With Cindy Martin
Transgender Forum Publisher
© 1996 Transgender Forum
July 22, 1996
h the delicious agony.
I secretly love electrolysis. Not the pain, I'm not a pain person, but coming from the Catholic faith it reminds me so much of Confession. I secretly enjoy that too.
In the Catholic Church we sinners get to clean up our souls by going into a private place with a priest and confessing all our sins. This is a great deal, possibly the best thing the church still has going for it.
Of course, it is kind of embarrassing telling the priest all your secrets and sins, but you know that in the end he is going to forgive you. "I pretended I was working when I was surfing on the Internet looking for porno, Father." "That is alright my son, what was the address?"
It's pretty shocking the things that get said in Confession. There is the penance part too, but that isn't so bad. You say a lot of prayers and in no time at all you've got a clean slate again, no more ink spots in the milk. For a few days at least, I won't curse and use the "F" word as my favority part of speech. Take me now Lord, 'cuz I won't be this pure for long.
And of course there is nothing quite like walking out of a cool, dark cathedral into a bright Saturday afternoon with all your sins erased. Except walking out of the electrologist's after a treatment.
Electrolysis, like confession, is sort of embarrassing. You really don't want to see the other clients or have them see you. Of course they're thinking, "What's that man doing here?" and naturally you're wondering what hair she is having removed. It works out both ways.
Spend an hour or two week after week with someone poking into every pore on your face and you'll eventually tell her whatever she wants to know. And usually they want to know a lot.
My electrologist is a major league talker and I make it a point to keep the conversation going. We don't want to offend someone who has an electric probe in her hand, now do we? On the other hand, I like to keep her target, my face, from moving around too much. Oh I know she enjoys the challenge, but I've learned some rudimentary ventriloquism as the better part of my valor.
Actually it's enjoyable talking to a good conversationalist like her particularly since I know that anything I say will be immediately communicated to all my TG friends who use her as well. Good way to keep up with the dirt in their lives. "Well, so-and-so had the operation. She can't pass but she's happier now." "Did you see so-and-so's plastic surgery? Just goes to show that you get what you pay for..." (I guess this part of the analogy isn't like Confession, but hey, this is a column not a quadratic equation. )
When I leave the confessional I know that sooner or later my state of purity won't last. Someone will cut me off, a manager will be stupid, something. But's great while I have it.
Same thing with electrolysis. Eventually, in a couple of days, a week, the hairs will be back. Not as many as before, but they'll be back. I'll wake up, look in the mirror and see that my facial purity has gone.
Then I'll swear.
peaking of electrolysis, has anyone else noticed how the so-called "laser" electrolysis hasn't taken off? One would think that the promise of nearly instanteous hair removal would have stimulating a huge rush to the new procedure. Hasn't happened.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to see a new process that is faster than the one we have now. But I also wouldn't trust my face to anything I wasn't sure was proven. So far, nothing I've heard has convinced me that laser electrolysis is the answer.
And while we're on the subject. Did you know that Rita Hayworth was one of the first Hollywood stars to have electrolysis done? Rita, who was born Rita Cantino, was Latino and had a widow's peak. The boys who created the star's looks in those days didn't think that looked so good on a goddess, so they made her get rid of it...musta hurt, the skin is really thin up there!
By the way, just looking at the picture on the right. Do you know now why Rita was able to marry to a Prince? He was lucky.
More electro: It has also been long rumored that Frank Sinatra had his facial hair removed, ostensibly to give him a younger look. Well, have you seen how Frank looks now at 80? A little overweight, but terrific otherwise. Besides, it's Sinatra's world. We just live in it. "Hey jealous lover, you're acting so strange..."
alifornia State Senator Milton Marx's attempt to get a statewide transgender rights bill got nowhere earlier this spring, but Marx deserves commendation for making a try. San Francisco and Santa Cruz both offer some protections for our community, but a state law is probably several years away.
exan Phyllis Frye is organizing an "educational" visit to Washington on February 24-25, 1997. This is not the same as the National Gender Lobby Days that will be held in May but you might want to check this out.
