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US TV Airing TG Documentary
Contributed by Stef Matthews
via GenderPac
September 17, 1998
The Arts and Entertainment Network (A&E) will cover the gender movement in an
unprecedented documentary that highlights the growth
of transgender awareness into a political movement to
end gender oppression. The program will air at 9 p.m.
on Monday, 5 Oct 98.
In a press release today, A&E said of the project,
"Building on human portraits, the program takes a broad
look at the new and fast-growing movement to combat what
is known as 'gender oppression,' highlighting the nation's
most notorious transsexual killings and a battle in
Congress to include transsexuals in the Federal Hate
Crimes Act. 'Investigative reports: Transgender Revolution'
portrays a subculture that challenges our most deeply held
notions about what it means to be a 'real' man or woman."
"Not only is this the first time anyone has given
us a full hour on national TV, but this marks the first
time a producer has eschewed the usual soft-core human
interest story and moved to cover us as a valid civil
rights movement," said Riki Anne Wilchins, Executive
Director of GenderPAC. "With the Time magazine article
and the recent NY Times' features, I think we are, at
last, turning a corner."
The A&E producer, David Heilbroner, has offered
to provide working journalists with advance copies of
the program for review and evaluation. "We wanted to look
at the real issues of the transgender community," he said.
"We wanted to take this beyond the tabloids' focus, to
portray the heart and soul of a community that is demand-
ing its rights."
Women Actress: Being A Guy Ain't Easy
Contributed by Susan Hall
via Detroit News and Free Press
September 13, 1998
Julianna Margulies, "ER" star, on what she discovered when she disguised
herself as a man and went barhopping in New York, in "Marie Claire"
magazine:
"This is a lot harder than I thought it would be. It's very
intimidating when all these guys are in packs. It's amazing to me. As an
actor, I thought I could do anything. And when it's scripted, I can. But
this is really hard. This is real life - there's much more at risk, all
of a sudden. I thought you guys had it easy, but you don't - always
having to be the one to make the move. It's much easier being the person
making the choice - as the woman being hit on.
Dolls, Drawings Of TS Artist Cause Stir
Contributed by Susan Hall
via Detroit News and Free Press
September 13, 1998
Review: "It's all about ME, Not You" - Through Nov. 1, Cranbrook Art
Museum, 1221 N. Woodward, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Tuesday-Saturday, open until 9:00 PM Thursday. Phone 1-248-645-3323.
From the time she was a young boy in Holly [Michigan], the late artist
Greer Lankton had an attachment to dolls. She began making them, and they
became an emotional outlet as she struggled to understand herself. They
later became the vehicle launching her artistic career.
Greer Lankton was born in 1958 as Greg Lankton, a female trapped in a
male body. She lived that way until age 21, when surgery freed her to
become the woman she longed to be.
That journey was mostly dark and filled with confusion, pain and
self-abuse. Making dolls emerged as a potent means of self-expression.
Some dolls were life-sized, full-figured, happy characters. As she fell
prey to anorexia and drug addiction, however, Lankton's dolls became
painfully thin, hauntingly macabre.
They were first shown in small New York galleries. When they began
attracting attention, they were included in more prestigious New York and
Venice shows in 1995.
The following year Lankton spent at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh,
laboring over a different art installation that approximated her one-room
studio/living space in Chicago. The scaled-down replica is complete with
aluminum siding, lighting, picnic table, umbrella, Astroturf, busty
sculptural lawn art and her interior collections.
"It's all about ME, not you" allows viewers literally to step into
Lankton's troubled world. Inside the dimly lit, claustrophobic space is
an amazing collection of Lankton's dolls, drawings, photographs and
artwork. Dominating the room is a life-sized skeletal figure with a
tortured face that lies in a bed overflowing with hundreds of prescription
pill bottles - testimony to her battle with drug addiction. A nearby
scale bearing the words 'Danger: 3 numerals are a bit too much.' squarely
tells of her anorexia.
Several sections of wall space are given over as shrines to those few
celebrities Lankton could identify with - the androgynous rocker Patti
Smith and the notorious drag queen Candy Darling, who starred in Andy
Warhol movies. One section is devoted to glamorous photographs, including
many nudes, of Lankton before and after her surgery. Another features
religious portraits that harken back to her upbringing as the youngest
child of a Presbyterian minister.
