Tag: organizations

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Five Questions With… Mona Rae Mason

mona rae masonMona Rae Mason is the Transgender Project‘s Field Coordinator and has been out and active in the TG community in NYC and Northeastern PA. for several years. As a former barmaid in a mid-town Manhattan cocktail lounge, she promoted and hosted several successful trans fundraisers – one for The NYC Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, another for City Meals on Wheels. She has been active in arranging, promoting and hosting transgender specific parties and events, and also speaks at various Transgender support groups and organizations.

1) What is the Transgender Project and what is its goal?

The Transgender Project is a longitudinal study of the male to female Transgender community of the greater NY metro area. The goal of The Transgender Project is, quite simply, to learn! ” The more we learn of ourselves, the better we can teach others”–and that’s pretty much what all this is about. When all is said and done, we will be able to present to MD’s, therapists, and clinicians some powerful and important information about our communtiy. After all, we can’t really expect them to be able to help us if we don’t give them proper information. We need to help them to help us.
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Fundraiser for Hurricane Katrina Victims at CDI

The local CD group CDI is having a fundraiser for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The organization will match all contributions up to $500, so if attendees donate $500, the hurricane victims will get $1000.
I think this is a brilliant idea, and I’ve donated a signed copy of my book for them to use as a fundraiser. I’d welcome requests from any other TG groups who’d be interested in doing the same thing. My contact information is right here.
Below are more details about the event, and even more can be found on the MHB Boards.

BBQ Fundraiser for Victims of Hurricane Katrina
Wednesday, September 14 at the Open House Dinner at 8:00pm

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Katrina

First a letter from one RenaRF to the President which was also posted on Daily Kos. It sums up how I’m feeling, too.
RenaRF also provided a list of organizations that are focusing their efforts on the Gulf.
Also, here’s a good article on the funding issue, & why the region wasn’t prepared.
& Another one that appeared in Salon
There is *no reason* that in this country, with our resources and technology, the poor folks of the South were left to evacuate by their own means, except for the short fall of empathy.
And God bless that man who had to let go of his wife’s hand.

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Five Questions With… Rosalyne Blumenstein

Rosalyne Blumenstein is the formerRosalyne Blumenstein directer of the Gender Identity Project at the GLBT Center in Manhattan, and is the author of Branded T.
1. You emphasize the non-inclusion of bisexual and transpeople in your book Branded T by writing it “GLbt.” Do you think this still holds true – are bisexuals and Ts still left out of the majority of “gay activism”?
I currently live in LA. In June they have their Pride Weekend. It is called Gay Pride, need I say more? …Well I will anyway.
I think we have gone backwards just like the larger system. I believe there to be a parallel process going on with the way in which government is running things and the way in which our social movements are following. Here’s the deal and my swing on it. (Not that I know anything… opinions are like assholes – everyone has one, well mostly everyone has one).
Again this is only my opinion.
I believe everyone should be able to live they way they want, experience some semblance of freedom, love, be loved, feel fulfilled, dream, and be on a journey. However, within the gay agenda it is all about mimicking a Christian heterosexist mentality. Mind you, take this apart there is nothing wrong with Christian…having a certain belief system and having faith which is grand and extremely helpful in life…
And as far as Heterosexuality is concerned, there is nothing wrong with someone who identifies as male loving someone who identifies as female. I for one would love to be in another relationship with a man. Right now I would love to be in a relationship with someone breathing let alone what damn gender they identify as.
But from my understanding of a sexual minority movement it‘s about many different kinds of loves, not just the sanctity of marriage. It’s about not buying into just the white picket fence and the 2.3 kids.
So the Gay Agenda has become about wanting the same things everybody else wants which is not a bad thing but is not the voice of the whole queer movement. In fact most voices that are silenced within the movement are those

  • that are either getting their ass kicked on the streets because they don’t blend
  • or those with little power within the political system
  • or those that care less about identity politics, they just want to be, live, have great sex, explore, be.

So the gay agenda doesn’t give voice to all concerned. Well maybe these groupings get some quality TV time during Pride since that is what media wants to show and that is what the larger gay movement does want to be viewed as. I think it is all about oppression and many times the oppressed (gay community) become the oppressors (the rest of us that don’t identify as gay).
So in answer to your question my dear I think B and T folk within the gay movement have the opportunity to participate within the movement but in the larger scheme of things and what is portrayed to the Universe is Gay= LGBT.
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Five Questions With… Interview with Jamison Green

