VL.9.23.2002

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   ANNOUNCEMENTS
   
   [1]USA:Cyperspace---Gender March on Washington e-group
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   [thanks to Rory Gould via gendermow and Rica Ashby Fredrickson 
<rica@netaxs.com>
   
Ms. Fredrickson writes:
But please note: to subscribe by email, the correct contact address is 
presresumably <GenderMarch-subscribe@yahoogroups.com> ... then you reply to the
response you receive.  Those of us who use yahoogroups much know the
drill :-)  -- rica]
   
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2002
From: Rory Gould
   
You and your friends and family who support gender equality, are
cordially invited to join the Gender March on Washington official
e-group at GenderMarch@yahoogroups.com.
   
This is the place to find the latest information and announcements from
the March Committee.  This site has an open membership to the press and
public. 
   
Please pass this announcement along to any interested party.  For
further information, contact GenderMarch@yahoo.com. 
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[2]Canada: Toronto TG film festival - Counting Past 2 , Sept 13- 20th

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   [thanks to Terisa Gibson via transgendernews]and Rica Ashby Fredrickson 
<rica@netaxs.com>

Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2002
From: Terisa Gibson <terisa_gibson@hotmail.com>

http://www.countingpast2.com/

Counting Past 2
Performance/Film/Video/Spoken Word
with Transsexual Verve!

September 13 -20, 2002
Toronto Canada
Screenings at the Bloor Cinema ˆ 506 Bloor St W
(detailed program)
http://www.countingpast2.com/program02.html

COUNTING PAST 2 is celebrating the 4th Transsexual, Intersex and 
Transgender Film/Video/Arts' Festival. This festival originated with 
the express purpose of promoting the artistic endeavors of 
Transsexual, Intersex and Transgender people, providing a space for 
artists to network, and for the public to learn about these 
communities from their own voices and not just from the 
stereotypical, mainstream representations. We have included a 
spectrum of Transartists from all walks of life and different genres 
of work, there should be something for everyone to enjoy. 

The Ontario and Toronto Arts Councils are funding sponsors of this 
year's film and video festival, which will be produced in 2002 by new 
Executive Director, Boyd Kodak and Director of Development, Cat 
Grant. We are multimedia artists, with experience in film and 
television. We have curated numerous programs for a variety of the 
world's top festivals, and have been involved in every past Counting 
Past 2. 

This press release comes late due to a critical illness endured by 
the E.D. Although a bit behind schedule, it is our pleasure to 
announce The Counting 2 Festival, number 4, will run from Friday 
September 13-20, 2002. There are 9 events planned, including 7 film & 
video programs, consisting of 43 movies. Themes run from people who 
love Transpersons to Transpeoples' art reflecting their own lives 
with plenty of comedy, drama, experiment, and trans aesthetic. 
Fabulously unique movies screening at the historic 850 seat Bloor 
Cinema. World, Canadian and Toronto Premieres hail from New Zealand, 
Australia, Germany, Mexico, USA & Canada. 

Some of the filmmakers and stars will be attending the festival, 
which will allow for an amazing cultural exchange. The Counting Past 
2 Festival attracts diverse crowds and is a popular event with all 
the communities involved. Come experience this well-known and oldest 
surviving Trans festival in the world. Some of this years highlights 
are: 

Opening night on September 13th 2002 is located at The University of 
Toronto (room 140). Special guest from Quebec, Viviane K. Namaste 
Ph.D., (author of Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and 
Transgendered People) will be presenting the world premiere of her 
lecture/slide/video "Cherchez La Femme". This project was in part 
funded by the Canada Council for the Arts and takes us back into the 
history of Trans women performing and living in Quebec over the past 
50 years. Entertaining and fascinating, it challenges many of our 
assumptions and beliefs. 

This event is followed by a welcoming reception featuring the music 
recordings of classical musician, Transsexual Woman, Sandra Clark 
(USA) who plays French Horn with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra. 

To Know One Is To Love One is the opening film program with a focus 
on the significant others and children in this community.Australia's 
award winner "Taste" Lisa Dombroski, explores the moments when a love 
interest finds out that you're Transsexual, a drama with a slice of 
real TS life."Myth Of Father" a documentary by Paul Hill, the son of 
a TS woman who utilizes his father's transition as a tool to work 
with his desire to become closer to his parent. 

The program called Doing it for Themselves includes popular and award 
winning film and videomakers from within the Tcommunity. 15 shorts of 
brand new work, 7 of which are by local artists' and promises to be a 
jam packed visual delight! 

The Shiver Me Timbers program includes the Toronto premiere of a film 
that has caused controversy over censorship vs. public funded 
art ."Girl King" by award winner Ileana Pietrobruno, is a millennium 
bodice ripper, with a hot dyke queen and Tgboy pirates searching for 
lost treasure. Drag king shorts from New York and Toronto accompany 
this original film including the sexy playful video highlighting 
Latin culture, "PAPI" by Gricel Severino. 

In the All Dressed Up With Somewhere To Go program, The beautifully 
filmed "Bitter Secret" from Germany by Michael Verhoevan is a 
thoughtful piece that touches you with it's story about a wife who 
finds out her husband is regularly crossdressing. Joined by 
Trangendered characters from Austrailia & the USA, animated, spoofed 
and real these works will have you laughing and crying. 

A book launch of Trans Woman & Toronto author, Trish Salah's new 
volume of poetry at sPaHa modern bistro provides yet another type of 
entertainment. Ally, Reena Katz also will provide music, and Trish 
will read selections from her new work ("Wanting In Arabic"), which 
will be for sale. 

While the Baby I'm Not Blue shorts program is a chance or 
nonstereotypical Transerotica representation, Counting Past 2 also 
has educational programming. 

Transistion Positions features a documentary recording a two year 
Female to Male transition in "Sir: Just a Normal Guy" USA, by Melanie 
La Rosa, with shorts featuring trans artists' and a rare video by 
Vancouver trans youth who candidly share their lives and ambitions 
in, "Some Of The Stories of Trans Youth" by Jacob Simpson. 

Closing night's Proud Lives program is sure to be a spirited one, 
featuring community members from around the globe. Mexico's, "The One 
of Your Dreams I'll Be" by Mafer Suarez; Canada's, "Proud Lives" by 
Mirha- Soliel Ross & Mark Karbusicky and New Zealand's, "Georgie 
Girl", by Annie Goldson & Peter Wells . The inspiring story of 
Georgina Beyer the first Transsexual Minister of Parliament. 

Counting Past 2, 2002 is now the largest Trans Festival worldwide. 
This is an event that encourages not only creativity, but community 
and education, to artists, sponsors and to the enthusiastic crowds 
that The Counting Past 2 Festival steadily generates. We look forward 
to seeing you at Counting Past 2 enjoying another fabulous festival. 

Best Regards, 

Cat Grant & Boyd Kodak
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[3]USA:San Francisco--"Rated XXXY: An Evening of Erotica and Education benefitting the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA)"

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   Dear ISNA Supporter,
   
ISNA is holding its first-ever benefit performance in San Francisco. 
The board of ISNA will be on hand, and we do hope to see you there.
   
   
THE EVENT:	"Rated XXXY: An Evening of Erotica and Education
		benefitting the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA)"
   
   
WHEN:		FRIDAY October 4th 2002, 7:00-9:00 p.m.
   
WHERE:		SF GLBT Center Ceremonial Room
		1800 Market Street
		San Francisco, CA 94102
   
ADMISSION:	$10-50 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds
   
The Goal:  In the spirit of raising awareness and gearing up for more
activism and further ISNA successes, "Rated XXXY" is evening of performance,
fundraising, and information.
   
Performers include:    solidad decosta • Thea Hillman • Emi Koyama
• Les Milstein • Shorona se Mbessakwini • Hida Viloria and the fabulous MC:
Fairy Butch A.K.A. Karlyn Lotney
   
Produced by Thea Hillman, hosted by the Harvey Milk Institute, and
co-sponsored by Black Books, this event will include spoken word
performances reflecting intersex experiences, an auction, and updates about
what progress we've made and what work we still need to do to end shame,
secrecy, and unwanted sexual surgeries. Cheryl Chase will speak at the
event, as will other members of the ISNA Board of Directors, which includes
Alice Dreger, Julie Dorf, Debbie Hartman, Thea Hillman, Sydney Levy, Robin
Mathias, and Kim Saviano. "We have made great progress in raising awareness
about intersex. However, these natural differences and variations are being
systematically erased every day. In the United States, an estimated
five babies a day receive unwanted, unnecessary cosmetic surgery to
'normalize' their genitals. Until intersex people are allowed to keep intact
the healthy bodies they were born with&emdash;or make their
own decisions about what will happen to their body, ISNA will be here."
   
Seating is limited and this event will sell out. To pre-purchase tickets,
visit http://isna.org/rated/ or call Karry at 707/636-0420 (leave a 
message with name
and contact info). The SF GLBT Center is wheelchair accessible and
scent-free.
   
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   [4]USA: Transgender Tapestry producing a special issue on distributed 
gender education, #101..Call for submissions
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   EDITOR'S NOTE: The date noted for publication, March 2002 in all 
likelyhood is a misprint. I presume they meant March 2003.
   
Transgender Tapestry Journal
A Publication of the International Foundation for Gender Education, Inc.
 
P.O. Box 33724
Decatur, GA 30032-0724
editor@ifge.org

18 September, 2002

Transgender Tapestry will be producing a special issue on distributed gender education, #101, to be available in March, 2002. This issue will include information for use by readers in their own gender education efforts. Special tear-out pages will allow readers to remove and duplicate them free of charge.

We hope to produce an issue that will be helpful to those doing gender education and outreach work throughout the first decade of the 21st century.

