With Cindy Martin
Transgender Forum Publisher
© 1997 Transgender Forum
Got a news tip? Seen a story with a TG angle to it?
Don't assume we know about it already.
Email Cindy and she'll spread the news!
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?
April 28, 1997
In a broadcast two weeks ago McDonald publicly mocked the Missouri TS who lost custody of her children in a high profile court case. Reacting to the decision, McDonald smirked and said words to the effect that it was a "tough call, the kids' mother or the guy with the fake vagina". This is the same Norm McDonald who last year said an FTM deserved to die.
I wonder if McDonald would still be working if he had made that kind of a comment about a gay or lesbian parent? I think we know the answer to that. So, too, did McDonald's audience, which didn't laugh much at his vile comment.
Here's my basic take: you want to make fun of Rudy Guiliani's drag turn, cool. Guiliani (the mayor of NYC) is a public figure and it was pretty incredible that he dressed up so amazingly well at a major media event last month. But the TS in Missouri is just an ordinary person. But McDonald, a powerful, well-paid guy, is a cheap shot artist who seems to enjoy going after the weak and powerless.
This guy really does suck.
Here is my letter to NBC:
To whom it may concern:
For the second time in two years Norm McDonald has made a hateful comment about a transexual to a national audience. His horrific commentary about the custody case in Missouri, in which he mocked a transexual's attempt to get joint custody of her children was about as insensitive and ugly an utterance as ever made on national television. This follows his commentary in late 1996 when he suggested that a female to male transexual deserved to be murdered in a Nebraska case.
An apology will not do this time. McDonald must be removed from the show, permanently.
Sincerely,
Cindy Martin
Publisher
Transgender Forum
http://www.tgforum.com
If you would like to write you can use this email link: snl@nbc.com
onventions are successful or not depending on what your expectations are. I had pretty low ones for the 1997 International Foundation for Gender Education, but three things made it a roaring success: Newsweek magazine, the Magnus Hirschfeld exhibit and the chance to meet a lot of you in person.
The organizers lucked out big time when Newsweek magazine, yes, THAT Newsweek magazine, informed them that they wanted access to people at the event for interviews as part of story on changing perceptions of gender. As I write this I am anticipating that the story will appear on newsstands today, though it could come out any time (or even be killed).
It was major commitment that was prompted by several stories you've read about here. One involved the custody battle in Missouri that has so far gone against an MTF transexual. The other was the story about the young man who was raised as a female after his penis was accidentally cut off in his infancy twenty-plus years ago. The young person eventually switched back to male, confounding researchers and some feminists who believed that with the right "nurture" anyone could be any gender. Apparently it is a little more complicated than that.
None us knows the line this story will take on us, and there was some concern that the magazine was going to do a superficial job and focus mostly on TG culture rather than some of the major issues confronting the community - including the extreme discrimination and prejudice we still face (see above for more on that). We will know better when the article comes out. But as my partner JoAnn Robert's said "Even a superficial job is better than being ignored."
She is right too. At this stage in our history it is clear that we remain exotic and unfathomable to many people, basically because we are still, for the most part, a giant secret society. People don't know us as individuals. That makes it easy to trash us.
I was excited that a national publication would spend several days interviewing and photographing transgenders. A studio was set up for possible cover photos (there was no shortage of volunteers for that!) and the reporter handling the piece was on the Queen Mary - the convention's venue - for two full days. The picture at the top of this column was a Polaroid test shot taken by one of the magazine's photographers.
But I'm not naive. I know that my excitement over the story is partly because our community is weak politically and I'll take just about anything that treats us reasonably well. I know that if we were powerful, we'd demand a lot more.
My other pleasant surprise was the Magnus Hirschfeld exhibit.
Transgender Forum underwrote a large part of the cost of bringing this exhibit from Germany to Long Beach, CA, but to be honest I wasn't quite sure what we were getting. JoAnn Roberts assured me that the community would enjoy it and hey, if Jo says it's good, Jamie Faye and I are there.
I knew that Hirschfeld, a German psychoanalyst was a pioneer in examining the causes and manifestations of transgenderism. I didn't know, but should have guessed, that he was also one of the earliest targets of the Nazis. They destroyed his Berlin Institute in 1933 and tried to wipe out all his work. They failed.