Contact Ms. Frye at 713/777-TGLC (8452) for more information. Phyllis is a long-time activist in the community and an attorney. The basic idea of the event is to meet with members of congress, or their staffs, in order to educate them as to the wide range of people who make up our community.
Frye has reserved a block of rooms for those wishing to go. Rooms are $59 plus tax per night at a hotel that is a six block walk from the Metro-Rail.
Frye is also encourage anyone who cannot come, but who is supportive, to send whatever donation they wish to International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy (ICTLEP) and designate for "DC SCHOLARSHIP/EXPENSES." We will apply to help however we can to bring folks who cannot otherwise attend. Whatever remains will be used to defray costs of printing or go into the ICTLEP general fund. For scholarship contributions or applications send to ictlep@aol.com or mail to PO Drawer 35477, Houston, TX 77345-5477, 713/777-TGLC (8452).
ransgender Forum is about to announce a significant donation to a national transgender organization and I don't want to scoop our own story. But I did want you to know that Jamie Fay Fenton, JoAnn Roberts and I are committed to supporting to worthy national, organizations dedicated to doing the hard work necessary to improve the legal and cultural status of our community.
We are a very small business at the moment, but from the start all of us agreed that TGF would be a substantial community resource in the fullest sense of the term.
This is why we continue to publish a Free Edition that is larger and more comprehensive than anything else on the Web (and if you aren't a subscriber you should see what we have in there!). We want everyone, regardless of their ability to pay, to be able to read and see the most vital information that we put out here every week.
It is this same philosophy that is going to guide our charitable activities. Stay tuned.
his not a drill.
As regular TGF readers know we've had two service failures the last two weeks, neither of which we could have prevented. One was a bizarre situationa involving InterNic, the company that issues all IP addresses which are vital to an internet presence. No IP, no web page. The one we own for www.tgforum.com was suspended for several days in late June because the company thought we hadn't paid our bill. We had. Many, many other sites had a similar nightmare. Last week our Subscription and backup Free Edition server got wacky and we had to shut down for a half day.
The point of telling you this is that eventually there will be another service interruption. Something, a breakdown in the Net itself, a bad disc, the golf gods, something will mess things up. So, how can you prepare for such an emergency? No, you don't need to stock up on kerosene and mascara. Just write these addresses down:
http://www.tgforum.com TGForum's original site and current primary home of the Free Edition
http://www.3dcom.com/tgfs/ TGForum's Subscriber site.
http://www.3dcom.com/tgfs/ TGForum's back-up Free Edition site.
One of these locations should ALWAYS be working and we're going to add another soon. Since we cannot notify you directly as to what is going on if we are down at a site you can find out yourself by checking on the Pointer Page or on What's New to get the info you need.
few weeks ago the National Organization for Women had it's "Fight The Right" march and as anyone who read the news accounts now knows, the turnout was a disappointment. Three days before the event the head of the California NOW told the San Francisco Chronicle that they expected about 100,000 people. Fifty thousand would have been an achievement. They got 14,000 (and that was a generous estimate), mostly from organized groups, including representatives from ETVC and several gay transgender groups.
This organization is in deep, deep trouble and they proved it once again by marching against just about everything except the Designated Hitter rule... That's this month. I'm there.
The problem with NOW is that it has a too-wide agenda that appeals to a very narrow group, or groups of people, mostly liberals. Contrast this with the American Association of Retired People. No, I'm not eligible to be a member yet, Miss Wise Acre, but I admire their ability to attract a truly diverse group of people who have relatively narrow interests: Social Security, medical care, and so on. The AARP isn't out there battling for transgender rights or immigrant rights or more welfare nor should they be. That's why they succeed.