In between the haunting images and anorexic dolls with their powerful
messages are campy touches that reveal Warhol's influence. For example, a
collection of troll dolls sits on a lower shelf.
Perhaps most touching among the lot are Lankton's drawings, much more
personal and heartrending than her dolls. With a fine hand attuned to
human anatomy, Lankton renders graceful dancers and acrobats in motion.
In others, she expresses the hurt and confusion of being caught in the
wrong body. In one, she crouches in the corner of a beauty parlor, a
little boy watching his sister have her hair curled, wishing for the same
treatment.
Another important piece of Lankton's life always was the unconditional
love of her parents. Lankton's mother, for instance, was there during her
transsexual surgery, paid for by the church health insurance after
meetings between her father and the church board. And it was her parents,
during their weekly visit to her apartment, who found her dead at 90
pounds in her small room just one month after the Mattress Factory show
opened.
The multilayered installation may be difficult to view, but it's
remarkable for what Lankton dares to share of her tortured, vulnerable
souls as shoe works to bridge real life and art. Clearly, Cranbrook's
risk is the viewer's gain.
Accompanying this installation are two lectures. Barbara Luderowski and
Michael Olijnyk of the Mattress Factory will speak at 6:30 PM Friday
[9/18/98]. Lankton's parents, the Reverend William and Lynn Lankton will
speak at 1:00 PM September 20."
TG Comedian Parodies Pols
Contributed by Elizabeth Parker
via Australian Associated Press
September 12, 1998
SYDNEY - After declaring himself the "mother of this
nation", Pauline Pantsdown has urged Australians to take him seriously
or he would be forced to apply for the single mothers' pension to
support 18 million offspring. The future of "all my Astrayan children"
was the focus of the aspiring senator and cross-dresser Pantsdown's
Sydney campaign launch today.
The heavily made-up and coiffed
Pantsdown, an over-the-top send-up of One Nation's Pauline Hanson, is
standing for the Senate in NSW as an independent. With his
chart-topping hit song titled 'I Don't Like It' pumping loudly down
the crowded street of the Darlinghurst launch, the impersonator's
campaign launch had few serious moments. But in between the parody he
urged Australians to cast a vote against "the Hanson-Howard coalition"
and be wary of a race-based election.
He said the October 3 election
was in danger of remaining focused on tax with racial issues at threat
of being forgotten. The 36-year-old university lecturer has been quoted
as saying he is not fooling himself that he will win a spot in the
federal parliament, but hopes to make his preferences count. He was
yet to study preference options, beyond "casting out the Hanson-Howard
coalition". His launch was marked with the formal presentation of a
ten-point plan of nine ideas, almost all of which had the prefix:
"This is the most important issue facing Astraya today".
It proposed
inviting Aborigines from other countries to Australia, because there
were not enough here and we need more to truly celebrate diversity. In
regard to education and immigration, the concern was the decline in
mathematical skills, particularly in regard to counting immigration
numbers. "If people say that the balance has swung too far in favour of
Asians, who make up less than five per cent of population, they need
to go back to school and learn their times tables," he said. "I think
127 per cent of Astrayans will back me on that."
With the sincere
belief Pauline Hanson would not be elevated to power, the only advice
Pantsdown had for the controversial politician was, "Pauline, try to
get a little bit more subtle on the make-up; people are saying things;
and maybe get rid of the racist rubbish and xenophobic statements as
well." Pantsdown's career got off to a rocky start earlier this year
when his first Hanson pop parody was withdrawn after objections from
his alter ego. But he and his new music video are now getting
television exposure, and are reportedly attracting overseas interest.
Lawsuit Victory Over Haters
Contributed by Elizabeth Parker and Rachelle Austin
via Reuters
September 9, 1998
Michigan's Triangle Foundation is celebrating the 1st successful
lawsuit against a public official for lying about gay, lesbians, bi's and
transpeople.
