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Southern Comfort: A Transgendered Pilgrimage

By Veronica Smith

When I returned from Southern Comfort, my wife asked if I had had a good time. I told her that I had indeed had fun, but that going to Southern Comfort was much more significant that merely having a "good time."

"How d’you mean?" she asked.

"For me," I explained, "my first Southern Comfort was an almost mystical confirmation of my transgendered status. Every time I return, I feel as if I reaffirm that status. Think of it as a ritual of affirmation."

"Like going to church?" she prompted.

"In a sense," I told her. "But more like going to Canterbury, Jerusalem or Mecca. Southern Comfort should be a required pilgrimage for every transgenderist."

"You mean for every transgenderist who can afford it," she quipped.

"Most significant experiences cost something," I responded, "Everyone who is serious about transgenderism owes it to herself to experience at least one Southern Comfort."

"We’ll have to put that in the TG contract," said my loving and supportive but kind of smart aleck wife as she helped me unpack.

"The world would be a lot better off if everyone went to at least one gender convention," I said. "It’s like pilgrimage and pilgrimage is good for the soul."

"I’ll see if I can find a habit for you to wear next year," the Littler Woman muttered while throwing my hip enhancers in the dirty clothes.

Southern Comfort as pilgrimage? Well, it certainly has some of the obvious elements: travel, ritual and the expectation of the miraculous. It even has penance if you think of the burdensome aspects of travel as penitential acts. And as for ritual, who knows more about private ceremonies than a TG? One of the first things I do at a gender convention is probably what most attendees do: take a perfumed bubble bath and shave the legs. With 400-500 people performing similar ablutions, you’ve got quite a sudsy baptism going on. Then comes the ritualistic painting of the face and donning all the accoutrements unique to our particular persuasion. And, of course, there are the miracles.

Like invalids tossing away crutches at a holy shrine, pilgrims at Southern Comfort toss aside incapacitating shame and discover they can walk – in heels, dressed the way they’ve always wanted, proud and tall. Pilgrimage shrines produce transformative experiences and, needless to say, there are lots of mystical transformations at Southern Comfort (besides the magical makeovers by Jim Bridges). Eyes sparkle and laughter comes easy. Excitement and expectation are in the air. Southern Comfort even transformed the complex in which it took place. Atlanta’s Buckhead is a posh convention area, certainly a center of social acceptance. But during Southern Comfort, that center became charged with a special energy supplied by the people who came to celebrate something which normally would keep them from social acceptance. 500 different people sharing something so special in the same place transformed the celebration into a grand rite and changed the convention center into a sacred space.

However, living in a sacred space can be disorienting. Time is spent like nowhere else. You are taken out of the typical work-a-day world and are disconnected from past and future. The day is measured by how long it takes to fix your hair, do your make-up and paint your nails. These are power rituals for the TG, filled with significance. You live this way for several days in a row. It becomes the norm and you are surrounded by hundreds of people who share this norm. Unlike trade conventions where a nametag signifies who you are and what you do, at a gender convention, most people call themselves by names that bear little relationship to the outside world. And they wear make-up and dress dissimilarly from how they usually dress. The fact that almost everyone presents herself stripped of the usual signifiers tends to level any hierarchy. People lose their statuses and there is a general sense of egalitarianism. This sense of equality and the fact that the event is inclusive creates a strong feeling of community. A famous anthropologist once wrote that the achievement of a similar egalitarian communal feeling was a fundamental motivation for pilgrimage. The added aspect of being crossdressed intensifies that feeling.

But the feeling can’t last (even in sacred shrines). Differences become noticeable and statuses reassert themselves. After the initial expectation, some become disappointed. Marisa Richmond even commented in her speech that there always were participants who didn’t look as if they were having a good time. She urged the more experienced conventioneers to help the shy neophytes. But I don’t think first-time shyness is the only obstacle for conventioneers to enjoy themselves. I also think there is a problem simply with the way men are conditioned to behave. Men (and almost of these ladies have been raised as men) are taught to do, not to experience. I think it’s difficult for them to experience passively the delicious sensation of being feminine for an extended period of time in a place where it’s safe for them to be as feminine as they want. Instead, it’s as if some conventioneers need to prove their femininity by hard drinking and all-night partying. While I like to party along with the next girl, rather than drinking to excess to achieve euphoria, there’s a euphoria that already exists at a gender conference that can be nursed while there and relished after. And while I started this piece in a joking way, I actually believe that trying to experience a gender conference more like a pilgrimage might help some to enjoy it more fully. There certainly is much to enjoy.


Leslie Feinberg

Southern Comfort is the most successful gender conference. Maybe it has something to do with Atlanta’s civic pride and Southern hospitality. Its dedicated volunteers seemingly want to offer as much as possible to as many as possible. The caretakers of the event are the most accommodating and intelligent hostesses, but they’re not afraid of taking risks. Anthropologists have noted that shrine caretakers usually try to impose their own doctrine upon the ritual and control the pilgrims’ competing interpretations and perceptions. What is so impressive with Southern Comfort’s organizers is that they welcome controversial expressions and perspectives, as their choice of speakers demonstrates. How many TGs cheerfully going off to a gender convention would have expected they would be urged by Leslie Feinberg to join the "Trans-liberation Movement," a resistance movement linking all disenfranchised persons against the "systems of oppression" that reinforce class distinctions and deny individuals the ownership of their bodies? How many would have expected that at a conference in the Bible Belt they would hear a speaker compare SRS rights to abortion rights? And how many would have expected that at a convention in a place where race can still be an issue (and apparently was to a few), organizers would have scheduled two dynamic speakers of African descent, Dawn Wilson and Dr. Marisa Richmond? The conventioneers might not have expected it, but judging by the standing ovations that all three speakers received, they certainly welcomed it. And that reveals another amazing aspect of Southern Comfort. It always exceeds expectations.

I love going to gender conventions and I always have a "good time" whether I dance all night or just visit with my chosen family. I suppose a psychologist might say that being within a congregation of my transgendered sisters and brothers reinforces my secular psychological structures. But I prefer to think of each such journey as a pilgrimage.

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