Category: Interview

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #104, Winter 2004.

A Modern Day Christine Jorgensen
by Christine Beatty

Calpernia Addams is a woman you can?t help but notice. Even among the remarkable landscape of transsexual women, she stands out. In some ways she is a new millennium version of Christine Jorgensen. She has adapted marvelously to her unexpected role on The Big Stage, and she has used that position to educate others and advance the cause of transgendered people everywhere.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #104, Winter 2004.

by Monica F. Helms

?Sheriff! Sheriff! The new doc just got off the train!?

?Calm down, Cleatis. Iffin? ya seens one doctor, ya seens ?em all.?

?Not like this, Sheriff. This doctor?s a ?she?!?

?Well, I?ll be hornswaggled. We got ourselves another Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman!?

In Trinidad, just 126 miles south of Colorado Springs, where the fictitious Dr. Quinn hung out her shingle, a new pioneer woman has come onto the scene?only this one is doing sex reassignment surgery. Dr. Marci Bowers, 45, a successful and award-winning OB/GYN doctor from Seattle, has decided to use the knowledge and skills she has learned to give back to our community. After all, she is one of us.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #99, Fall 2002.


Lessons From my Year as President
Or How to Survive with your Sense of Humor Intact

It was little more than a year ago that I was approached by friends who encouraged me to run for President of the TransGender Education Association (TGEA), one of the social/support groups in Washington, D.C. At the time, there was a palpable sense of apathy rising in a group that once numbered over 90 members. Over the years, the pool of regulars?who always found a way to stay involved?began to dry up or burn out. As elections approached, there were more open positions than there were nominations or incumbents.

by Gordene O. MacKenzie
and Nancy R. Nangeroni

(from Tapestry 098)

In the second half of the last decade, the board of directors the Boston-based Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) decided to look closely at the emerging arena of gender and transgenderism, in hopes of incorporating some of the perspectives emerging from that movement into their work. As a group of attorneys litigating key cases in hopes of setting far-reaching precedents in defense of LGBT persons, the GLAD board made it their mission to advocate on behalf of those who had been denied justice because of their gender.

Four years ago, they offered a job to a trans-identified attorney from Chicago who had been helping transpeople with legal concerns in her spare time. That attorney was Jennifer Levi. Since that time, Jennifer has been involved in?and won?a number of high-visibility court cases in the New England area, establishing far-reaching precedents on matters dear to the transgender heart. She was the primary drafter of Rhode Island?s transgender-inclusive non-discrimination law. She has been instrumental in winning favorable rulings for transpeople in employment, health care, lending, public accommodations, and education. Her arguments produced a legal victory in the Brockton, MA case where a biologically male transgendered student won the right to attend school wearing ?girl?s? clothing. She is working to ensure transpeople are included under federal sex discrimination law. We spoke with Jennifer about gender case law, and about her own gender identity and beliefs.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #98, Summer 2002.

Shannon Minter, the Legal Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, took time out of his busy day to interview Lisa Mottet, the Legislative Lawyer for the brand new Transgender Civil Rights Project, which she created with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Shannon and Lisa first met in early 1999 in Washington, D.C. Although Shannon didn?t know it at the time, Lisa immediately identified Shannon as someone from whom she could learn a lot. Three years later, Lisa consults regularly with Shannon about language of proposed bills and ordinances and developments in litigation. She works with him on a variety of collaborative projects relating to transgender civil rights issues.

True-Life Experiences at the Gender Clinics

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #98, Summer 2002.

Sharon

Sharon, who was interviewed in the last issue of Chrysalis Quarterly, is a 41-year-old post-operative male-to- female transsexual person. She has lived full-time as a woman for nearly two years. She works in a professional capacity, and says she has never been happier. This is what she tells us about her experience with a gender clinic in a large mid-southern city in the late 1970s.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #096, Winter 2001.

by Larissa Glasser


Simply put, not many of us associate heavy metal music with transgenderism. Its cultural roots trace to a popularly perceived heterosexism from the male perspective. Surprised?

Despite the genre?s blatant avowal of androgyny, rebellion and empowerment, the average fan of heavy metal music is about as far from the definition of queer as you can get?at least from the queer side of the fence. Despite its outlaw characteristics, metal just ain?t a queer place to be.

Having started with popular bands such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath in the late sixties/early seventies, metal came into full flourish during the eighties?the dawn of Reagan, AIDS, and music censorship by the Parents Music Resource Center. It was under these oppressive circumstances that in the United States heavy metal music began to gain ground in the music collections of predominantly male youths (Beavis and Butthead wear AC/DC and Metallica T-shirts). However, a closer examination indicates an appeal across the gender spectrum. Although heavy metal is still perceived in many circles as misogynist and homophobic, there is a power in this music and outlaw identity that harnesses a commonality with queer and trans culture. Occasionally, you may even run into someone who embodies that.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #096, Winter 2001.

by Mariette Pathy Allen

June 22, 2001, a warm, humid Saturday, happened to be my birthday. I decided to celebrate by immersing myself in two aspects of life that have always fascinated me: art and gender, so I took the train to Albany. I taxied across the river to Troy, a beautiful, bleak old industrial city often used as a backdrop for historical movies. The artists? reception at Fulton Street Gallery, which lies on a quiet, tree-lined street, was in full swing, making history.

?Aspects of Gender,? the brainchild of Helen ?Montage? Farrell, was as far as I know, the first conference devoted to art made by people of transgender experience. Although some conventions, noteably those organized by transmen, have included art exhibitions and an occasional art-related workshop, art has never been the main subject of any transgender gathering.