Gender Identity Center Journal |
Online Edition |
June/July 1998 |
Welcome to the online edition of the GIC Journal, the newsletter of the Gender Identity Center of Colorado. Here, you'll find a sample of articles and features from our print edition. For all the news, vendors, photos and more, subscribe, or better yet become a member, of the GIC.
By Jessie S.
While open meetings are usually on Mondays and Saturdays, all meetings during the Summer Speaker Series are open all who would like to hear the speaker that evening. This gives everyone an opportunity to check out what happens in the other groups.
To provide honoraria for our speakers, the door fee is $7 for members and $10 for nonmembers.
Friday, May 29, from 7:30-8:30pm, Rebecca Buretta, from Equality Colorado and leader of the Anti-Violence Project, will speak on hate crimes. It is very important that you should report any such incidents to the Anti-Violence Project to be used as statistical evidence to support hate crime legislation. They also offer counseling. As a matter of policy, you will remain anonymous.
Tuesday, June 2, Laurie Silver-Caspe, an acting and voice coach, will speak on personal deportment.
Tuesday, June 9, The Colorado Aids Project(?) lends us Tamisha Curtis, who will speak on HIV and AIDS Prevention.
Friday, June 19, Jan Jackson, Police Agent with the Lakewood Police Dept. She will explain the legal elements of act and intent that constitute a hate crime. Jan will also discuss how and when to report a hate crime, and how to be a good witness. She will suggest certain victim profiles or characteristics that should be avoided, and self-defense strategies, including personal protection devicesand the use of firearms for self-defense.
Tuesday, June 30, Lynn Kimbrough, Dir.of Public Information for Lakewood Police Department, perhaps one of our most popular guest speakers, will return to answer questions on legal issues of being transgendered. She will speak after the 8:30 p.m. break.
Tuesday, July 14, hypnotherapist Lyle Tautfest will speak on hypnosis as a way of dealing with bad habits and other, deeper philosophical issues. Sure to be an interesting evening!
If there are other speakers or subjects that you believe might be of particular interest to our members, please let me know. We would like to expand the summer speaker series to the entire year.
by Susan C.
Summertime and the livin' is easy. . . yeah, right! Well, it's finally here! Summer, yea! And with it all the craziness and fairs and parades, etc.
It all started on the 16th of May with our first participation at Thorntonfest. Sort of a mini People's Fair. People were friendly, to the tolerant side.
We did have some good conversations with some of the people running for political office. Greg Shaw is running for county coroner and he was quite open to learning about TG issues and took a lot of information away with him. Dave Borstel is running for the representative seat from the 32nd district. He is a more conservative Republican, but did have quite a long conversation with us.
We spoke with a teacher from Horizon High School who is very supportive of his students. He knows that he has a couple of gay students and wants to let everyone know that he is a safe teacher to talk to. We offered him some advice and information to put him in touch with Linda Harmon, the sponsor of the HHART (Homosexual and Heterosexual Alliance Reaching for Tolerance) group at Smoky Hill High School. It's nice to know that there are educators like him out there. We also told him to get in touch with GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian Straight Educators Network.)
We also had a very attentive policewoman who was glad to see that we were there and happy to hear that no one at the City offices gave us a hard time about wanting to be there.
Of course, we have the Capital Hill People's Fair coming up on Saturday and Sunday June 6 & 7. Once again, we will have a booth and be selling our products and offering information to anyone willing to ask questions and/or listen. This is always a good opportunity to make contacts with people and organizations who have had occasion to talk with a transgendered person, but never knew that the G. I. C. existed. As always, we will need volunteers to staff the booth. There will be a volunteer training on Wednesday, June 3 at 7 p.m. at the Center.
Coming up on Sunday, June 28 is PrideFest '98. (Can you believe it's that time again already?) Of course, we will have a booth and march in the parade, but this year we're also going to do a production number on the stage. Volunteers will be needed for all. Jamie Lynne is in charge of the production number and more details will follow.
