while loving, defending, and claiming a community that doesn't even show that same love back to you.

Shaun Dawson (12:26.06)
Okay, so it's time for a little Black trans and genderqueer history. Today, we're centering the story of Monica Roberts.

Monica Roberts (12:33.176)
We trans people exist. are part of the diverse mosaic of human life and we will not be dehumanized or disrespected by friend, foe, frenemy, or my governor.

Shaun Dawson (12:45.484)
Monica was born in 1962 in Houston, Texas, back when the city was still very segregated. Her family, her whole community really put a lot of weight on respectability. You went to church, you minded your business, you kept things quiet. She was the kind of kid who loved watching the news, following politics, catching every game on TV. And she paid attention. She really paid attention to how Black people were talked about in the media. People who knew her back then say she was sharp, observant, and she didn't miss a thing.

By the early 90s, Monica was working as a gate agent for the airlines in Houston.

Monica Roberts (13:21.742)
When I started the journey in 1994, I was working as a gate agent and supervisor at Houston Intercontinental Airport. I had basically come to the conclusion that in order to be the best person that I could be, it would be necessary for me to transition.

Shaun Dawson (13:47.182)
So imagine that, navigating airports, uniforms, TSA lines, co-workers, annoying ass customers, all while figuring out her own name, pronouns, and presentation.

Monica Roberts (13:59.028)
I had a subscription to a magazine that was published right out of Walton, Massachusetts and the organization that was based there called the International Foundation for Gender Education. That organization published a magazine called Transgender Tapestry. And it was basically to educate and inform on the trans issues of the day. And also in the pre-internet days, it was a way for trans folks to kind of get to know each other because they had a personal section in the back where you could kind of send letters to different people and get to know other trans people from around the country and even the world. So they were about to do a series of
100 out and proud trans people. And so at that time, since it was a quarterly publication, you're looking at they were doing 25 trans folks at the time. The question I asked myself at that time was, okay, where are the people who look like me? I know not all trans folks are predominantly are predominantly white and female. So I get my answer when the next issue hits my mailbox and they actually had two people of color on that group of 25, RuPaul and Dennis Rodman. I was so pissed off after reading that one and from that point on I have been involved in activism ever since.

Shaun Dawson (15:54.752)
As she got deeper into activism, her life stretched way beyond Houston. She became the founding member of the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition and served as its lobby chair from 1999 to 2002, which meant she was literally walking into political spaces where almost nobody looked like her.

Monica Roberts (16:13.454)
one of the people that most of the other side was demonizing earlier this afternoon. I'm part of the transgender community. I'm also a proud African American. But what I heard over the last couple of hours from ministers in my community really sickened me. That they didn't believe that it is possible to be part of the transgender community and also be a proud African American. Hello, I'm here.

Shaun Dawson (16:44.91)
She moved through places like Virginia and Kentucky, organizing and serving on boards like the Fairness Campaign, learning how racism, transphobia, and conservative religion played out differently in Black communities in the South and in the Midwest. All of that was teaching her the same lesson. When Black institutions refuse to say trans, Black trans women paid with their lives. In 2004, Monica started a column in a Louisville LGBT newspaper called The Letter entitled TransGriot.

Monica Roberts (17:13.965)
When blogging began to go mainstream in 2004, I was writing a column for a local monthly LGBTQ newspaper in Louisville, Kentucky. Trans-oriented blogs addressing the issues germane to the trans community existed, but the common thread was that none of those early trans blogs were discussing issues of importance to trans people of color. Neither were those blogs discussing trans issues and the news of the day from our perspective.

Shaun Dawson (17:49.994)
When an advertiser complained about her writing and she lost the column, she didn't stop. She just took the name with her, moved online, and launched the TransGriot blog in 2006 so nobody else could control how or when she told her community stories.

Monica Roberts (18:03.854)
At midnight Eastern Standard Time on January 1st, 2006, the first post went up at TransGriot. It's now been a decade, 6.4 million viewers in counting, and nearly 10,000 posts later. And TransGriot is still telling it like it. T-I-Is is on behalf of my community from an unapologetically Black perspective and documenting its history.

Shaun Dawson (18:41.71)
TransGriot started as what looked like a simple blog site. It was three columns, a basic font, some small photos, but underneath that layout was something almost no one else was doing at the time. For 14 years, Monica used that space to chronicle both the everyday joys and the brutal losses of trans people, especially black trans women across the United States. She would track down local news reports, look past the headlines calling people men in dresses or bearded women and pieced together the truth. The victims' real name, their gender, their community, and the fact that they were loved.