We are inviting GLBT organizations and individuals to submit educational materials for this special issue. We will include brief descriptions of organizations and individuals and the work they do for the transgender community. In some cases, we will reproduce flyers as submitted; in other cases, we may ask for a cleaner design or will redesign the pages ourselves (to the satisfaction of the author or organization).

We would also like to receive articles about the importance of educating the public, government officials, GLB organizations, churches, business, schools, and civic organizations. We will consider publishing accounts of the educational activities of individuals or organizations, but this will be at best a minor part of the issue.

Submissions should be sent electronically to the post office box at the top of this release, if possible. We will of course accept submissions by snail mail also.

Please send Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files if you would like us to reproduce your flyer as a tear-out page. If we decide to use your flyer as you designed it. If we decide to update or otherwise change your flyer, we will work with you on a redesign to your satisfaction.

Flyers should be single-sided 8 1/2 x 11" in size, with 1/2 inch borders all around, or double-sided flyers of the same size. Tri- or bi-fold flyers are acceptable, with the same dimensions.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Dallas Denny, Editor

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   [5]Canada: Schedule for LGBT issues in schools group
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   From: "Kris Wells" <wellsk@icrossroads.com>
Subject: CANADA: Agape 2002-2003 Schedule
Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2002

AGAPE is a focus group set up to consider issues in relation to
sex-and-gender differences and schooling. It is designed to meet the needs
of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) undergraduate and graduate
students, faculty, and staff in the Faculty of Education. Straight allies
are also welcome. As well, we welcome practicing teachers and other
interested members of the larger community.

AGAPE will be hosting a FREE Sex-and-Gender Differences, Education & Culture
mini-conference on Saturday, November 16th in the Faculty of Education.
Email for more information.

AGAPE Meeting Schedule: Academic Year 2002-2003

Time: noon - 1:00pm
Feel free to bring your lunch.
Location: Room 7-114, 7th Floor, Education North

Meetings will be held on the third Thursday of the month on the following
dates:

Sept. 19: Welcome to AGAPE & Session by the Alberta Teachers' Association's
Safe-and-Caring Schools Project

Oct. 17: Violence against LGBT Youth in Schools and Communities: A Joint
Presentation of AGAPE and the Gay and Lesbian Community Centre of Edmonton
(GLCCE)

Nov. 16: Sex-and-Gender Differences, Education, and Culture Conference
featuring Jan Padgett, film maker of in other words and Sticks & Stones
(National Film Board of Canada)

Nov. 21: LGBT Research in Education: Graduate Students Share their
Experiences

Dec. 19: AGAPE Holiday Celebration

Jan. 16: Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG): Parents Share
their Stories of their Children's Coming Out & their Coming to Terms

Feb. 13: Youth Understanding Youth: Edmonton's LGBT Youth Share their
Stories of School, Family, and Community

March 20: LGBT Educational Video Presentation and Discussion

April 17: AGAPE Year-End Celebration

If you have a question, please email

Dr. Andre Grace at 
<mailto:andre.grace@ualberta.ca>andre.grace@ualberta<mailto:andre.grace@ualberta.ca>.ca
Or
Kris Wells at 
<mailto:kwells@ualberta.ca>kwells@ualberta<mailto:kwells@ualberta.ca>.ca

Thanks,

Kris
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[6]USA: The Monterey Transgender Support Group

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Stephen L. Braveman writes:

Dear Trans Community Members,

The Monterey Transgender Support Group, for both FtM's and MtF's/Pre-op and Post-op, will be having a guest speaker at our next meeting this coming Saturday, Sept. 21st. "Lisa", a post-op MtF, will be sharing her story about her successful, full transition.

For those who do not know, this is a closed (see note regarding guest below), confidential therapy support group run by gender specialists Stephen L. Braveman, M.A., L.M.F.T., C.S.T. (Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, Certified Sex Therapist) and Maren Martin, M.A., L.C.S.W. (Licensed Clinical Social Worker). The group meets at Stephen's office in Monterey. There is a $25.00 fee per group and a free, one hour intake is required to be a regular part of this group. There are currently a couple openings for new members available.

GUESTS IN THE TRANS COMMUNITY, WHO ARE NOT PART OF THIS GROUP, ARE WELCOME ON SPECIAL OCCASIONS SUCH AS THIS ONE. HOWEVER, THIS IS BY RESERVATION ONLY. SORRY, NO DROP-INS ARE ALLOWED.

Call or write Stephen at the number/e-mail address below if you are interested in joining the group, being a guest a special meeting and/or both.

All my best,

Stephen L. Braveman, M.A., L.M.F.T., C.S.T.
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist 
Certified Sex Therapist
E-Mail: stephen@bravemantherapy.com 
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GENERAL INFORMATION
   
   [7]USA: Past TG activism bearing fruit, preparing for the future is next
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   September 13, 2002. 
   
[thanks to Terisa Gibson via transgendernews]
   
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2002 02:17:50 -0000
From: Terisa Gibson <terisa_gibson@hotmail.com> and Rica Ashby Fredrickson <rica@netaxs.com>
   
Southern Voice (GLBT weekly, Atlanta based)
September 13, 2002
   
http://tinyurl.com/1g2p
http://www.southernvoice.com/atlanta/index.php3?pub=atl
   
Trans activists cite 'avalanche year' 
Largest national trans conference turns focus to lobbying, political 
savvy 
   
By JENNIFER J. SMITH
   
Two years ago, the most popular seminars at Atlanta's annual Southern 
Comfort transgender conference were "Make-up" and "Feminine Voice."
   
But when this year's conference convenes Sept. 17-22, organizers 
expect "Lobbying for equality" and "Working out front as an activist" 
to outshine those less-political workshops.
   
"There has been an explosion of transgender political advocacy, and 
that is reflected in the seminar schedule at Southern Comfort this 
year," said Kylar Broadus, a female-to-male transsexual activist who 
will co-chair the panel on lobbying.
   
"The other issues are certainly still very important, but you're 
seeing the first public wave of the movement's maturation, a 
community realization that we must learn how to speak up for 
ourselves, and then do just that," he said.
   
Southern Comfort, an annual transgender conference held in Atlanta 
since its founding in 1990, "certainly did not start out to be 
political in nature," said founder Sabrina Marcus, a male-to-female 
transgendered person who identifies as "bi-gender."
   
"It was meant to be ˜ and was ˜ just an opportunity for us to get 
together in a safe environment and meet people who looked like us and 
felt like us," she said. "The politics came after ˜ way after."
   
The first year the conference drew 75 people from the Southeast. This 
year organizers expect attendance to match last year's numbers: in 
excess of 500 transsexuals, cross-dressers, pre-op's, post-op's, non-
op's, bi-gender, transgender, spouses or partners of all of the above 
and anyone else who is interested from around the world, they said.
   
"When you get that many diverse people from such diverse places with 
such diverse opinions in one place, it's always interesting," said 
Monica Helms, executive director of Trans=Action, a transgender 
advocacy group in Georgia. "But the one thing they all have in common 
is we're all learning ˜ unfortunately sometimes the hard way because 
we've been excluded ˜ that no one else is going to speak up for us."
   
Key year for trans issues
   
While the shift to a new political consciousness "might have taken 
place" last year if the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks had not happened, 
Marcus said, it is "no surprise" the conference has taken a decidedly 
political slant this year.
   
Three important events have led to the creation of a new generation 
of trans activists, observers say.
   
"First, you had the trans community's reaction to being left out of 
ENDA [the Employment Non-Discrimination Act], which was huge," said 
Broadus, who also serves as the state legislative manager for the 
Human Rights Campaign, the Washington, D.C.-based gay advocacy group 
pushing the proposed federal law. 
   
While activists have been fighting for ENDA for years, the bill saw a 
key Senate hearing in February and HRC expects a Senate vote on the 
measure this year.
   
As currently written, ENDA would ban job bias based on sexual 
orientation, but not gender identity. "Let's just say there is still 
no love lost between the two groups," Broadus said.
   
Several transgender groups, including Trans=Action, have both 
attended and protested HRC-sponsored events because of the group's 
decision to not lobby for the inclusion of gender identity in ENDA. 
Most recently, Trans=Action protested outside HRC's annual dinner in 
Atlanta in May and disrupted an HRC forum on ENDA in Atlanta in July.
   
While gender identity was left out of federal legislation, a second 
factor in growing trans political activism is "a huge increase in the 
number of jurisdictions and municipalities proposing gender-inclusive 
legislation," Broadus said.
   
Combining those two catalysts with planning that began this year for 
a transgender march on Washington creates "an environment where 
people who didn't care about politics start to realize that if we are 
going to keep pushing this movement forward, we need everyone's 
participation," Helms said.
   
And for those who do not respond to positive forward momentum, 2002 
provided alternative motivation, activists said.
   
"For some, it was the onslaught of transgender murders," said Riki 
Wilchins, a male-to-female transgender activist and executive 
director of Washington, D.C.-based GenderPAC.
   
"With the murder of Fred Martinez, then the two transgender teenage 
girls in Washington, D.C., and recently the beating of a teenage boy 
in New York state who was taking figure skating classes, more people 
are becoming aware of how tenuous things really are," said Wilchins, 
who will be a speaker at Southern Comfort.
   
"Two-spirit" Navajo youth Fred Martinez Jr. was found bludgeoned to 
death in Cortez, Colo., on June 21, 2001, and his killer went on 
trial this summer. Barely two months after Martinez' assailant was 
convicted, Deon "Ukea" Davis and Wilbur "Stephanie" Thomas were shot 
to death in a southeast Washington, D.C., neighborhood on Aug. 12, 
2002.
   
Figure skater Aaron Vays, 12, was beaten by fellow class-mates at
   
two different schools in New York last year after being labeled 
a "fag," according to the New York Post.
   
Political rights also remain "tenuous" for transgendered people, 
despite progress this year.
   
