As I mentioned, Betty & I got to see Mariette Pathy Allen’s new book while at a GenderPAC event – a small party/outreach/fundraiser. GenderPAC is the ‘Gender Public Advocacy Coalition,’ an organization which works to end discrimination and violence caused by gender stereotypes. Riki Wilchins, author of Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender is the executive director.
Wilchins and others spoke about their mission and their current projects: 1) Workplace Fairness – in which GPAC helps corporations add gender protections to their EEO policies; 2) Public Education & Violence Prevention – which involves lobbying, press releases (which draw the media’s attention to violence against transgender people, which is why most of us even heard about the rash of killings in DC recently ), and works on changing laws in order to protect transgender people, and 3) GenderYouth – which is rallying support at colleges and high schools to end the bullying, harassment, & discrimination that is too often part of school life.
Obviously, crossdressers stand to benefit from their efforts. Because most CDs are not out, and so cannot help do their share in terms of helping eduate the public, the best way to support GPAC might be to donate money. Those of you who work for corporations might talk to someone at your company about adding gender protections to your EEO. & you don’t have to out yourself to do any of this! So go read the website, write a check, spread the word!
Mariette Pathy Allen's new book
Last night Betty & I went to a GenderPAC event (more on GPAC & the meeting tomorrow), which was hosted by the lovely & talented Mariette Pathy Allen, the photographer. If you don’t know her book Transformations, you should: it’s a document of crossdressers. The photographs are their lives, on the page, interspersed with their own words. It was the first book my husband gave me about crossdressing, and I especially loved that there are wives and girlfriends in the book as well – also in their own words. I recommend it highly.
As luck would have it, Ms. Allen’s new book was delivered just in time for the gathering, & we were able to look at a copy. It is GORGEOUS. The photos are of the entire tg spectrum: mtf, ftm, and her photography is more gorgeous even than it was in Transformations.
The new book is called The Gender Frontier, and you can check out some of the photographs that appear in it here.
National Coming Out Day – Oct 11th
I read an FAQ at the Human Rights’ Campaign’s website yesterday about Nat’l Coming Out Day, and was quite pleased to see that ‘transvestite’ made their short list of transgender categories.
http://www.hrc.org/ncop/faqs.asp
What occurred to me is that it would be great if crossdressers could really rally to coming out to someone this year: a wife, if she doesn’t know yet; children or parents, or more likely, a friend. Even if you’re not ready for that, you could come out to a stranger: go buy those size 11 pumps and tell the clerk at Payless (or Kenneth Cole) they’re for you!
Of course there are a million reasons to come out (a bunch of them are in the FAQ above) but I think the best reason is it can make YOU feel better. In the long run, of course, every crossdresser who comes out makes some other crossdresser’s life a little bit easier. (Shoot, look at how liberating Eddie Izzard’s being out has been for so many of us! But more on him some other time.)
So what do you think? Will you come out to someone this October 11th?