Looks like this summer is going to be a busy one. Once all these events are over, we have to gear up big time for the Colorado Gold Rush. (Registration brochures are enclosed in the Journal. If you haven't signed up, do so now to get the early registration price.) We're all very excited about our 20th Anniversary celebration. This is going to be a wonderful event, and if it is as successful as we hope it's going to be, it will become an annual event. Don't miss the first Colorado Gold Rush! They always say, "You never forget your first one!" I know I won't.
As Always, Susan
by Zia K.
Now that I am a month post surgery, I've been trying to understand what has been really important to me in the past 2 years of transition.
While the surgery was the goal, I think the most important change was when I began to respect my transgendered self and learned that I had the right to ask others to do so as well. It is best illustrated by my experience at work. Over the last 18 months, I had gradually transitioned without any announcement by me or any problems with boss, co-workers or customers. I had changed my name, began wearing jewelry and earrings, light make-up and nail polish. I don't wear dresses; my usual work cloth= es are jeans and shirt. I am a delivery driver at a small company.
Finally, about six months ago I felt ready to make my announcement. I wrote a one-page letter talking about being transgendered and in transition. I ended by asking everyone to change pronouns, when referring to me, from male to female. If they couldn't do that, I asked that they try to use my name or job title. I first read the letter to my boss, to get his approval before distributing copies to the other dozen employees. He was enthusiastically supportive, and we talked almost two hours after closing time.
The next day, I gave each employee a copy, explained that it was my coming out letter, and asked them to read it at their convenience. Over the next few days, some people congratulated me. Three people told me very intimate details of their life's struggle, and five or six people said nothing. Generally, the atmosphere felt very supportive, and I noticed a distinct lack of pronouns, either male or female, when people spoke of me. For the first month, I felt positive that everyone carefully dodged pronouns.
It felt like good progress, but soon certain key people began letting "he" slip back into their conversation. When I pointed out that I wanted to not be "he," they would say they were too busy to think about it. "It just came out." For a few months I corrected everyone every time they said "he," but after a while almost everyone called me "he," and they didn't reply when I objected. I got tired of objecting and began to think I had no right to object. I should just be lucky I could work there and save money for surgery. Why should it be such a big deal? But I really started to feel like I was disappearing. I even started to pour on the make-up really heavy and I redoubled my efforts to feminize my voice. Nothing helped.
I was angry and frustrated when I went to a Tuesday night meeting at the Center. I brought it up for discussion to see if anyone had any suggestions. Melissa B. had an idea, she printed name tags on her computer, one which said, "She Zia Her," and several others such as "Ms. Zia," and the powerful, "Her." She even gave me a pin-on plastic bracket like conventioneers wear.
The next day, I wore "She Zia Her" to work, and I went to each person. As sweetly as possible, I pointed to my name tag and said, "This is my name, these are my pronouns, and if you have any questions please refer to this pronoun guide." Almost everyone took it in good humor, but two people seemed ruffled by making sour faces at my name tag. One said, "Well, what if people think you're a woman, but then they see the name tag and that raises questions?" I just looked back and said, "That's too complicated for my brain to think about." The truth was I realized it didn't matter what people thought as long as they didn't call me "Sir" or "He." I wore the name tag to work for three days and when a couple of times I was referred to as "he" I repeated again as sweetly as possible, "This is my name and these are my pronouns." Outside of the store, not one person even commented on the name tag, even though people looked at it.
By the end of three days, everyone at work had stopped with "he" and it has been feminine pronouns ever since. That struggle caused me to finally realize that I deserved to be respected for who I chose to be and not what others chose for me. Thank you, Melissa B.!!
my point eXactlY by Matt K
TRANSPRIDE, Got It?
On St. Patrick's day, everyone is Irish. And on Gay Pride Day, everyone is . . . . Well, I guess that's where the analogy breaks down. I remember my first Gay Pride parade, which I stumbled upon quite by accident My intention for the morning was to lie in the sun at Cheesman Park and get a tan. As I spread my towel on the grass, it was hard not to notice that people were gathering in a large and festive group, and they certainly weren't there to look at my pasty white legs.