There was good news and bad news out of the Michigan courts for Detroit's
gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender advocacy group the Triangle Foundation on
September 14: on the one hand, its members were alarmed by the state Court
of Appeals overturning on a technicality the second-degree murder
conviction of Jonathan Schmitz in the so-called "Jenny Jones" killing of
open gay Scott Amedure (which the prosecution is appealing further); on
the other, they were delighted to learn that they had prevailed in their
defamation lawsuit against state Representative Deborah Whyman (R-Canton)
for her allegations against them in her 1996 campaign literature.
"This is an historic victory for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender
people everywhere," said Triangle executive director Jeffrey Montgomery.
"Never before has a GLBT organization successfully sued an elected
official for defamation. This should send a clear message to public
officials everywhere that publishing defamatory statements about GLBT
people and organizations will be challenged and that they will be held
personally responsible for their intentional lies about us." Montgomery
demanded a public apology from Whyman.
In a November 1996 campaign mailing piece that depicted two men facing
each other, nude from the waist up, Whyman had charged that Triangle
supported pedophilia, and also that it had supported her opponent,
Democrat Deborah Nesbit, which would have been a violation of the group's
non-profit status. The mailing to several thousand homes just two days
before the election also charged that Nesbit had accepted campaign
contributions from Triangle members, making her an endorser of pedophilia
and "homosexual extremists" -- Whyman's favorite phrase for gay and
lesbian activists -- and helped to defeat Nesbit in the election.
In February 1997, Triangle filed a complaint against Whyman on six charges
of libel, slander and defamation, as Montgomery said, "Lies and
intentional misinformation about gays and lesbians must be challenged
whenever they are published. It is especially important to hold public
officials accountable when they engage in the intentional distortion of
facts and truth. They need to be held to a higher standard of integrity
and responsibility." In October 1997, a panel of three mediators had
agreed that Whyman's allegations were false and malicious, awarding
Triangle $15,000 in damages, but Whyman rejected their non-binding
decision and Triangle went on to file its lawsuit.
Wayne County Circuit Judge Susan Borman in an 18-page opinion noted that
since Whyman had quoted Triangle's by-laws, it was fair to infer that she
was aware of their contents and the fact that they did not "proclaim"
support for sex acts involving minors. She wrote, "There is nothing beyond
the rhetorical construction [that the phrase "sexual minorities" includes
pedophiles] of the defendants [Whyman] that would tend to show that, in
fact, plaintiffs [Triangle] have ever proclaimed support for
pedophilia.... The Triangle Foundation has never published or adopted any
policies or statements of support for sex between adults and children....
The court finds as a matter of law that the issue statement in the 1996
statement [campaign literature] was defamatory per se as to all
Gore Scored By Religious Nuts
Contributed by and Elizabeth Parker
via Reuters
September 18, 1998
WASHINGTON -- Americans for Truth President
Peter LaBarbera released the following statement regarding Vice
President Al Gore's appearance Saturday night as a featured speaker at
a gala dinner for the Human Rights Campaign (the event is at Marriott
Wardman Park Hotel). The HRC is a homosexual activist group that
lobbies for homosexual "marriage," "gay" adoption, pro-homosexual
programs in schools, and "transgender rights" (including affirming
"transgender youth"). Last February, the organization sponsored a
college youth conference for "gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgendered" youth that featured a presentation by an actual
prostitute, the showing of hard-core pornographic and sadomasochistic
films, and a talk by a female-to-male transsexual activist.
"Al Gore's scheduled acceptance of an honor from the Human Rights
Campaign is further proof of his hypocrisy on the issue of 'family
values.' Mr. Gore has been busy currying favor with the homosexual
lobby -- a wealthy constituency for his expected presidential bid. At
the same time, he continues to list membership in the Southern
Baptist-affiliated Mt. Vernon Baptist Church (in Arlington, VA), whose
pastor -- K. Bruce Miller -- believes the Bible that homosexual
behavior is a sin. Like his boss, Gore wants to have it both ways. He
will campaign as a 'pro-family' candidate even as he makes a mockery
of traditional and biblical beliefs on homosexuality and abortion --
beliefs that may be politically incorrect in the Democratic Party (and
among some in the GOP), but which embody eternal truths," LaBarbera
said.
Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, based outside Washington,
D.C., is a group dedicated to opposing homosexual activism. It
publishes the bimonthly Lambda Report on Homosexual Activism. Web
site: www.americansfortruth.com.
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