In addition to the national ENDA legislation that does not extend 
employment protection to gender identity, only 46 municipalities and 
jurisdictions around the country have passed their own non-
discrimination ordinances that include the category, according to 
Broadus.
   
Minneapolis led the way in 1975, according to the Transgender Law & 
Policy Institute.
   
Only two states, California and Rhode Island, along with six counties 
and 38 cities ˜ including Atlanta ˜ now boast the legislation.
   
Still, 2002 has been "our avalanche year," according to Broadus.
   
"There have already been seven municipalities or jurisdictions that 
have passed gender-protective legislation this year," Broadus said. 
   
"A year ago, you couldn't get most elected officials to talk about 
transgender issues; it was totally taboo," he said. "Now most seem to 
feel guilty if they don't include it."
   
'Next major political movement'
   
Kat Turner is one of the "new generation of activists" to whom 
Marcus, Helms and Wilchins refer.
   
A retired construction firm owner who just transitioned ˜ publicly 
changing outward gender expression ˜ in 2000, Turner identifies as 
a "transperson" and sometimes still "presents" as a man.
   
"I'm comfortable with both genders equally," said Turner, who first 
attended Southern Comfort last year and now "oversees vendors and 
advertising and some of the activities."
   
Turner moved to Atlanta in March and immediately joined the Southern 
Comfort committee, although she said she "never in a million years" 
expected to be active in transgender politics after retirement.
   
But empowering and educating newcomers is vital, according to Marcus.
   
"This community, this movement, this energy, has legs. You can feel 
it growing," she said. "But it takes all of us."
   
While nationally most transgender activists rank employment, housing 
and health issues at the top of their list, these three may switch 
rankings or be completely replaced by a burning local issue, 
activists said.
   
Because some communities have legislative protection for gender 
identity and some don't, "different trans communities are fighting 
different battles," Helms said.
   
"If you already have employment protection because you live and work 
for the city of Atlanta, you may be focusing on national employment 
protection, or local housing protection, or driver's license and 
birth certificate issues," she said.
   
The local issues are surprisingly diverse across the country, 
according to Helms, which makes Southern Comfort a rare educational 
opportunity.
   
"I really want to know what the battles in the Midwest are, for 
example," she said. "Because they may help us here in Atlanta, and 
vice versa."
   
Despite the diversity of opinions, approaches and local issues, 
events like Southern Comfort have produced an undeniable national 
momentum, participants say.
   
FOR MORE INFO  
Sept. 17-22 
Atlanta, GA 
P.O. Box 6194 
Titusville, FL 32782 
www.sccatl.org  
   
"We are no longer just fodder for the Jerry Springer show," Broadus 
said. "Like it or not, we are the next major political movement."
   
A movement moving faster than any forerunner, some activists argued.
   
"And it happened in less time than any previous political movement," 
Marcus said. "The movement for the women's vote, the civil rights 
movement, the gay rights movement, they all took decades.
   
"Transgender rights have only been on activists' radar screens for 10 
years, and we're already putting together a national march and 
lobbying for national legislation," she said. "That really says 
something."
 
© 2002 | A Window Media Publication 
   
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   [8]AUSTRALIA: Captain makes maiden voyage
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   Sunday Times: Captain makes maiden voyage  [ ...
http://www.sundaytimes.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,7034,5142272%255E2761
,00.html
SOURCE: Brenda Lana Smith R.af D.
   
Captain makes maiden voyage
By JIM KELLY
 
22sep02
   
ALMOST a decade ago Brian Parry followed his dream of building a ship to
retrace the epic voyage of 19th century mariner Matthew Flinders.
Today he is living that dream off the WA coast &endash; as a woman.
   
This year he embarked on his own journey of discovery as transsexual Captain
Sarah.
   
The former navy diver left Sydney in March at the helm of the 33m brigantine
Windeward Bound, which is now making its way down the WA coast.
   
This weekend the boat tied up at Port Hedland at the end of the latest leg
of a 17-month voyage retracing Flinders' historic circumnavigation and
mapping of Australia in 1802 and 1803.
   
At each port, new crew pay up to $300-a-day to experience a rare
sail-training experience.
   
Not only does the skipper look great in a dress, but during each leg two
crew in costume act out the story of Flinders' life.
   
"A few people are surprised that I don't look like Priscilla, Queen of the
Pacific," Captain Sarah, who wears a white uniform on official occasions,
said.
   
"The transgender aspect has never been a problem.
   
"Sometimes people in indigenous communities ask if I am a boy or a girl. If
I get a negative reaction it is usually because people are not sure about
having a woman captain."
   
Captain Sarah's odyssey began in the early 1990s when she decided to build a
tall ship to follow in her mentor's wake.
   
Then Captain Sarah was still Brian, a bearded Vietnam veteran and married
father of three fighting a consuming desire to live as a woman.
   
By the time his ship was completed, he had become a woman.
   
Captain Sarah said the voyage had been a life-changing experience for her
and all who took up one of about 30 berths on the ship.
   
Profits go towards the cost of the voyage and to sponsoring young people.
   
Windeward Bound is due in Fremantle at the end of next month.
 
   
© Sunday Times 
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   MEDIA WATCH
   
   [9]USA: Grrrl Talk Interview: Some of My Best Friends are Transsexual
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   Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002
From: Lisa Marie
   
   
http://www.bordersstores.com/features/feature.jsp?file=grrrl
http://tinyurl.com/1f7p
   
Grrrl Talk Interview
Some of My Best Friends are Transsexual
   
Conducted by Jessica Jernigan
   
If you listen to This American Life on NPR, you may know my pal Grif. He 
was a guest on the recent show on testosterone. He was invited to be on the 
show because he's a female-to- male transsexual: Shooting himself full of 
testosterone every few weeks is one of the ways in which he maintains his 
manliness. It's not the only way˜it may not even be the most important 
way˜but the changes that hormone injections have wrought in Griffin's life 
are certainly profound, and, if my own experience busting this material out 
at cocktail parties is any indication, definitely interesting.
   
A couple of years ago, I asked Grif if he would let me interview him for 
Grrrl Talk. I wanted him to give readers some insight into his transition, 
and share his unique, insider's view of the differences between men and 
women. When this interview was first published, Grif had been on 
testosterone for four years and his chest had been reconstructed. He was 
semi-closeted, which was why he went by "Jack" (his pseudonym as the 
subject of Chapter 10 in The Book of the Penis) in the original interview. 
He's pretty open about being an FTM now. This American Life was sort of his 
public debut as a tranny. Some other things have changed, too. He's got a 
steady girl now, which I mention mostly because she is, in my opinion, the 
coolest woman he's ever dated. Some things haven't changed: A working 
penis, for example, still remains beyond the surgeon's art.
   
I met Griffin Hansbury, oddly enough, at the women's college we both 
attended. We've been friends ever since, and he continues to be one of the 
greatest guys I know.
   
 >So, how out are you now?
   
Griffin Hansbury: I am out to everyone but the people in my office. That 
means all my friends. Most of my friends are people I've had in my life 
since before the transition. So, people from high school, college ˜they've 
come along for the ride. As for the office, I have been at my current job 
for almost three years and I have been completely closeted. I live as a man 
at work and nobody knows. I did come out to a friend of mine there, just a 
few weeks ago.
   
 >Oh, really?
   
GH: It's funny. I hadn't known him very well for very long, but there was 
something about him I trusted. We were at a bar one night˜I don't usually 
socialize with people from work because I'm not out˜but he and I were 
hanging out and talking. He was telling me about all his female friends. 
Anyway, I've come to a point in my life where I want to be out. I also 
thought that maybe he could set me up with some of his lady friends. 
[Laughing.] So, I came out to him. We were sitting in this bar and I said 
to him, "Can you keep a secret?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Can you really 
keep a secret?" He said, "Yeah." So, I said, "Well, I used to be a woman." 
And that's how I put it, because when you tell somebody that you're 
transsexual they think you're a cross-dresser or something. The word is too 
big and too weird for regular people˜they don't get it. So, I say, "I used 
to be a woman. " That, everybody gets˜ immediately. He thought I was 
bullshitting him. I had to keep saying it until he believed me.
   
I asked him was how his perception of me had changed now that he knows, and 
his first response was that it hadn't changed at all, that I was the same 
person. But of course that's not possible˜it's just not. And, since he and 
I talked, he's had a lot of questions for me˜he's interested, he wants to 
know more˜and it's clear that his perception of me has changed. I'm still a 
guy to him, but I'm a different kind of guy.
   
 >Do you feel like you've become a different person to your friends? To the 
people who have known you since before the transition?
   
GH: I have. I have changed to them. My friend Thea, whom I've known for 
years, forgets that I was ever anything but a guy. When we're talking and 
I'm bemoaning my lack of romantic possibilities, for instance, she'll say 
to me, "Why don't you just go to a bar and pick up a girl?" And I say, 
"It's a little more complicated, you know. I have a lot of explaining to 
do." And she'll say, "Oh man, I forget that." She actually says, "I forget."
   
 >That's funny, since Thea didn't just meet you at college, but at the 
women's college. Of course, now that I think about it, even back then, even 
though I practically lived with you, I would frequently forget that you 
were a woman. I just didn't think about you that way.
   
GH: Even before I changed?
   
 >Oh yeah, like it used to give me the willies when you got your period.
   
GH: I remember that, that's right. Isn't it strange? I was dating a woman 
about five years ago, just before I started transitioning physically˜before 
I started hormones˜and I was physically female. I had not had any 
testosterone. Anyway, it was before we really started� this woman and I 
were just hanging out in my apartment, just friends. I told her that I was 
going to start transitioning in the next year and that I identified as 
transsexual. We talked about that for a while, and she said, "You know, 
it's funny that you're telling me this now because when I was in your 
bathroom, I saw tampons, and I thought, 'What are you doing with tampons?' 
And then I thought, 'Oh right, you have a woman roommate, they must be 
hers.'" It didn't occur to her that these tampons could be mine. It's the 
same thing. What do you think it's about? Why was it hard for you to see me 
as a woman before I transitioned?
   