I know that there are those in this community who want NOW to take up our fight. Fine if they want to help us out. But I would much rather see NOW dealing with what most women actually want, like wage equality, and quit screwing around with peripheral stuff. Then maybe ordinary women would actually care what they are doing.
o one is more security conscious than I am when I'm out, but let's not get paranoid about the awful spate of murders in our community. These things are terrible but they happen RARELY. Still, when you go out you should do the same things women should do to minimize your risks:
1. Avoid poorly light parking lots. Police statistics consistently show that very high percentages of attacks and assaults happen in parking lots and garages.
2. Be aware of your surroundings. TGs have a real habit, like women, of not seeing everyone around them. See and be seen. Don't walk with your head down. If you look like a weak victim, you're going to be a target. Be proud and aware. The punks will pick the easy ones.
3. Watch the hands If some idiot comes up to you and you find you cannot avoid them, keep an eye on what their hands are doing...they never lie. If those hands move towards you or into the jerk's coat or pocket in anyway, get the hell out of there.
4. Key and Whistle A simple little trick is to carry keys between your fingers, sort of like brass knuckles, as you walk to and from your car. Keep a good whistle on the chain. In a class given recently on security for TGs the instructor said that making a lot of noise is a major defense in a confrontation. Use your mouth too if nothing else is available, and if you have to use them, the keys can be useful delivered to the right locations.
There are a lot more common sense precautions you can take like don't dress up like a hooker, hang out in trashy neighborhoods and pick up strangers in bars. Those are bad ideas under any circumstance.
oming out is kind of exhilarating, but it had been some time for me to add new people to my list.
The reason for my recent spate of revelations was this entity that has entered my life. This voracious thing that has caused me to give up my beloved golf game, forced me to forego my budding career as a seamstress, and made me spend hours on end trying to understand bizarre nuances of databases and the horridly mutating HyperText Markup Language. Did you know that America Online uses proxy servers? Almost interesting hunh?
Yes, people have noticed. Those 4 a.m. Emails have caught their attention. So I told them.
"Well, what is it EXACTLY that you're publishing on the Web?" a former boss and potential re-employer asked recently at the end of our interview.
"Go to this address," I said.
He ended up at Siperstein's Hardware store (where they sell fine home and garden implements...check them out).
"This is what you've been so cagey about?" he asked. "What do they sell there, porno? This like a front?"
"Uh, no ex-boss (and maybe re-boss), add these letters to the address...It's a transgender magazine"
"So what's this transgender? What, do you wear dresses? How do you know these people?...Nice looking site, whaddya got here. Hey, that's a guy? (it was the lovely and talented Michelle Ross' pictorial that he liked). You can't look that good, can you?"
"No, I don't look that good."
"So what is it with these people?" he said with a look that was undeciperable to me as either genuine or smart aleck. I went with genuine.
"They are just people, different, but just people. It is like any other community of people."
I didn't want to get into a big explanation. This was a possible employer, not an old friend or relative. Think about it: if I was gay I wouldn't be explaining why I was not like him. Same with being transgender, I really take that attitude now. I am not ashamed of who I am. On the contrary, I'm a person who has always played by the rules and, like most people in our community, have very high ethical standards. I think a lot of us feel that if we are ever "exposed" (what an awful way of seeing all this) we want to have the rest of our life in tip-top order. A negative produces a positive. And in this particular situation, if this man was going to reject me on this part of my life, I didn't want to work for him anyway. What kind of person would be so narrow minded anyway. There was no downside risk to his knowing.
"Look, you know me right? Well, you still know me, but now you know something else. Does this have any bearing on our plans?"
"Nope. Just curious..." and on we went to other issues.
He called me back soon after and we're negotiating some things...I may not go for the job, though for unrelated reasons.
One other fun, exciting "come out" happened about a week later with an ancient friend who was visiting. Same sort of situation. He knew how much I was doing on the Web and wanted to know more.
What was so fun about this was I showed him the May edition of NetGuide, the one that gave TGF a great review. Turns out his site was reviewed in the very same issue...right next to TGFs (it is a political site, not TG).
This was a very, very different situation than the encounter with the ex-boss. We talked at great length, which I'll spare you.
