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.