 >Well, for one thing, I think I always knew that sexual reassignment was 
something you planned to do. It seems like that was one of the first things 
that I knew about you. And you just were very masculine, which is a weird 
thing to say now that I think about it. I mean, at that time and in that 
place˜a fairly radical women's college in the early '90s˜the idea of an 
objective masculinity was kind of anathema. I had very second-wave feminist 
ideas about sex and gender˜that sex was immutable biology and gender was 
pure culture. But, I don't know, you were just very masculine.
   
GH: I think a lot of women at school were upset by me. I think I was 
unsettling for all those reasons, all those feminist reasons you allude to. 
Female-to-male transsexuals upset feminists. We upset lesbians, perhaps 
because lesbians˜especially butch lesbians˜have been always been told, "You 
just want to be a man." They don't, of course, want to be men˜they want to 
be butch lesbians. It's like they're afraid that, somehow, since 
female-to-male transsexuals are women who do want to be men˜who are men˜we 
could be used as proof that all masculine women really do wish they were men.
   
 >Even if we reject the idea that FTMs prove anything about lesbian 
identities, the existence of FTMs does suggest that there is an innate 
difference between men and women, a difference that made it impossible for 
you to just be "masculine" in a female body.
   
GH: Yes. A lot of people don't want to believe that. I was coming out to a 
friend of mine at graduate school (this was before I started physically 
transitioning), and he was very upset because he did not want to believe in 
gender, he didn't want to believe in gender difference. He wanted to think, 
"Hey, you can just be a masculine woman, that's OK." A lot of people say 
that to me, "Why can't you just live as a masculine woman, what's wrong 
with that?" People who say this to me are people who tend to think of 
themselves as progressive, sexually progressive and open-minded, yet 
they're so bothered by this disruption to their way of understanding. They 
think that they're beyond gender, yet they're really clinging to it, you 
know? If you need to control what I do with my gender, then gender must be 
far more important to you than you're admitting.
   
 >I know that when you started taking testosterone, you kind of upset my 
worldview a bit. I mean, I wasn't upset about the transition or with the 
simple fact that you were changing, but your experience on testosterone 
kind of freaked me out. Your whole testosterone trip totally blew my mind.
   
GH: Well, it blew mine, too. You and I went to college together˜we got the 
same kind of feminist education˜and I didn't want to believe that 
testosterone really made a qualitative difference in how men and women see 
the world, how they act in the world. I really wanted to believe that 
gender was a cultural creation. But a lot of it's not. A lot of it is, but 
a lot of it's not. It's hard for me to convince some people of that˜you 
kind of have to go through it to believe it.
   
Since I started the transition, I have since done a lot of studying about 
testosterone, and I know now that it has actually changed my brain. 
Testosterone in utero shrinks the corpus callosum, the connecting thread 
between the two hemispheres in the brain. It does the same thing when you 
add testosterone to an adult female body, to an adult female brain.
   
 >Really? I didn't know that testosterone would have such a profound effect 
on an adult brain.
   
GH: The dominant side of the brain is the analytical side. However, in 
women and people with low testosterone, the corpus callosum is wider, so 
more information is going back and forth between the hemispheres more 
quickly. They're not so much dominated by one side or the other. This is 
why women's brains tend to be more integrated and women think in a more 
integrated way, whereas men tend to be more analytical, more dominated by 
the left side because the information's not flowing as well between the two 
hemispheres. I'm a writer and my verbal ability, since I've been on 
testosterone, has decreased. Words don't come to me like before. I have to 
look up a lot of words I used to know. I find myself stumbling over words 
in a way that I never did before. It's a little spooky. And then you think, 
well, boys don't do as well in school at verbal tests, and this is 
why˜testosterone.
   
 >Um, Grif, while this is all very interesting, your loss of verbal acuity 
is not what freaked me out when you started on the testosterone. When you 
first started taking it�
   
GH: Oh, you wanted me to talk about sex�
   
 >[Laughing.] Yes, sex! That's what freaked me out!
   
GH: Well, I've since learned about the corpus callosum�
   
 >And it's fascinating, but�
   
GH: [Laughing.] OK, OK. Here's the sex stuff. All our lives, we hear the 
same thing about men, that they think about sex every five seconds. As a 
feminist I wanted to believe that this was just male propaganda.
   
 >And I liked to think, "Well, gentlemen, women think about sex, too, and 
you'd be surprised how much�"
   
GH: Exactly. But the fact of the matter is testosterone makes you crazy 
sexually. Before testosterone I'd be sitting on the subway and I'd see an 
attractive woman and I'd think, "She's attractive. I'd like to talk to her. 
If I talk to her, we might talk about this or that. I'd learn her name, I'd 
ask her on a date, we'd go out, we'd get dressed up, we'd get to know each 
other, I would lean in for the kiss, I'd take her home, we'd have sex.
   
 >It would be a narrative.
   
GH: Right, a story, and there'd be details in the story. After 
testosterone, I'd see a woman on the train� no, let me amend that, I'd see 
a woman's knee on the train and instantly aggressive, violent, sexual 
images of just nailing this woman would flood my mind. There was not even a 
split second between seeing the knee and having the flood of images. It's 
just instantaneous, and it's unstoppable. You can't get it out of your brain.
   
 >What was that like? How was it different to experience the rush of 
testosterone not as a normal adolescent boy, but as an adult who had 
previously been biologically female?
   
GH: Well, I can't compare because I don't know what it's like being an 
adolescent male, so I'm not sure, but I can tell you it was pretty scary. I 
felt out of control. I felt like a monster. I felt horribly distracted. I 
mean, I have a job. I'm expected to be able to concentrate on the task at 
hand, and there was no way I could do my work because all I could think 
about was tearing the clothes off all the women around me. They didn't even 
have to be attractive. They could be very unattractive. It didn't matter at 
all.
   
 >I think I remember you telling me that you would find one attractive part 
on every woman you saw, like, "That is a great ankle. I want to hump it 
right now."
   
GH: That was all it took. It was frightening and I wanted it to go away. I 
wanted it to stop. I remember being really glad that I was not in a 
relationship at the time. I felt like, if I had a woman available to me, I 
would coerce her. I was afraid that I would force myself on her. I was 
actually happy to be alone.
   
 >So, the overwhelming power of testosterone has dissipated somewhat, has 
it not?
   
GH: Quite a bit.
   
 >Do you think you've just gotten used to it, or has it just become more 
integrated into your life?
   
GH: I think it's both. It's mellowed out and leveled out and I'm also used 
to it. Now my fantasy life is sort of a combination of before and after 
testosterone. There's a little bit of narrative, but, the stories in my 
head are a little more aggressive than they used to be. Sexual desire is 
much more manageable now. It's not overwhelming.
   
 >That's nice.
   
GH: It is nice. It makes it a lot easier to walk down the street in New 
York City in the summertime.
   
 >A lot of knees, a lot of ankles�
   
GH: A lot of bare skin. Under the influence of testosterone, you become 
more visual. Your whole visual/spatial reality shifts. Men like pornography 
because they're more visually stimulated, while women, generally, prefer to 
read romance novels˜I used to think that was bullshit, but I don't think 
that anymore.
   
 >But you've always liked porn.
   
GH: I did, but I liked it and I also knew I was liking it. It was kind of 
an intellectual thrill, maybe more than I wanted to admit at the time. 
Before testosterone, I would look at pornography, and I enjoyed it because 
I was doing something masculine. I felt like I was acting like a man. I was 
performing masculinity˜even in private, I was performing masculinity by 
looking at pornography˜but the visual stimulation did not elicit a physical 
response. But now I see a picture of a naked woman, and I have a physical 
response. Four years ago, when I was starting testosterone, that response 
was really strong.
   
 >It's interesting that you talk about performing masculinity. I've never 
thought about it exactly this way until you just said that, but you're much 
less assertively, typically masculine than you used to be. I don't know, 
maybe the difference is, at least in part, being more grown up, but you're 
much more laid back and less aggressive than you were before the transition
   
GH: I don't have anything to prove anymore. When I started the testosterone 
and I first started to pass as a man and I could move through the world and 
people saw me as a man, I started going to topless bars a lot. I loved 
going to strip joints, I loved it. I went as much as possible˜not every 
day, but a couple times a month. I loved going because it was a place that 
had been forbidden to me and suddenly I could go. I could be a man among 
men in a place filled with naked women. That was great, that was like 
freedom. It was like being let out of class for recess. But then I reached 
a point where I felt like, "Hey, I don't need to do this anymore." I can't 
remember the last time I went to topless place.
   
 >What other doors opened up for you when you became a man?
   
GH: A lot of doors closed˜literally, people don't hold the door for me 
anymore. They don't hold the elevator door˜I gotta run for that, and if it 
slams on me it slams on me. Nobody cares. It's tough.
   
 >Yeah, that is tough.
   
GH: Women get common courtesies that men don't. It's tough to be a man. You 
have to fight for everything everyday. Everything's a battle. Nobody gives 
a man a break. People aren't gentle with you, people don't make it easy for 
you. Anyway, let me think, doors that opened for me˜beside strip joints? I 
can't think of any.
   
 >Dude, I was kind of hoping you would talk about the large hot dog.
   
GH: Oh, you want to hear about the large hot dog. The large hot dog is, of 
course, conveniently phallic�
   
 >[Laughing.] That is, of course, one of the reasons I love the large hot dog�
   
GH: Yeah, so, anyway, I live in New York, and as everybody knows, there are 
a lot of hot dog vendors in New York City. Before testosterone when I went 
to buy a hot dog from the hot dog cart, I'd say, "I'd like a hot dog." I'd 
hand the guy $1.25 or whatever, and I'd get a hot dog. After I started 
passing as a man, I would ask for a hot dog and the hot dog man would ask, 
"Would you like a large?" I was stupefied. I didn't know that there was 
another option. I had no idea that there was such a thing as a large hot 
dog. For women, there is one size.
   
