With Cindy Martin
Transgender Forum Publisher
© 1997 Transgender Forum
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June 30, 1997
he failure of GenderPac to become the focussed organization we'd all hoped it would be is not the last chapter in this community's efforts to put together a united political front.
There are rumblings that another coalition is being considered, one that would again include all the big players: the International Foundation for Gender Education, Renaissance, Aegis, et al. which would take a more moderate approach to lobbying than the radicalized GenderPAC.
Naturally, there are personality issues that could wreck this before it even gets off the ground. None seems insurmountable, particularly if the louder antagonists button up for once. Troublesome as personalities can be, the real question is whether this community can actually create a lobby group that is:
Alliances with gay organizations are fine, though frankly, most of the work has been done already. Only the Human Rights Campaign is anti-TG of the major U.S. gay groups, everyone else is supportive. We've done our bridge building, now we need to start bridge crossing. We must also stay on point. Any new transgender organization needs to steer clear of incorporating other groups' agendas into ours. There is absolutely no cogent reason I can think of that requires us to integrate our efforts with those in the S&M community or other non-TG groups. Be friendly towards them sure. Be allies, fine. Merge with them, NO. We've got more than enough on our plates right now.
This community also has to stop expecting something for nothing. Plenty of us are not struggling financially, yet raising cash for worthwhile causes is notoriously difficult. We need to put our mirrors down and open our purses if we are going to have serious political organization. Relying totally on volunteers isn't going to work.
I understand that part of the reluctance many of us have had about donating money is that we haven't known who to trust or where to direct it. For now, I'd suggest you start with your local support group. I'd also recommend IFGE, Aegis and the International Conference on Transgender Law & Education Policy. But keep reading this space. There will be a lot more said on this subject over the next few months.
irector Michael Cimino has made a statement denying he is a transexual after chatter about his alleged penchant for doing drag appeared in several gossip columns, including Liz Smith's.
Cimino, director of the "Deer Hunter" and the appalling "Heaven's Gate", supposedly has been seen in Hollywood wearing "dyed blond hair, pointy boots, outlandish outfits and makeup," Smith reported on June 16.
"Cimino is probably just having fun, like a lot of guys in these liberated times. But I must add, some of the most important and respectable people in Hollywood are repeating the stories," she wrote.
At this point in his career, which is pretty nonexistent, just about anything that gets Cimino noticed is probably positive. And who knows, Hollywood is trying awfully hard to put more women in the director's chair...can we say comeback?
aise your hand if the lead paragraph on the story describing your local gay pride parade this month went something like this:
"Led by colorful drag queens, biker Lesbians in black leather and gay police officers, this year's FillinTheBlank Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and Transgender Parade drew XXX,000 downtown to a multi-cultural celebration of diverse lifestyles..."
umors were rampant that RuPaul and a group of NYC drag divas were going to bid for Lady Dianna's gowns during a recent charity auction. I loved the idea of RuPaul, all 6-feet-plus of her, trying to wedge into the Lady Di's clothes. What a show. Ah well, there was more chance of Lady Di refereeing a tractor pull than Ru fitting into one of tiny Di's outfits.
Anyway, it turns out that one Zandra Foxx was the only transgender person who showed up at the chi-chi auction at Christie's and she was out-bid for lot 14, a scarlet dance dress in spangled silk chiffon, by Bruce Oldfield.
The auction, to raise funds for AIDS and cancer research, raised $3.5 million and was topped by a record $200,000 bid for a dress Diana wore when she danced with film star John Travolta at the White House in 1985.
The midnight-blue silk velvet gown by Victor Edelstein was bought by an anonymous American bidder, a private client, who said he was "a long-standing fan of Princess Diana". Hmmm.
The record price broke the previous one for a garment, $160,000 at Christie's, London in June 1995, for the suit Travolta wore in the film Saturday Night Fever.
Thanks to Elizabeth Parker for being all over this story and feeding it to me...
ritish scientist David Gems of London's University, using examples from the animal world and a study of eunuchs, believes that men would live longer than females "if it weren't for their energetic sexual activity."
Women live longer than men, but that may be because men have more urgent sex needs and act on them, he theorizes. Gems arrived at this theory after studying the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. Gems explains that while most worms are labeled hermaphroditic, they are "essentially females capable of making a small number of sperm for self-fertilization." In every worm population, however, there are a few true males.
When Gems grouped male worms together he found that, as statistically projected, they died at about 10 days of age. But when the males were left alone, separated from other males, their life-spans doubled -- to 20 days, four days longer than the average female life-span.
Obviously, worms aren't people, though some sure act like them. Oops. Back to the column train of thought...
Gems said that studies of the quite randy male marsupial mouse, who spend 5 to 11 hours a day having sex, show a similar pattern. When they are castrated the live span of the mouse increases from a few weeks, to several years.
There is also evidence that no-sex drive equals long lives for human males: Gems points to a 1969 study of 319 eunuchs, which revealed their average life-span to be 13.5 years longer than intact males.
The implications for transexuals, if this theory is true, are very interesting. Will FTMs have shorter lives than they would have had as women and will MTFs get a longer life from switching sides? Thirty years from now we'll probably have some answers because that is when there may be a large enough number of elderly transexuals to reach some conclusions.
Of course, you don't have to be a transexual or a woman to increase you lifespan. If Gems is right, just stop having sex.