Monica Roberts (19:17.068)
We have now lost our 12th person in 2018 to anti-trans violence. She is 38-year-old Antash'a Devine Sherrington English. She was originally from Albany, Georgia, but resided in Jacksonville, Florida. English was found by police at 3.45 a.m. Eastern time, suffering from a gunshot wound lying between two houses during the early morning hours of June 1st at 1500 Ella Street. She was rushed to a nearby hospital, but died from the wound to her abdomen.

English transitioned over 20 years ago and was a well-loved multiple title holder in the trans pageant world. She was also a featured entertainer at the Jacksonville club called InCahoots for nearly a decade. She is, in addition to being the 12th we've lost to anti-trans violence, the sixth African American trans person we've lost in 2018, and the second in the city of Jacksonville.

Shaun Dawson (20:11.682)
Her work wasn't just about being accurate. It was about fighting transphobia inside Black communities and in Black media. Monica joined groups like the National Association of Black Journalists and the LGBTQ Journalists Association and used those spaces to challenge the way her colleagues talked about trans people. There's a story folks love to tell about a 2018 LGBTQ journalist convention where a MC opened up with, "ladies and gentlemen, things and it's." And Monica immediately jumped in and said, "there's no thing and it's in this room." That was her energy. Monica was a real one in a trans auntie because she went after everybody. Police departments, major newspapers, even national LGBTQ organizations when they misgendered someone or reduced a trans woman's death to a punchline. She reminded people that the violence her community faced wasn't just anti-trans. It was also anti-black and often anti-sex worker. A lot of people first understood how bad things were. How many black trans women were killed because of TransGriot.

Monica Roberts (21:14.566)
Black trans women are Black women and our issues are Black community issues. We have to deal with the same anti-blackness and attacks on our femininity as our cis sisters do. It also points out that we have more things that unite us as Black women than divide us. So once again to recap, when you say trust Black women, that means trusting Black trans women as well.

Shaun Dawson (21:41.454)
She wasn't only writing about death. Monica wrote about politics, sports, her NFL picks, pop culture, and the everyday wins of Black trans people because she refused to let her community be framed only as victims. Friends say she wanted people to see that a Black trans woman could be a serious journalist and a football nerd, that she could talk about policy and then clown about a bad call in the same feed.

Monica Roberts (22:03.726)
Maria Sharapova thinks there's a rivalry between her and Serena Williams that started after Sharapova upset her in the 2004 Wimbledon final and repeated the trick in the 2004 WTA Championship. Sharapova's book Unstoppable also added fuel to the drama between the two women. Sharapova has also been positioned versus Serena's greatness as the Great White Hope. More like the Great White Nope.

Since 2004, Serena has beaten Sharapova like she stole something over last 14 years. She's 19 and 2 against Sharadopa, has won 18 straight matches against her, and the last 7 matches they've played against each other, Sharadopa has lost to Williams in straight sets. I repeat, what rivalry?

Shaun Dawson (22:54.476)
That combination is part of what made her feel familiar for so many people. They saw a version of themselves who loved Black folks and still had the range to drag us when we being transphobic. Over time, mainstream outlets started to catch up. Reporters and activists now credit Monica with changing the way media covers stories, especially murders, by showing what it looks like to lead with a victim's real name and gender and to tell more than just the way their body was found. Her impact didn't go unnoticed. GLAAD recognized her and so did the International Foundation for Gender Education. She also broke ground as the first openly trans Black Texan to win the Trinity Award. She was celebrated by the National Black Justice Coalition for it.

On October 5th, 2020, Monica Roberts died at home in Houston at the age of 58. When news of her death hit, social feeds filled up with people saying things like,

speaker-4 (23:46.23)
We lost our lion. We lost our pioneer. We lost our powerhouse. We lost our heartbeat.

speaker-5 (23:51.528)
She spent so much of her life here and just implementing change in any way that she could to make sure Houston was a safe and inclusive space.

Shaun Dawson (24:01.966)
So when we talk about Monica Roberts now, we're talking about a Black trans woman from Houston who looked at the way Black trans women were misnamed, misgendered, and disrespected, including by her own communities, and decided she was going to do something about it. She fought police reports, headline writers, church respectability, and newsroom habits so that when a Black trans woman lived or died, she could at least be called by her right name. In a conversation about transphobia in Black communities, Monica's life is a reminder that sometimes the best love is the kind that refuses to let people be erased, even when your own people are the ones doing the erasing.