 >There's just the hot dog.
   
GH: But for men there's the large. The large is only 25¢ more than the 
regular size.
   
 >How much bigger is it?
   
GH: It's not too much longer, really, but it's quite a bit fatter.
   
 >[Laughing.] That's actually good. Girth is more important than length, 
you know.
   
GH: The last time I got the large hot dog I was in Central Park and the hot 
dog man said to me, "You want the large, right?" I mean, they assume you 
want the large.
   
 >Sure, you're a man.
   
GH: I'm a man˜I want the large, I have a big appetite, I eat large food. 
So, this guy gave me the large, and he added in his fabulous accent, "It 
will make you strong in the night."
   
 >[Laughing.] So, this is what I have gathered from your four years of 
being a man, coupled with your previous experience of being female˜the 
large hot dog is, apparently, the last vestige of secret masculine power.
   
GH: [Laughing.] It will make you strong in the night.
   
--
Regards,
-Lisa
   Top
   
[10] USA: WEIRD BUT TRUE 
   Top
   EDITOR'S NOTE: I usually stay away from stories like this but in this case I 
think the story says a great deal about how little the NY POST things a homeless 
"transvestite" is worth. Is it really "WEIRD" to help out a homeless persone simply 
because they are transgendered?..Sad.
   
NYPOST.COM World News: WEIRD BUT TRUE
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/57246.htm
   
   
September 17, 2002 
   
   
A homeless transvestite is living rent-free in a luxury home in Texas
because the owner is allergic to mold.
   
Homeowner Cindy Brettschneider made the deal with skirt-wearing transient
Leslie Cochran to guard her five-bedroom mansion in West Lake Hills until
she can sell the property, which is plagued by mold.
   
Brettschneider is allergic to mildew, but Cochran, whom she met when making
a documentary about homelessness, isn't.
 Top
   
   
   
   LEGISLATIVE ACTION
   
   [11] USA:California-- Visalia district agrees to historic harassment settlement
   Top
   Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 0
From: Carolyn Laub <carolyn@gsanetwork.org> via Jean Richter <richter@eecs.berkeley.edu> via 
Rica Ashby Fredrickson <rica@netaxs.com>
   
   
Gay-Straight Alliance Network
<http://www.gsanetwork.org>http://www.gsanetwork.<http://www.gsanetwork.org>org 
   
   
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
   
Contact: Carolyn Laub
415-552-4229
   
GSA Network and Visalia Unified School District Reach Historic Settlement 
in Anti-Gay Case
   
Parties Agree to Comprehensive Reforms to Counter Sexual Orientation 
Discrimination
   
SAN FRANCISCO, August 13, 2002 - An historic settlement in an anti-gay 
harassment lawsuit was filed in federal court today, the first filed under 
a recent California law that protects students from discrimination on the 
basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
   
Visalia Unified School District, the defendant in the case, and the 
Gay-Straight Alliance Network (GSA Network), the lead plaintiff, agreed on 
a comprehensive plan to prevent the discrimination brought to light by 
George Loomis, a former VUSD student and also a plaintiff in the case.
   
"This settlement is a real milestone for California students," said Carolyn 
Laub, Executive Director of the GSA Network.  "It demonstrates that when 
students challenge a hostile school culture, they can win. The agreement 
also provides a model to school districts that want to make changes to 
comply with California's school non-discrimination law - as well as a 
warning to school districts that have resisted or ignored it."
   
The participation of GSA Network in the lawsuit, which was strongly opposed 
by the District, sets a precedent with momentous implications, since most 
students who have sued school districts in the past are no longer enrolled 
and can recover damages but lack standing to insist on broad reform to 
protect all students.
   
"GSA Network represents students in school now, and our members have a 
stake in seeing the district implement real reform," said Laub.  "This is 
why the settlement breaks new ground - it brings about systematic, lasting 
reforms that will create safer schools for all Visalia students."
   
Loomis and other Visalia Unified students described a climate of pervasive 
hostility, including:
* Teachers and other staff making anti-gay slurs and statements to students
* Students harassing, spitting at, throwing objects at, sexually harassing, 
and attacking other students
* Administrators either refusing to respond or isolating students who 
complained and encouraging them to leave school and enter independent 
study, a program that severely limits students' future academic options, 
providing only one hour of instruction per week.
   
"We fought for six years for a law that protects students when their 
schools refuse to," said Senator Sheila Kuehl, who authored AB 537, the 
California Student Safety and Violence Prevention Act of 2000, which 
protects students from harassment and discrimination on the basis of sexual 
orientation and gender identity.  "I'm delighted to see that students are 
using that law to press for change and to build a better, more equitable, 
more humane society."
   
"This settlement ensures that other students won't have to go through what 
I went through," said George Loomis. "That's what matters most."
   
Laub noted that the case and its settlement coincide with the rapid growth 
of the GSA movement in California's Central Valley.
   
"In just over a year, fifteen new GSAs have been founded in the Central 
Valley, and student activists are leading a dynamic movement to alter the 
culture of hostility that still pervades far too many schools," said Laub.
   
"It's great that our school district has made these commitments, because 
George was definitely not alone in experiencing harassment in this 
district," said Jennifer Lopez, a GSA leader and student at Redwood High 
School in Visalia.  "My friends and I want our school to be a safe place, 
and this settlement gives us hope that it will become one."
   
The three-year agreement between GSA Network and VUSD includes requirements 
that the district:
* Develop and disseminate clear harassment and discrimination policies and 
procedures,
* Conduct mandatory, annual training for K-12 teachers and other staff on 
preventing harassment and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation,
* Conduct mandatory, annual, peer-to-peer training for all 9th graders on 
preventing sexual orientation harassment or discrimination, and
* Assign a compliance coordinator in each school to handle sexual 
orientation harassment and discrimination reports.
   
GSA Network will provide the peer training for students, while Intergroup 
Clearinghouse, a human relations organization that trains schools on 
creating a bias-free environment, will conduct the staff training, the 
first of which will take place on August 19.
   
The ACLU of Northern California represented GSA Network and Loomis, and the 
law firm of Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin acted as pro 
bono co-counsel in the case.
   
Founded in 1998, GSA Network is the nation's largest youth-led organization 
dedicated to ending harassment and discrimination based on sexual 
orientation and gender identity in schools through the establishment and 
support of GSA clubs. With offices in San Francisco, Fresno and Los Angeles 
supporting more than 275 GSAs, GSA Network has created a regional support 
system for California's burgeoning GSA movement, helping California youth 
lead the way to a more equitable future.  More information can be found at 
<http://www.gsanetwork.org>http://www.gsanetwork.<http://www.gsanetwork.org>org. 
   
   
   
Carolyn Laub
Executive Director
Gay-Straight Alliance Network
160 14th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
   Top
   
   [12]USA: Washington State--Tacoma council puts repeal of gay 
antidiscrimination law on Nov. 5 ballot
   Top
   September 11, 2002. 
   
[via QueerPolitics] and Rica Ashby Fredrickson <rica@netaxs.com>
   
Tacoma (WA) News Tribune
September 11, 2002
( http://www.tribnet.com/ )
   
Tacoma council puts repeal of gay antidiscrimination law on Nov. 5 ballot
by Kris Sherman; The News Tribune
        Voters will decide Nov. 5 whether to keep Tacoma's so-called gay
rights law or repeal it.
        The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to put the issue on
the general election ballot after a group called Help Us Take Back Tacoma
Again! collected enough signatures to force an election.
        But Hap Butler, co-founder of the group that wants to repeal the law,
was not happy with the ballot wording submitted by City Attorney Robin
Jenkinson and approved by the council.
        He complained it didn't meet state standards of impartiality and was
not "clear and concise."
        Butler proposed ballot wording that said in part:
        "Shall there be a repeal of those portions of Tacoma Ordinance 26948
(passed 23 April 02) which prohibit discrimination on the basis of actual or
perceived sexual orientation or gender identity?  Gender identity is defined
as homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexuality, transgender and intersexed
individuals."
        The wording approved by the council does not define gender identity.
        The council voted 8-1 April 23 to enact the law, which bans
discrimination against gays, lesbians and other sexual minorities in
employment, housing, lending and other aspects of life.
        That law added "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to an
antidiscrimination law covering race, ethnicity, age, gender and other
classes of people.
        The council was forced to reconsider the issue after Help Us Take
Back Tacoma Again!, led by former East Side business owner Doug Delin,
collected the 4,048 signatures needed to put the question of repealing the
law on the ballot.
        Tacoma United for Fairness, or TUFF, is running a campaign to retain
the law.
        Despite some citizens' comments that the ballot wording might confuse
people about what voting yes or voting no means, TUFF member Laurie Jinkins
said the meaning is clear.
        "Voting 'No' means you're against discrimination," she said.
        "We believe the initiative is all about simple, ugly discrimination
and we believe the people of Tacoma need to vote 'No' on Nov. 5,' Jinkins
continued.
        City Council members enacted a similar law protecting the rights of
sexual minorities in 1989, but voters overturned it in an election later
that year.
        Tacoma's law is similar to ordinances in Seattle and Spokane, where
discrimination based on sexual orientation is outlawed in public and private
sector housing and employment.
        Some opponents of the law cite moral and religious reasons for their
belief that sexual orientation should not be protected in the same class
with race, religion, gender, age, family status or disability.
        Alfred Kammerzell disagrees.
        He told the council it was "a disgrace to the City of Tacoma that
this initiative was even introduced."
        "Everybody has basic rights," he said.  "And the intent of this
initiative is to take away basic rights ... that are so plain it's
preposterous that we even have to vote on it."
   
