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.
9/11: To The Wives and Partners
In honor of the families and friends of those mourning a loved one today, and especially for the wives and girlfriends and partners who lost someone, this sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay:
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the time;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter love must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughs abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, – so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.
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?