Jamison Green is the author of Becoming A Visible Manjamison green (Vanderbilt U. Press, 2004), which won the CLAGS’ Sylvia Rivera Book Award and was a Lambda Literary Finalist. He writes a monthly column for PlanetOut, and is a trans-activist of unmatched credibility. He is board chair of Gender Advocacy and Education, a board member for the Transgender Law and Policy Institute and the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, and served as the head of FTM International for most of the 1990s*. He is referred to in many other books about trans issues, including Patrick Califia’s Sex Changes, Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein, and Body Alchemy by Loren Cameron.
1. Betty and I often repeat your “there is no right way to be trans” idea, and I was wondering if any one thing contributed to you believing that.
I guess you could boil it down to the desire not to invalidate other people, but that desire has been informed by exposure to a wide variety of transgender and transsexual individuals of many ages, from many cultures, and many walks of life. Some people take it upon themselves to judge other trans people, to say “You’ll never make it as a man” or “as a woman,” or “you’re not trans enough,” “radical enough,” “queer enough,” whatever the case is. But I’ve known people who were told those things who went on to have successful transitions and generally satisfying lives, though they often felt burned enough by “the community” to stay away from it. I think it’s a shame that people cut themselves and/or others off from the potential for community, and I think that if we all truly believed there was room for everyone and we could learn to truly appreciate other’s differences and each person’s intrinsic value as a human being –and if we worked to make that a reality– then we, as collective trans people, might really make a positive difference in the world.
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Five Questions With… Gwen Smith

gwen smithGwen Smith, Transmissions columnist and originator of the Remembering Our Dead project, answers five questions. Thanks, Gwen, for being willing.
1) Since you’re famous for having created the TG Day of Remembrance, what do you think is the best thing to come out of this holiday?
When I began the Remembering Our Dead Project, out of which the Transgender Day of Remembrance was born, I did it with the full knowledge that I was but one voice crying out in what seemed to be a wilderness.
I’ve long been pleasantly surprised to have been proven wrong about that, and to see the event has become as big as it has. Last year there were 212 events that I know of. There was an event in the small town I live in, that I had no direct hand in: it sprung up on its own. I simply never expected it to grow like it has.
As such, I’d have to say that the best thing to come out of this is a moment where we are all together, showing our strength, and that our community can truly be as one.
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Reader Privacy

Rep Bernie Saunders of Vermont is once again going to try to get the Freedom to Read Amendment passed. The Amendment would cut off funding for library and bookstore searches that came with the USA Patriot Act.
You should contact your House Representative and urge him or her to vote yes on the Freedom to Read Amendment. You can find your Rep by checking the House’s website.
For more information, check the boards, and these organizations.
American Library Assocation
American Booksellers Association
Association of American Publishers
PEN American Center.

www.readerprivacy.org for more information.

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Sex & the Shingled Girl

It turned out, after two bad diagnoses, that what I had was shingles. This is a medieval illness, a virus that causes extreme pain, pox marks, and more extreme pain. You can only get it if you’ve had chicken pox as a child; somehow part of becoming immune from chicken pox includes storing this little evil in cells. Stress or a lowered immune system can cause it to flare; I probably had both – the former due to a really bad allergy season, and the latter due to – everything else.
I was very lucky to have a transitioning doctor friend, Deborah, who diagnosed me long distance when the two doctors I saw in Brooklyn failed (one thought it was TMJ, the other Parotiditis).
It felt like an ear infection, a sinus infection, and an abscessed tooth all at once: brutal amounts of pain that even Percoset only quieted. Now, most of the pain has gone away, though occasionally I get these pangs of pain that seem to come right from the healing pox marks. Like I said: medieval.
Thanks to everyone for the good wishes, and my apologies again for missing the Lambda reading in DC and the CLAGS conference. Also, thanks to Carolyn Ann for a ride to the doctor, to Deborah for the correct diagnosis, and to Sarah Joan for the title of this post.

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The Only Times

Betty & I have been separated very rarely – at least for an overnight – in our seven years together. Once for a performance of her acting company in PA, and then again in February for an NCTE Board Meeting, and now again – this weekend – for an NCTE Board meeting in DC.
It makes me sad as I was going to go with her, but because she’ll be in meetings from 9am – 5pm on Saturday, and 9am – 3pm on Sunday (right after which she returns), we really couldn’t justify spending the money for me to go.
Besides, I’m Queen of Cats this weekend. A couple of people in our building are away, so I’m watching four cats altogether: our boys, of course, and the differently-eyed Truman (one green, one blue – he’s all white) and the very young and impish Basil, who is the only female of the four.
Betty spent so many weekends working as an actor; I was looking forward to us actually getting three-day weekends now that she’s unofficially “retired” from acting. But alas – no luck. Instead, tranny politics take her away.
I’m a little sad, and a little bored, and a little lonely, and yet – not enough of any of them to do anything about it. I’ll clean, I might watch a movie, have brunch with friends. It amazes me that only a 48-hour separation makes me feel so – singular. The bed’s too big without her, indeed (though the cats will no doubt fill a great deal of the empty space).
A Happy Memorial Day to all. I hope yours is full of romance, and sex, and love and laughter.