   
Gay rights law on the ballot:
        Here's the question Tacoma residents will vote on Nov. 5 to decide
whether to keep the city's so-called gay rights law or repeal it.  A yes
vote is in favor of repealing the law, a no vote is in favor of retaining
it.
        Initiative No. 1 "Initiative No. 1 concerns discrimination based on
sexual orientation and gender identity.  The Tacoma Municipal Code currently
prohibits discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived sexual
orientation and gender identity in the areas of employment, housing, lending
and public accommodations.  If passed, this measure would remove those
prohibitions against discrimination.  Should this measure be passed?"
   
   Top
   
   [13]USA: Buffalo New York--City of Buffalo extends protection against discrimination 
in employment and housing to transgendered persons
   Top
   For Immediate Release: Dated September 18, 2002
From: The National Transgender Advocacy Coalition (NTAC)
Contact Person: Vanessa Edwards Foster; Houston, Texas
Contact Email: ntacmedia@aol.com
media@ntac.org
Contact Phone: 832-483-9901
Website: http://www.ntac.org

On Tuesday September 17, 2002 Buffalo NY, known as the 'City of Good Neighbors,' proved its heart. In a near unanimous vote, the Common Council of the City of Buffalo extended protection against discrimination in employment and housing to transgendered persons. Mayor Anthony Masiello has announced that he will sign the amendments into law.

The amendments adding protection for "gender identity and expression" were initiated and sponsored by Councilman Antoine Thompson, who said, "It's another step to break from Buffalo's past and encourage tolerance and diversity."

Earlier this year, Councilman Thompson gathered a group of community leaders to help draft amendments to Buffalo's anti-discrimination laws. Although "sexual orientation" was already included under existing laws, the Anti-Discrimination Advisory Group felt that the phrase "gender identity and expression" needed to be explicitly included as a protected class.

The amendments garnered widespread support, bridging across divisions of race and sexual orientation. Organizations supporting the amendments included: Men of Color Health Awareness Project (MOCHA), New York State Transgender Coalition, Stonewall Democrats, and Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).

"In my outreach and education efforts throughout the Buffalo area, I often encounter transgender individuals who are in constant fear of losing their job, their apartment or being the victim of a hate crime," said Camille Hopkins, a City Hall employee and male to female transsexual. Hopkins testified before City Council that she had lost her apartment simply because her landlord did not like transgendered persons. "I just want to live an ordinary life," she finished, "without fear of reprisal from those who want me to disappear."

Speakers on behalf of the amendments included Carol Speser, founder of Western New York Stonewall Democrats, and Lana Bentovich, Executive Director, National Conference of Community and Justice. Ms Bentovich, who is also a. member of Buffalo's Commission on Citizens' Rights and Community Relations stated, "If we are going to be the City of Good Neighbors that we have been described as for decades, this is one way of showing what we are."

"I am thrilled over the passage of this Gender Identity and Expression Amendment," exclaimed Buffalo resident Joy Schroeder in response to the successful ordinance vote. Schroeder, a male to female transsexual, added, "I believe this is a big first step towards bringing equality and protection from the injustices that we face every day of our lives."

LEGAL ISSUES

[14]USA: Ohio--Judge turns down marriage license

Top

By JOHN BOOTH Tribune Chronicle

WARREN - Saying a Howland woman and a transsexual man tried to
mislead the court by withholding information on their marriage
license application, Trumbull County Probate Judge Thomas Swift
rejected the couple's application Friday.
 
Jacob Benjamin Nash, 37, and Erin Angelina Barr, 30, applied for the
license Aug. 2, but Swift delayed his decision upon learning later
that month that Nash was born a female.
 
Swift's ruling focused on a Massachusetts divorce certificate the
couple presented at a September hearing indicating that Nash had
previously been married under the name Pamela Ann Nash-Michalak.
 
The judge said that evidence contradicted the couple's Trumbull
County marriage application and sworn statements that neither Nash
nor Barr had been married before.
 
Swift wrote that the couple's ''explanation that they forgot the
previous marriage and divorce when they completed the original
application lacks credibility.''
 
''The Court further finds that the Applicants' omission of said fact
was intentional and made with the purpose of misleading this Court,''
Swift's ruling states.
 
Attorney Randi Barnabee, representing the couple, was under the
impression that Swift was going to incorporate the evidence from the
hearing into the marriage application.
 
''The judge told us that he would conform the pleadings to the
evidence,'' Barnabee said. ''That means basically, he would conform
the original application to include this other information which was
inadvertently omitted.''
 
The couple will likely file a motion for reconsideration, Barnabee
said.
 
Swift also denied a request to extend the two-week deadline for the
couple's attorneys to file a brief after the Sept. 5 evidentiary
hearing and subsequently denied the brief, which was submitted Friday.
 
Barnabee said she sought the extension because the court was unable
to provide her with transcripts of the hearing in a timely manner.
 
''Basically, he told us we had to do a brief without the benefit of
having the transcripts available,'' Barnabee said. ''I think that
shows bias on the part of the court.''
 
Barr and Nash have both testified that they exchanged vows Aug. 31 in
a nonlegal ceremony at a local banquet hall.
 
Swift told the couple last month that he believes a person's sex is
determined by chromosomes and not body parts and delayed granting the
license to determine whether the marriage was legal.
 
Copyright © 2002 Tribune Chronicle

Top

[15] USA: Federal Court Rules No Protection for Transgendered Employees

Top

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:DATED SEPTEMBER 20, 2002
FROM: THE NATIONAL TRANSGENDER ADVOCACY COALITION (NTAC)
CONTACT PERSON: VANESSA EDWARDS FOSTER; HOUSTON, TEXAS
CONTACT EMAIL: NTACMEDIA@AOL.COM
MEDIA@NTAC.ORG
CONTACT PHONE: 832-483-9901
WEBSITE: HTTP://WWW.NTAC.ORG

According to a Louisiana Federal District Judge's ruling, companies may discriminate against some employees for legal activities pursued while not on the job.

Peter Oiler, a truck driver and Winn-Dixie employee for more than 20 years, was fired by that company after managers learned that he occasionally cross-dressed during his off-duty hours. Winn-Dixie found no fault with Oiler's work performance, stating that he was fired because of concern that customers might avoid the store if they heard that a cross-dresser worked for Winn-Dixie. Oiler, with the help of the ACLU, filed a civil lawsuit alleging discrimination in employment on the basis of sex under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Judge Lance Africk ruled on September 16, 2002, that his then-employer, Winn-Dixie, had the legal right to fire him merely for being transgendered. In his decision, Judge Africk noted that Congress has never attempted to provide protection from employment discrimination for transgendered citizens of the United States. "From 1981 through 2001, thirty -one proposed bills have been introduced in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives which have attempted to amend Title VII and prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of affectional or sexual orientation. None have passed. … In contrast to the numerous failed attempts by Congress to include affectional or sexual orientation within Title VII's ambit, neither plaintiff nor defendant can point to any attempts by Congress to amend Title VII in order to clarify that discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual identity disorders is prohibited."

The judge ruled that Oiler's case "is not a situation where [an employee] failed to conform to gender stereotypes. [Oiler] was not discharged because he did not act sufficiently masculine or because he exhibited traits normally valued in a female employee, but disparaged in a male employee. Rather [he] disguised himself as a person of a different sex and presented himself as a female for stress relief and to express his gender identity. … This is not just a matter of an employee of one sex exhibiting characteristics associated with the opposite sex. This is a matter of a person of one sex assuming the role of a person of the opposite sex."

Despite the judge's unfavorable ruling, he did note that, "[Winn-Dixie's] rationale for [Mr. Oiler's] discharge may strike many as morally wrong. However, the function of this court is not to raise the social conscience of [Winn-Dixie's] upper-level management, but to construe the law in accordance with proper statutory construction and judicial precedent," adding that he "cannot, therefore, afford the luxury of making a moral judgment."

Contacted at the Southern Comfort transgender convention, Peter Oiler's first comment was, "I'm disappointed. But if it had to come, I'm glad it came while I was here, surrounded by friends, well-wishers, and activists." Oiler's wife, Shirley, agreed with his comments.

Oiler said that he is pleased to have found employment with a more tolerant company but is angered that so many transgendered people -- cross-dressers, transsexuals, and other gender variant people - can be subjected to such blatant discrimination as he had been. "This discrimination applies to all gender variant people, including gays and lesbians," he said. "If a company is that upset about a part time cross-dresser, you can bet that they don't want gays and lesbians on the job, either."

Courtney Sharp, a transgender activist who helped Oiler develop his case, observed, "The Judge does not seem to recognize that Representative Barney Frank [D MA], a chief drafter of the current Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), left gender identity out of the bill because he maintains that we already have protections under Title VII. Obviously Representative Frank and Judge Africk have differing views. Hopefully, Representative Frank will be willing to publicly comment on this ruling to ensure that all federal judges understand that transgender persons are protected by Title VII."

Peter Oiler may be disappointed, but he is not ready to give up the fighting for the civil rights of transgendered people. "It doesn't pay to stop now," he said. "Too many people are unemployed because of these issues. We won't stop fighting."

When Robyn Walters, Secretary of the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition expressed NTAC's appreciation of and support for his legal struggle, Oiler replied, "The transgender community must get its act together and take one issue at a time. So many problems go back to employment. Solve that and then go for other issues."

Although no formal decision has been announced on appealing the District Court ruling, Oiler stated that he and ACLU attorney, Ken Choe, would review the decision in detail and decide how best to contest it point by point.