Twelve years of painstaking research and work by dedicated people, including TGF's own Claudia Wrede, resulted in an amazing exhibit of photos and articles put together art gallery-style in 5 sections with a total of 55 panels. The photos of hermaphrodites alone are stunning, but one picture of a 1930 sexual reassignment surgery left me with the deepest impression. Like many of us, I thought the first SRS was in the late 1940s. I had no clue that it had been done, successfully, so early.
The exhibit also contains photos of transvestites, "bearded" ladies, and many other variants of the gender spectrum. It is truly a must-see if it comes to your area. It is scheduled to go to the Goethe Institute in San Francisco with a May 10 opening and then to Philadelphia. Additional itinerary has not been formalized, nor is it clear where the exhibit will be permanently housed, though it is probably going to end up at Cal State Northridge in the Los Angeles area. We'll keep you posted on this.
Then there was you.
I would hurt someone's feelings if I tried to name all the TGF folks who are at the convention and the pictures we have only get a small number of you. But it was a real thrill to meet so many of you in person. And yes, you all look as great in person as you do here!
rin Souza, president of ETVC, is one of the funniest, quickest people I know.
During the convention Erin spotted TG radio personality and activist Nancy Nangeroni wearing a "Transexual Menace - New York" warm-up jacket and suggested that the next logical step are TS Menace restaurant franchises, à la Planet Hollywood and Hard Rock Cafe.
"You have to have the wall mementos of course," she said. "Like the handcuffs worn by the first queen dragged out of the Stonewall, Virginia Prince's high heels and Ed Wood's angora sweater. " Naturally the menu would be in theme too. There'd be the Rikiburger in honor of trans-activist Riki Wilchins and for desert a delicious JoAnn Roberts Re-Torte. My favorite was Erin's drink idea: the Cindy Martini.
Erin also was the brainstorm behind a new activist group, the TV answer to Transexual Menace:
Transvestite Nuisance!
We'll be rolling out our non-negotiable demands officially in JoAnn Robert's column next week (hint: #1 on the list is Price Controls for Beaded Gowns! NOW!)
It's silly and gets sillier still but the purpose is serious: fundraising for community groups and actions. Don't miss JoAnn's column next week for all about it...
Erin also came up with a quickie
Top Ten Excuses Why My Legs Are Shaved, Honey:
10. I'm going to become a cross-country biker, soon
9. I was in the bathroom and an electrical storm made your Satinelle go out of control.
8. Hair got in way of CAT scan. Don't worry, I'm OK
7. Every third generation of guys in my family loses leg hair at this age.
6. Volunteered for annual company hair drive.
5. Fell asleep in barber chair and he went overboard.
4. Trying to make weight for class reunion wrestling match
3. Picked AFC team in football bet with bull dyke.
2. Too much lighter fluid at Memorial Day barbeque
1. Mixed up Nair and Sunblock.
ig News! Anyone who reads my column probably has guessed by now that I am a really old person (all those photos are cheap rigs, I'm good with Photoshop) and have been around since the Roosevelt administration, that's Teddy Roosevelt.
Anyway, years ago, I remember my mom telling me that she'd never wear a wig because they looked "like hair helmet." As I learned in the post-GlamRock age, she was right.
Well, we've moved well past the mono-colored speaker wire fibers of the olden days and nice wigs, often with two or three color variations in the same piece are readily available.
But apparently some very new synthetics are taking the market by storm. These fibers are incredibly thin and strong, but even better, some manufacturers are now combining five or more colors (like real head hair) in one piece, an effect which makes these new wigs the hairpiece equivalent of digital TV: incredibly lifelike and real.
They're pricey, naturally, but at $150-$200, far less than human hair wigs use to be. And, like someone once said, "If you're spending more on your breastforms than your hair you've got your priorities wrong!"
I'll have more to report on this at a later time.
hat we need: activists with common sense.
I had an amazing conversation with one of the nation's leading trans-activists during the IFGE convention and came away more worried than ever about where some people are trying to take us.
Let me put it clean and simple: we don't need more "glorious" defeats.
Now to explain. I've said before that any political movement that has a focussed agenda and a wide base of support, like the American Association of Retired Persons, has a great chance of being effective. On the other hand, any movement that tries to be all things to all people is virtually assured of failure.