Monica Roberts (24:39.118)
One of the things that I was planning on doing was just simply living my life being the fabulous Black trans woman that you see right now. Just living my life and counting the days to my retirement from the airline industry. But fate had other plans for me.

Shaun Dawson (25:08.33)
My experience with family and my gender identity has been mostly supportive, unlike some of the folks in the Assign Sex doc. The thing with my family is they can always stick beside me. I decided a while ago that I was just going to be my full 100 % self around them and not sit everybody down for some big announcement. I don't really feel like I owe them an explanation or speech to justify who I am. My people, especially my mom,
she's gonna ride or die for me regardless so like she might not have all the language, she might not understand every label but she's always gonna show up for me so instead of coming out... I just live out... and see what happens

That said that experience looks different for everybody. There was someone in the dock whose parent didn't fully get their identity but still chose to stand beside them. And that support ended up costing that parent relationship with other relatives. I kind of feel like that's the pattern you see a lot. Partners losing family because they're with a trans person or siblings getting cut off for taking the trans sibling's side. So even when the love is there, there's this ripple effect where anybody who chooses to support a trans person can end up paying a price for it.

Yolanda Adams (26:35.276)
I don't think that God is this small entity that people are trying to make him or her or it because he is spirit. Because we are of the mind of calling things gender wise, because that's how we grew up. I'm just gonna continue to say he, if he was gonna be surprised by you, he wouldn't have created you. Because it's like... how you think God is surprised just because you're surprised? And if he made all things and if he created all things. God is a God of variety. God is a God of diversity. We wouldn't have a million genuses of flowers if he were not. I just believe that God entrusts us with his power to make the world a better place.

Shaun Dawson (27:21.71)
Religion didn't shape my gender identity as much as it shaped where I feel safe showing up in my gender. Organized religion has always felt like a cult to me, every since I can remember. I grew up with my grandma. She picked me up on Sunday mornings and she put me in her punch buggy and we do a church tour. We would go from church to church. And I would sit in the front row of every church and watch her sing and I would hear people whispering behind me and they were talking about how she sounded like Shirley Caesar. And that's the part that I liked. I loved that part. But now when I think about it, I think I liked the storytelling aspect. My grandma was a really great storyteller. What I didn't like was the message underneath the music sometimes. You know, like all the suffer now, be strong, hold on till you die, then maybe you'll make it to heaven part of it. That shit was dark. It was way too dark for me. And then there was this part where they would drag all the kids to their front to recite a Bible verse. And I hated it so much and I would just start crying on site. So they skipped me. Weaponized tears. It was very, very, very effective.

Anyway, with church, feel like a lot of queer and trans folks talk about this mix of beauty and harm where the art and the faith really, really hit. But the way churches talk about us is just too heavy and depressing.

Yolanda Adams (29:07.18)
I think that there is a mindset that needs to change revolutionarily in the world. Because the truth is we need everybody on this earth. Because everybody brings something so special to this earth and God created them. You know, the point blank. To say that somebody's worth is less than mine. That's absurd. That's absolutely absurd. And so I'm so glad I was born to the parents I was born to because we were around all kinds of people, Muslim people, Jewish people, gay, straight, lesbian, folks in the closet. But we still love them. We love everybody.

Shaun Dawson (30:03.498)
So for my gender journey, religion showed up mostly as a big red flag on the church door, I learned very young that church people can be mean as hell. They judgemental, they gossipy and they quick to call anything queer the devil or confusion. So even though I still love gospel music, I don't go looking for God in most church buildings because my experience has been that those are the places that are most likely to attack my gender. So yeah, I love gospel music, but I'm not going to go hunting for God in places where I got to fight.

Shaun Dawson (30:45.23)
The clips you heard from Monica Roberts in today's episode came from several sources. You can find her Call of Service lecture in the Courage to Act panel on the PBHAServes YouTube channel. There's also a tribute piece from KPRC2 Houston reporting on her passing and her 2016 GLAD Special Recognition Award speech. I also pulled from her YouTube show, TransGrio Weekly with Monica Roberts, and her testimony in support of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance back in 2014. All the links are included in the show notes.

If this episode dragged you a little bit or if it hugged you a little bit, please share it with someone you love. You can find me, your non-binary cousin, Shaun Dawson on all platforms @iamsdawson. Y'all be safe out there.