Top


   [16]USA:Chicago-- Judge to Rule in Child Custody Case Involving Transgendered Father
   Top
   WorldNews: Judge to Rule in Transgender Case
http://cgi.wn.com/?action=display&article=15772683&template=worldnews/search
.txt&index=recent  
     
Fri, 20 Sep 2002
   
Judge to Rule in Transgender Case
   
The Associated Press
   
CHICAGO (AP) &emdash; The mother of a 10-year-old boy is seeking custody over the
transgendered person she married, claiming her former partner has no
parental rights because their marriage was illegal.
   
Circuit Judge Gerald Bender heard opening arguments Thursday. The mother's
attorney claims the state's ban on same-sex unions means her partner was
never a father. 
   
The couple, whose identities were withheld for the child's protection,
married in 1985 without disclosing that the groom was born a woman and
underwent hormone therapy but still had female genitals. The mother became
pregnant through artificial insemination.
   
``There simply is no marriage to dissolve,'' attorney Burt Hochberg argued.
``A transgender individual has no standing to pursue custody.''
   
Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy, representing the child, said
gender and marriage are irrelevant to a boy who accepts and loves his father
as a parent. 
   
``It doesn't matter if he's male or female, husband or wife,'' Murphy said.
``The only thing that is important is that there's a 10-year-old who
considers this man his dad and wants to live with him.''
   
The father visits the boy every other weekend and one night per off-week.
The mother wants to keep it that way, but the father wants to be the
custodial parent. 
   
©2002 WN.com
   Top
   
   
   
   [17]USA Louisiana: ACLU Criticizes Decision in Peter Oiler Case
   Top
      Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002
   From: "Claire Ashton" <claire@c-ashton.fsnet.co.uk>
   
   
Source: Petra Henderson
   
From: Willow Arune [mailto:twofruitbats@shaw.ca]via TNUK Digest
   
>From It's Time America: 
http://www.tgender.net/pipermail/ita-announce/2002/000163.html
   
ACLU Criticizes Decision in Louisiana Transgendered Case
   
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, September 17, 2002
   
CONTACT:
Chris Hampton, ACLU, (212) 549-2673
Joe Cook, ACLU of Louisiana, (504) 522-0628
   
NEW ORLEANS - Late yesterday afternoon, a United States District Judge
decided that the federal ban on sex discrimination does not apply to
people who are transgendered.  He then dismissed Peter Oiler's case
against the Winn-Dixie grocery store chain, even though Winn-Dixie 
never claimed that Oiler's off-the-job cross-dressing interfered with 
his work in any way.
   
Almost 15 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court said that laws against sex
discrimination prevent employers from firing a person who doesn?t act
"like a man" or "like a woman."  But that, the ACLU said, is just what
Winn-Dixie did.  "We believe that courts will reject the idea that 
only some people are protected from discrimination based on 
stereotypes about sex," said Ken Choe, staff attorney with the ACLU's 
Lesbian and Gay Rights Project.
   
Some courts already have moved past this cramped reading of civil 
rights law, Choe said.  Two states and about 40 cities have
guaranteed that more courts will do likewise by passing laws that 
specifically forbid discrimination based on gender identity.  In 
addition to that, more than 100 private employers have included
gender identity in their employment nondiscrimination policies.
   
Peter Oiler had worked for Winn-Dixie for 21 years, during which he
showed up for work on time, did a good job, and followed all the 
rules, but in January of 2000 he was fired because he cross-dresses 
off-duty.  Oiler and his wife Shirley lost their health insurance,
and nearly lost their home. The American Civil Liberties Union filed
a federal lawsuit on Peter's behalf, charging that Winn-Dixie 
violated state and federal sex discrimination laws.
   
"Discrimination based on gender identity is just as foolish and
wrongheaded as all the other practices that deny people jobs and
homes on account of something that has no bearing on ability or work 
ethic," said Joe Cook, executive director of the Louisiana ACLU. 
"Sooner or later," he added, "courts will recognize that people who
do their jobs well should not lose their jobs simply because they 
are transgendered.  But people like Peter Oiler will suffer until
that day comes.  We should speed the process by passing federal and 
state laws now that specifically forbid gender identity 
discrimination."
   
The case is Peter Oiler v. Winn-Dixie Louisiana, Inc. Civil Action No.
00-3114 (Sect. I).  The ACLU's complaint in the case can be found 
at: http://www.aclu.org/court/oiler_v_winndixie.html .
   Top
   

   BOOKS, Etc....
   
   [18]'Middlesex': My Big Fat Greek Gender Identity Crisis
   By LAURA MILLER
   Top
   Source Rica Ashby Fredrickson  <rica@netaxs.com>
September 15, 2002
   
   
Even before she's born, Calliope Stephanides's gender is up for debate. Her
parents, Milton and Tessie Stephanides of Detroit, want a girl, and a
bachelor uncle convinces Milton, ostensibly on the authority of an article
in Scientific American magazine, that if the couple have ''sexual congress''
24 hours prior to ovulation ''the swift male sperm would rush in and die
off. The female sperm, sluggish but more reliable, would arrive just as the
egg dropped.'' Tessie complies, despite her worries that ''to tamper with
something as mysterious and miraculous as the birth of a child was an act of
hubris.'' Once Tessie is pregnant, Milton's mother, Desdemona -- a refugee
with her husband, Lefty, from a Greek village on the slopes of Mount
Olympus -- dangles a silver spoon tied to a string over the belly of her
daughter-in-law and pronounces the child a boy. Her son storms in to protest
the divination; the baby is a girl, he insists. ''It's science, Ma.''
   
They're both right, after a fashion. Callie will spend the 1960's and early
70's, the first years of her life, as the relatively unremarkable daughter
of an entrepreneurial Greek-American family, only to discover at 14, in the
office of a Manhattan physician, that she is a hermaphrodite -- or, more
precisely, a pseudohermaphrodite, a sufferer of 5-alpha-reductase deficiency
syndrome. ''To the extent that fetal hormones affect brain chemistry and
histology, I've got a male brain,'' explains Cal, the man Callie decides to
become after she learns the truth and the narrator of ''Middlesex,'' Jeffrey
Eugenides's expansive and radiantly generous second novel. ''But I was
raised as a girl.''
   
Eugenides's first novel, ''The Virgin Suicides'' (1993), was a dreamy,
slender book about the gulf in understanding between the adolescent boys in
a Michigan suburb and the five daughters of a strict Roman Catholic couple
living in their neighborhood. The boys fill that gulf with romantic
obsession, a beast that thrives in a vacuum, and the girls, stricken with a
fatal loneliness, die by their own hands like a bevy of unlucky fairy tale
princesses. ''Middlesex'' may be an entirely different sort of book -- it's
longer, more discursive and funnier, for a start -- but it's equally
preoccupied with rifts. There's the gap between male and female, obviously,
but also between Greek and WASP, black and white, the old world and the new,
the silver spoon and the sluggish sperm. Finally, there is the tug of war
between destiny and free will -- an age-old concern of Greek storytellers,
as every college freshman learns, reborn in the theories advanced by
evolutionary psychology.
   
Evolutionary psychology, at least in its popular incarnation -- which seems
to get more popular every day -- keeps chipping away at the garden-variety
humanism espoused by most novelists. That's why it's surprising so few of
them (at least within the genre of literary fiction) have bothered to take
notice of it. Viewed through a sociobiological lens, infidelity, the novel's
favorite meat, is transformed from the stuff of betrayal and moral failing
to the mere playing out of a Darwinian reproductive imperative; despair
springs from an inherited defect in the regulation of neurochemicals, not
from an existential apprehension of the absurdity of the human condition.
The tangled parks and gardens that have long been the novelist's stamping
grounds are being bulldozed to make way for sleek, sterile industrial
complexes where, in cataloging each molecule in the human genome, scientists
may ultimately be able to tell us which gene caused Anna Karenina to cheat
and gave Oliver Twist the nerve to ask for more gruel.
   
Cal isn't a faithful adherent of either the nature or the nurture camp; he
eventually runs away to avoid undergoing surgery and hormone treatments at
the hands of a doctor who thinks that 14 years of living as a girl must
count more than the male identity Cal wants to embrace. Eugenides, after
all, is an artist, not a polemicist, and the truth about what shapes us may
never be settled. ''Sing now, O Muse, of the recessive mutation on my fifth
chromosome,'' Cal vamps in the book's opening pages. (''Sorry if I get a
little Homeric at times. That's genetic, too.'') By mimicking an ancient
author equally preoccupied by the tension between preordained fate and
self-determination, Cal telegraphs a very modern question: Is
''Middlesex'' -- or any novel, for that matter -- the story of its hero/ine
or the history of a particular configuration of DNA? As Cal -- sometimes --
chooses to tell it, the novel describes the ''roller coaster ride of a
single gene through time,'' how it found its twin in the mingled gametes of
Desdemona and Lefty, who, it turns out, are brother and sister as well as
husband and wife, able with their freshly minted American identities to
consummate a union they could never have gotten away with back in their home
village. Practically the whole first half of ''Middlesex,'' like a doorstop
biography run amok, takes place before Cal is even born.
   
If all this makes ''Middlesex'' sound like a novel of ideas, well, it is;
but it's several other things too. It's a saga that takes Desdemona and
Lefty from the burning of Smyrna through Detroit's purgatorial assembly
lines, the shadow economy of Prohibition and the founding of the family's
legit businesses, first a bar and then a restaurant. The Stephanideses
career through the Depression, World War II, the cataclysmic Detroit race
riots of 1967, the counterculture, Watergate, the energy crisis.
   
''Middlesex'' is also a coming-of-age story, albeit an exceptionally fraught
one, as it gradually dawns on the adolescent Callie that there's something
seriously odd about her body -- and that she's besotted with a female
classmate. There's a bit of road novel as well, when, enlightened as to the
actual state of his chromosomes, Cal hitchhikes to -- where else? -- San
Francisco. And, finally, there's the sliver of a love story, as the now
41-year-old Cal, ensconced in a safely nomadic State Department career,
gingerly courts a Japanese-American photographer, wondering if he can trust
her with the surprise between his legs.
   