The transgender political movement must first and foremost be about the issues that effect us, like job loss, family disruption and the extreme prejudice that those of us who are out sometimes face. Accomplishing anything so obvious as a law forbidding people from firing us just because we are transgender (no quotas!) will require both the support of the community at-large, including those who face none of these issues, and convincing skeptical politicians to get behind our causes.
This is going to be a brutally tough battle, though I believe it is winnable. But we will guarantee ourselves failure if we do what major players want to do now: include any sexual minority who wants to be part of the transgender community.
I was told by a leading light at the IFGE convention that our community, specifically GenderPAC, has a moral obligation to include everyone who wants to be part of the community's political lobbying effort. The sado-masochist community wants in right now. It is not at all inconceivable that adult babies will ask for recognition too. And there are new minorities shaping up who have already indicated that they are part of us, including the "transpecies" people who like to dress like furry animals.
I do NOT mock or disrespect any of these people. But politics is a practical art and frankly, including these groups will destroy the small chance we have of moving forward.
Naturally, this put me on the moral low ground with this particular leader, who admitted to me in front of another person that her strategy of including everyone is probably going to lead to the defeat of our cause. (!)
Her argument was that if we exclude people we become just like those gay and lesbian organizations, specifically the Human Rights Campaign Fund (HRCF) that wants no part of us in their effort to get a national law prohibiting job discrimination against gays.
Yes, that's correct. We do become like them. So what? They have their agenda, their practical battles, and we have ours. They've been successful. We've been...
I think it is very nice that gay and lesbian groups around the country have begun including us in their organizations, it is truly a wonderful development. Indeed, in Washington State, the leading gay and lesbian groups have agreed to include transgenders in their battles for a ballot initiative ending job discrimination even though surveys have shown that it will lose is TGs are part of the ballot language.
But if the Washington measure passes it would be one of the first in which gays and lesbians have actively worked to get a law including us passed. Frankly, the laws now directly protecting transgenders, and I'm talking about the laws in San Francisco, Seattle, and Minnesota, did not result from the direct work of gays and lesbians. A law in Santa Cruz that makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of appearance was really intended primarily to protect gays. We came in as an after thought. And who do you think made it possible for a person to change their sex on a California driver's license? Who made it legal to cross-dress in Houston, TX? Hint: transgenders.
Folks, our gay and lesbian friends are dear to me and I do love them because they have been mostly sympathetic. But WE made the laws happen, not them. Their friendly assistance made it all possible, but we were the workhorses and dad gummit, that is the way it should be.
Second, it is totally specious to compare the transgender movement in 1997 with the gay and lesbian rights movement of 1997.
Try comparing us instead to the gay rights movement of 1970.
I was around then and I don't remember any big rush to "include" us. Au contraire. Neither do I recall any big attempt at formally including the leather boys or dykes on bikes crowd. Yes, they came in later, after the gay movement became highly visible and powerful, but they were not part of the public persona in the early days.
And these are our early days. Hell, at least 90 percent of our people are still in the closet, and I'm being generous with that estimate.
Look, I wish all the other sexual minorities well, I really do. And, like our gay and lesbian friends, I believe we need to be sympathetic to their causes. But we need to get our own house in order first.
For these comments I was accused, indirectly of "identity" politics. This is clever because it was an attempt to put me into a trap. See, conservatives like to deride minorities for playing identity politics. So, for a radical to use this line on me was quite sharp. I presume she thought that since I am ostensibly the conservative (ha,ha) I would recoil at identity politics.
Wrong. I think identity politics are what we must play right now. We have NO identity to most people, at least not a positive one. Establishing our unique identity is the key to our success, or failure.
eports that the UFO suicide cult in San Diego included "castrated" men gave me pause. Obviously, some of the people in that group took seriously the part of their belief system that promised they would become genderless in the "Next Level" above Human, which is what they called heaven.
This may sound odd from a transgender person, but a genderless world doesn't appeal much to me.
Sounds boring, frankly.
A world with a lot of gender variance is more what I have in mind. The idea of everyone being the same, everyone wearing black clothes, Nike sneakers and wearing crewcut hair is so...wait, a minute, that's what people look like in the bars South of Market in San Francisco...
JoAnn Roberts, Jamie Faye and I were talking about this story the other day and it was interesting the perspectives my partners have.