Next day, we played golf. I used to kick his rear in that game, but now I suck and he took advantage. We had a great time and as we were walking back to the club house he said, "You know, the first thing I'm going when I get back to my office is frame that page and I'm going to circle your site and mine. I want everyone to know we're friends."
Naturally I was touched.
"So then how come you only gave me four strokes a side?"
ow I KNOW this guy isn't just guilty, he really is crazy.
Following the arrest of the "alleged" Unabomber I discovered that his now famous manifesto says that transexualism "represents society's decay".
Let me see if I got this right: guy living in teeny cabin in the middle of nowhere, great with numbers, not too good on the social skills, kills three people and hates computers (now that is really low) and he thinks that TSs represent decay?
Your honor, I ask you...
alifornia Dreamin' was apparently a success, at least judging from the comments made by Joan Goodnight and several other leaders of the Powder Puffs of California who this year brought the event to San Francisco. (See photos elsewhere in the subscriber edition).
What I found most notable however was the general improvement in the appearance of the attendees. Every time I go to one of these things I find that our community, or at least that part that is out and can afford it, is generally looking better. The "straights" notice too. They may not understand us, but they keep getting friendlier. Yeah, I know this is San Francisco, but the other people at the hotel were tourists, not natives.
On the other hand, as ETVC wag-turned-el presidente Erin Souza put it: "If they didn't see a drag queen in San Francisco it'd be like not seeing Mickey Mouse in Disneyland."
Lots of TGF readers in attendance, including Joan, Claudia Wrede (from Germany), Ricki, Robyn and many others. Nice to see y'all! (and none of them smashed me with their purses over the subscriptions thing either!)
he recent reader vote here on whether we should allow sex chat in a special area (the "No's" won convincingly) brought to mind a question that has been kicking around the online world for years:
I became friendly with this one lady, call her Sarah, who said she was a bi-sexual but mostly enjoyed sex chatting with women. She was always "disappearing" into private conversations. I had no interest in those, though I got my share of invitations, I was more interested in talking to friends and sharing a little info about being transgender to a mostly uninformed group. It was sort of my way of being out in the "straight" online world.
Over the course of a year we bumped into each other online and talked, mostly about her adventures. Most fake "women" are really easy to spot, but she was good, very good. I must admit the stories were terrifically exciting. Meanwhile, I started hearing things from other people, always women, about Sarah. A pattern began to emerge. After several chats, Sarah would see if they could meet sometime, then couldn't make the meeting for one reason or another. Several women got very deeply involved, only to be broken-hearted when things somehow didn't work out.
Then one women got angry, and to make a long story short, was able to put one and one together from the inconsistencies in Sarah's e-mail and from screen captures of her chats. Eventually, she figured it all out. Sarah was a man. She "outted" Sarah publicly to 100s of people on the BBS and the reaction was, to say the least, really nasty, particularly from the few guys that Sarah had tricked.
It wasn't the sex chat part that bothered me, what I found upsetting was the way this person played with people's emotions and took advantage of lonely people. That was cold. Worse, people began giving me a bunch of grief. I was the known TG there and they thought that I should explain this. My reaction was that I couldn't explain it, because it was wrong.
About six months later, I got a note from a guy I didn't know who said he had something "important" to tell me. You know who it was. We got online. I had one question: are you transgender or what?
He said no, emphatically no. He was just a guy who loved women and found that posing as one made it easier to be with them online and to sex chat them. He wasn't "really" gay, though he admitted to having chats with men. He said he had never dressed as a woman. Yet he was very, very good at the impersonation, at least in cyberspace. He apologized for tricking me and was gone forever (or are you reading this now?).
Sarah is by no means the only "cyber-transvestite" I've run across. But is someone like Sarah transgender? I'm certain of it, just as I'm certain that the guys who want TV/TS sex are gay or bi-sexual, not straight as they often claim.
On the other hand, maybe it's better for people like Sarah to disassociate themselves from our community. I'm not so sure I want someone so thoughtless and cruel to be one of us either.