Naaaaa.
May 26, 1997
nother of those "What the?" stories:
According to a promotional release from the prestigious "Inside Edition" television "news" show a Virginia woman named Margaret Ann Hunter will go on national TV and claim that she "unknowingly" wed a woman posing as a man. The press release from the program goes on to say that she "tells 'Inside Edition' exclusively (that) she never noticed anything odd about her spouse because she was blinded by love."
olunteering to help others is one of the noblest things any of us can do, and everyone should give something back. But there is a certain type of person who seems to instinctively know how to turn a volunteer job into a self-aggrandizing power trip that can be extremely destructive.
Watch out for the seemingly big hearted person who raises her hand for every job that needs doing. Naturally, she's given them or assigns them to herself. Eventually, she takes on all the key jobs, almost always those involving money or information or both.
This isn't necessarily a problem, but the truly caring volunteer knows when it's time to step aside and let someone else take a turn. Beware the super-volunteer in a position of authority who refuses to move on after a few years. They need a life and your group is the substitute.
A genuinely giving person likes acknowledgement and thanks, of course, but she gets her real fulfillment knowing that others have been helped. That's the fun. But a power tripper demands thanks and uses guilt ("Look at how much I've done for the community!") to maintain control. This type of person draws on the capital of her good deeds to silence or, more often, dismiss, those who disagree or have other ideas. These are the worst.
Powertrippers know that most people are afraid to take on volunteer work, or rather, are afraid that if a volunteer leaves no one will step up and do the job. That, and the knowledge that most people wouldn't dare start a fight with a sainted volunteer, is the secret to her control. Loving persons are happy to turn over the reins, become a "wise elder" and cheer on successors. Selfish egotists never want to move on.
Powertrippers, for all their good work (and they usually do a lot of that, part of the secret) will destroy an organization if left in authority too long.
How do they destroy it? Well, if there are never any good job "openings" the most energetic people will vanish. Sometimes people want to throw the parties, not just set the table, and intuitively the best ones will see that they will never get a chance to do the good work if the super-volunteer is doing it all. I've seen this happen many times.
The funny thing is that when these "irreplaceable" people finally leave, often in a bloody coup, some one else inevitably steps in and, surprise, the organization survives.
No one is irreplaceable. And if they are, your group, or cause, is doomed.
id the IFGE convention last month suck or not?
Some people are really griping about the event now, though you won't count me among them. I should explain that I went to that convention for very specific reasons, none of which included going to any of the event seminars, which seem to be what people were most unhappy about.
My goal was to meet TGF people, wave the flag a little, renew old friendships and party. From that perspective, the convention was fabu. I wasn't there to learn how to do my eyes better or get info on hormones. But some people were, and when you are paying top buck you should get a quality event. However, I would remind those who found the seminars disappointing that these events are staged by volunteers, not pros. That pretty much assures that an IFGE convention can be great one year and stinky another.
I had a good time, so I'll be in Toronto next year. All I'll expect is that Toronto will be fun, because I know that city is fun. If the convention is good too, well that's a bonus.
peaking of low expectations, I certainly had them for this year's Gender Lobby Day.
But now I think it went pretty well considering the very low turnout of only 60 people, 40% fewer than the 1996 event.
I am very pleased that our lobbyists were able to convince a number of congress members to sign onto a letter deploring violence against us. This is a very important achievement because it may help us get some coverage in federal "hate crimes" laws. It was also one more sign that people are beginning to take us seriously at the national level.
But it does bother me that relatively few people participated in this effort.
There were, in effect, two lobbying days this year. The first was in February by Phyllis Frye and the International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy. Frye insisted that this wasn't officially a lobbying effort, but it was clearly an event designed to bring our issues to the attention of Congress. Whatever you call it, the February event guaranteed that there would be a smaller group doing the same thing in May. There are only so many people who are both activists and rich enough to go to Washington, D.C. twice in the same year.
On the other hand, Phyllis is pushing hard for issues that I believe concern this community above all others: jobs and family. In my view, she's on the right track.
Meanwhile, GenderPAC, led by Riki Wilchins, decided to make "trans-violence" the focus of this year's Lobby Days out of an abiding concern that physical attacks are becoming more common as we become more visible.
Good issue, one that politicians were able to latch onto, but frankly not one that is very meaningful to most of us.
I am very much aware of the series of murders of TGs in the last few years. I find all of them disturbing. But the plain truth is that most of us simply don't worry that much about getting killed or beat-up. I'll leave discussion of this to another time, but it is evident to me that as a group we fear losing our jobs and families much more than we fear we will become the victims of violence.
So the violence issue, while important, was not one that was going to draw a big crowd.
Nevertheless, from a strategic standpoint going with the violence angle was a decent call. It is something that people outside the community can understand. Plus, it is quite a bit easier to legislate a hate crime than it is to legislate employment protections for a group of people that most of the country still thinks of as a fringe group.
It worked to get us through the door and get some important people on record as our friends. But now that we have gone through the door, it would be a good time to begin work on the much tougher issue of job discrimination.
Let's see how it goes next year.
alk about brass!
Did anyone else notice that Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which has staunchly opposed including us the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, was right there for us on hate crimes during Lobby Day? Even got in the GenderPAC press release for coming out against violence towards TGs.
Gee, you think HRC will get really gutsy now and come out against the designated hitter rule?
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