Jamie, the computer whiz, said it was incredibly weird walking into her office on Thursday and seeing every screen in the place with the "Heaven's Gate" home page blinking. "No wonder it was so hard to get in," she said.
I told JoAnn about a comment from a hardboiled colleague of mine who surprised me by wondering aloud if Heaven's Gate really was a nut group. He wondered whether it was crazy for people who believe in something to die for it. Hadn't other true believers done this? Don't we now call them "martyrs"? Hmmm, but I don't remember any major religions requiring people to commit suicide to reach paradise...
JoAnn thought about this a minute and came up with the best line I've heard about this:
"The only difference between a nutcase and a saint is the number of people willing to follow him."
Saudi religious court sentenced a man to 200 lashes and six months in prison for wearing a dress to a wedding party in the city of Hael, according to a wire service report this month. The man said he was dressed as a woman to get a surreptitious look at women he might want to marry.
Yeah, and I like to shop in drag at Macy's because it's the best way to pick out clothes for my wife.
Thanks to Jane for that item...
hanks to a large contribution from Transgender Forum, a very special exhibit of Magnus Hirschfeld's work will be on display at the upcoming IFGE convention in Long Beach, California.
Hirschfeld, a German psychoanalyst was a pioneer in examining the causes and manifestations of transgenderism.
The exhibit consists of 5 sections with a total of 55 panels including -- as its core -- the reconstruction of Hirschfeld's original picture wall illustrating his theory of sexual intermediates.
This special exhibit contains important parts of our community's history and after Long Beach is expected to be displayed in other cities. It is scheduled to go to the Goethe Institute in San Francisco, then to Philadelphia, the additional itinerary has not been formalized. We'll keep you posted on this.
 Angora (104k) |
 ust for the hell of it, here are some really great audio clips from "Glen or Glenda", Ed Wood's 1954 film about a transvestite's travails. Either be adventurous and click on the girl's body or just click the color links. These file sizes are accurate. Be a little patient while they load. They're worth it. Wood's movie was certainly heartfelt, he was a transvestite himself, but as much as I try to like it, the film really is appallingly bad. However, the scene when Wood (who is Glen/Glenda) peers longingly at lingerie while on the street en femme as "Glenda" is a great moment. Maybe not in film history, but a great moment anyway. Wood, who produced a string of disasters, including the infamous "Plan Nine From Outer Space", was immortalized in a 1992 movie baring his name and starring Johnny Depp. Let me know if you like these clips and I'll put a few more up next month.
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Much more is coming, but we don't believe in putting a lot of crappy, untested technology up just for the sake of having it. We also try not to create pages that take forever to load, which is why we don't have many "flying baloneys" here.
However, you can be certain that TGF will continue to change and improve and we think you'll find many of our planned new features to be exciting and useful. I haven't noticed that our readers are particularly shy about telling us what they do and don't like and if you don't like it, we'll just dump it!
he Harvey Milk Institute (HMI) is pleased to announce a four-hour
seminar, May 10th at 10:00 a.m. entitled "Transgenderism and Society."
the cost of the seminar is $25 to HMI. The seminar will be held at the
HMI offices at 584b Castro Street, San Francisco.
Further details are
available through HMI by phoning (415) 552-7200. The instructor for
this course will be Saybrook student and frequent TGF contributor, Ted J. Clement, MA (aka Stacy).
avid
Cronenberg's new film Crash hit American movie screens last week, telling
a sordid story of people obtaining sexual excitement from car crashes and the
bodily injury of the victims. The film was adapted from a 1973 cult novel by
J.G. Ballard. Add this to the long list of films depicting transgenderism in
the worst way. Included in this gruesome assemblage is a fetishistic
transvestite who fondles his imitation breasts while watching car crash
videos. The transvestite eventually perishes in his reenactment of the 1967
automobile accident that killed American film actress Jayne Mansfield. ---contributed by Kristina Latham
David Cronenberg is no stranger to truly sick ideas and gruesome special effects. Don't waste your money on this crap. The real world is harsh enough.
ne of my favorite people, photographer Mariette Pathy Allen, has an interesting exhibit running on the web right now. It isn't heavily TG, but very interesting anyway. Mariette, by the way, is one of the community's top photographers and we hope to convince her to display some of her work here...
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