I asked a woman what was happening. "It's Gay Pride Day," she announced with a look that said, "What cave have you been living in, and maybe you should go back." As a person not only in professional denial of my transgenderism but of any sexual orientation issues that status might bring up, I stayed and watched the parade, just for the fun of it. And it was fun.
I had never seen so many happy, no, downright joyous, people in my life. I had never seen so many colorful costumes, so many decorative floats and so much diversity, from leather and motorcycles to ball gowns and high heels. I was hooked. I went home two hours later, humming "If My Friends Could See Me Now," and wondering a little at my overblown fascination with it all. It would be seven years and seven Pride parades later that I would finally come to terms with my own gender and sexuality issues. Once I did, I came out with a vengeance. But, hey, I had good role models--entire parades of them, people so proud of who they were and the larger picture they stood for that they were marching down the streets of Denver announcing themselves to anyone who cared to look.
For trans people, pride is just as important, although sometimes more elusive. Our numbers are smaller, our position in society more precarious as laws passed to include even gay people don't include us. And, like our gay brothers and sisters, in most places we can still lose our jobs, our apartments and our basic civil rights just for being ourselves. We are hated sometimes, we are feared sometimes and we are made fun of. But we exist, and we still have that right. We are brave and we can be proud of that. And whether you shout it from the rooftops or think it to yourself in your own little corner of the universe, you know who you are, so be proud of it. This year, I'll be marching in the parade for the first time. Look for me. I'll be the guy who looks really proud of himself.
by Joan R.
During the last part of April, I was invited to be on a panel of LesBiGaTr persons in Fort Collins for a presentation to an audience of helping professionals. The object of this panel was to present the "client" side of the counselor-client relationship and to educate the therapists of the positive and negative aspects of our interactions with them. That is: where they have failed to provide meaningful help, where the help really wasn't of any use, and where they provided excellent help.
Sitting there listening to the other panelists present their stories was very enlightening for me. I realized how much more we had in common with those in the "gay" community than we had differences with them. The problems of coming out, having relationships, getting 'society' to tolerate us (or at least to leave us alone) are very much the same no matter what the gender or sexual preferences are. The other thing that surprised me is how much trouble they had finding professionals that even had a clue as to what was happening. One panelist spent a small fortune on a psychologist who was going to cure her of being a lesbian. She was told that her problem was one of choices and there was no physical reason she preferred other women instead of men. How many of us have heard that tale from the uninformed medical community?
I had spent about 3 hours sitting in front of this computer composing my 5-6 minute presentation outlining my background, experience with helping professionals, and other pertinent factors. When it became my turn to present, I put the prepared speech aside and spoke from my heart. About the shrink in the 50's who was going to "shock" me out of my cross-gender inclination, to the person who tried to convince me that I just had to put more faith in God to forget my crossdress-ing aberrations, to the professional who finally told me that there really wasn't anything wrong with me. I wasn't a freak or a immoral denizen of the deep who belonged locked up with the rest of those deviates who circulated through society.
I was more open with them about my past then I have been with anyone outside of a confidential setting. There are any number of things we will not usually disclose to anyone about ourselves to any one under any circumstances and I usually am very much that way. How ever in this case I felt that disclosure of some of this would be in the best interest of educating others to the needs of *T*persons and those of us who fall outside the definition of "normal. "
These presentations provided an awareness that many in the audience did not have before. A lot of them had only rudimentary textbook knowledge of our needs and also some slight preconceptions about "T" needs. I have been invited to give a presentation on gender issues to a group at the University of Colorado sometime in the near future; C.U. is having their graduation as I write these words. If this comes to pass, I will pass my experiences on to you. Writers always need subject matter, you know.
Until next time DO IT WITH STYLE!!!
Editor: Carolee Laughton
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G.I.C. Journal
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Copyright (c) 1998, Gender Identity Center of Colorado, Inc.