Eugenides pitches a big tent, but one of the delights of ''Middlesex'' is
how soundly it's constructed, with motifs and characters weaving through the
novel's various episodes, pulling it tight. The young Armenian doctor who
saves Lefty in Smyrna and sees his own children butchered by Turkish
soldiers becomes the aged, bleary-eyed family retainer who overlooks
Callie's unusual anatomy. Middlesex, the modern house the Stephanideses
manage to purchase in the exclusive suburb of Grosse Pointe (it's too
peculiar and unfashionable to sell to WASPs) is ''like communism, better in
theory than reality.'' Which makes it also like the blank-slate notion of
gender identity advanced by the doctor who wants to drag Cal under the
knife.
   
And while some of the odds and ends Eugenides tosses into the mix (a
disquisition on Michael Dukakis, a supporting character's bizarre connection
to the Nation of Islam) don't quite integrate, far more often than not the
novel feels rich with treats, including some handsome writing. When the
author describes the pulchritudinous teenage Desdemona's braids as ''not
delicate like a little girl's but heavy and womanly, possessing a natural
power, like a beaver's tail,'' for example, the metaphor has an elemental
eroticism worthy of Hardy.
   
Because it's long and wide and full of stuff, ''Middlesex'' will be
associated by some readers with books by David Foster Wallace and Jonathan
Franzen, brilliant members of Eugenides's cohort. Those writers, however,
have more satirical, even self-lacerating inclinations; there can be an air
of penance to their work (as there is to ''The Virgin Suicides''). Here, at
least, Eugenides is sunnier; the book's length feels like its author's arms
stretching farther and farther to encompass more people, more life. His
narrator is a soul who inhabits a liminal realm, a creature able to bridge
the divisions that plague humanity, endowed with ''the ability to
communicate between the genders, to see not with the monovision of one sex
but in the stereoscope of both.'' That utopian reach makes ''Middlesex''
deliriously American; the novel's patron saint is Walt Whitman, and it has
some of the shagginess of that poet's verse to go along with the exuberance.
But mostly it is a colossal act of curiosity, of imagination and of love.
   
   Top

HEALTH AND SCIENCE

[19] USA: Colorado--Bringing it all together--Boulder Summit a First for LGBTI Health Advocates

Top

[thanks to Terisa Gibson via transgendernews] and Rica Ashby Fredrickson <rica@netaxs.com

Echo Magazine (GLBT weekly, Arizona)

September 12, 2002 Issue 339 · 09.12.02

http://echomag.com/news/med1.html

Bringing it all together--Boulder Summit a First for LGBTI Health Advocates

By Liz Highleyman

BOULDER, CO

Over 300 gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people and 
their allies gathered Aug. 21-25 in Boulder, CO, for the Lesbian, 
Gay, Bisexual, and Intersex Health Summit 2002. The summit, hosted by 
the Boulder County AIDS Program, brought together health advocates, 
activists, healthcare professionals, service providers, researchers, 
policymakers, and others to explore a wide range of health and 
wellness issues of interest to the community. The summit was 
sponsored by the Gill Foundation and Bristol-Myers Squibb; the Astrea 
National Lesbian Action Foundation provided scholarship support.
   
    Organized by a volunteer collective representing the diversity of 
the community, the summit fills a gap left by the discontinuation, 
after 20 years, of the annual conference put on by the National 
Lesbian and Gay Health Association. Two Gay Men's Health Summits took 
place in Boulder in 1999 and 2000, and several regional gay men's 
health meetings took place in 2001.
   
    With over 175 institutes, workshops, panel discussions, and 
plenary sessions featuring well-known researchers, authors, and 
health advocates, the summit covered the full gamut of LGBTI health 
issues. Body image, depression, same-sex domestic violence, and 
healthy anal sex were among the many topics discussed. Conference 
participants also heard reports from the International AIDS 
conference in Barcelona and the Queer Disability Conference held in 
June. Several sessions looked at international aspects of the LGBTI 
health movement, with presenters from Australia, Canada, Japan, 
Tanzania, and Zimbabwe.
   
    The 2002 summit was the first health gathering at which bisexual, 
transgender, and intersex issues were a major focus, and in which bi, 
trans, and intersex people played an integral role in the planning 
process. Bisexual Foundation director Luigi Ferrer and transman Sean 
Camargo were members of the seven-member summit organizing collective.
   
    "I think we are at a place in our larger movement history where 
we understand that gender and sexuality are not so easy to slice up," 
said collective member Marj Plumb. "Our edges are blurred. We need a 
large enough container to hold all of us."
   
    The first conference plenary was devoted to intersex issues and 
why they matter to the queer health movement. Cheryl Chase and Emi 
Koyama discussed the intersex agenda, emphasizing that intersex 
advocates are not arguing for the abolition of gender or that 
children with intersex conditions should not be assigned a gender at 
birth. Rather, said Chase, doctors and parents should make 
their "best guess" about a child's future gender, but should not 
perform surgery to correct intermediate genitalia and should be open 
to the possibility that the child's gender identity may change.
   
    Another new feature was a full track of workshops focusing on 
drug use, harm reduction, and treatment, including a session on the 
history and meaning of drug use in the gay circuit party scene.
   
    "We need to address pleasure and desire as well as risk," said 
City University of New York professor of public health Richard 
Elovich, who coordinated the track. "Harm reduction is not about 
ideology, it's about facing reality.
   
    Pleasure and desire were themes throughout the conference. Anna 
Forbes of the Global Campaign for Microbicides and Chris Bartlett led 
a session on the development of microbicides and how they might be 
used by gay men to prevent disease transmission during anal sex. 
Participants debated whether men who bareback simply dislike condoms, 
or if unprotected sex holds deeper meanings for that group.
   
    Participants came away from the summit with plans to organize 
separate gay, lesbian, transgender, and other meeting in odd-numbered 
years ˜ the next Gay Men's Health Summit is already being planned for 
2003 ˜ and unified LGBTI summits in alternate years.
   
    A theme of the earlier gay men's health summits was looking 
beyond AIDS to other health issues. At this year's summit, the focus 
was even broader, looking beyond pathologies and problems to address 
wellness and strengths of the LGBTI community ˜ what organizing 
collective member T. Scott Pegues called an "empowered, asset-based, 
wellness model of health."
   
    "Our communities are harmed tremendously by portraying them as 
diseased. Is it possible to truly empower when we consistently 
represent a community utilizing deficit-based constructs?" asked 
summit planner Eric Rofes. "Let's think of LGBTI people as resilient 
and creative and persevering more often than we think of our people 
as damaged.
   
©ACE Publishing
   Top
   
   
   [20]Bad Hair Days: Baldness Treatment Claim Raises Eyebrows
   Top
   ABCNEWS.com : Baldness Treatment Claim Raises...
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/living/GoodMorningAmerica/GMA020920Baldne
ss_formulas_hunter.html
   
RETRIEVED: Sunday, September 22, 2002
   
Sept. 20 &emdash; Joe Krainock is one of thousands of people who paid more than
$100 for a product called FolliGuard, hoping it would help grow hair.
   
Though it was described in a television commercial as "the revolutionary new
breakthrough scientifically formulated to stop excessive hair loss and
re-grow new hair," Krainock was unimpressed with the results.
   
"Didn't work," Krainok told Good Morning America. "Nothing."
   
Balding men are the traditional target market for the $1 billion a year hair
growing business that is bursting with products promising to give back what
nature has taken away. But 40 percent of the 60 million Americans
experiencing hair loss are women, and now they, too, have become a target
market for products that promise to treat baldness.
   
FolliGuard, a new hair formula that costs $359 for a three-month supply, is
proving to be an equal opportunity letdown, customers told Good Morning
America. After an investigation, GMA learned that the only ingredient in the
formula that is proven to work on balding is an ingredient that can be
purchased a lot cheaper at the drugstore. Plus, dissatisfied customers were
having problems getting their money back.
   
'Good Hair Day' Quest
   
FolliGuard is marketed to both sexes on TV and radio, and in publications
that have mostly female readers.
   
Kim Farrand was worried about her thinning hair, fearing that she would
become one of 24 million women who experience some degree of female pattern
baldness. 
   
"I would never find a boyfriend if I was half bald," Farrand said. "It's
hard enough to find one as it is when I'm educated and independent and nice
and I've got to have a good hair day going along with that."
   
She paid more than $200 for FolliGuard's guaranteed system of vitamins,
shampoo, herbal tablets, and a "topical activator," but said she felt let
down by the results. After using FolliGuard, she says her hair did not get
thicker as she had hoped.
   
"As a matter of fact it seemed to be falling out," Farrand said.
   
Company Declines Comment
   
Despite repeated requests for a television interview, no one at Jungle MD,
the Biddeford, Maine-based company that sells FolliGuard would talk on
camera to Good Morning America about the "revolutionary hair growing
formula." Jungle MD president Chris Austin did not return calls or respond
to a letter, and when a correspondent and crew visited company offices,
someone called the police to have them thrown off the premises.
   
GMA producers ordered a three-month supply of FolliGuard Extra from Jungle
MD, for $359. When the product arrived, they saw that one of the main
ingredients of the "...scientifically advanced ...revolutionary new
formula..." was minoxidil, the same over-the-counter drug found in Rogaine,
a baldness treatment product which has been around for years.
   
One doctor said that the company appears to be using a new tactic to sell
what he described as "snake oil."
   
"This is a new technique that, that is being used to sell products that I
used to refer to as snake oil because they didn't work, but now they have
minoxidil so now there's snake oil with minoxidil," said Dr. Michael Reed, a
hair loss expert at New York University Medical Center.
   
Only Two FDA-Approved Ingredients
   
The Food and Drug Administration is in charge of making sure hair regrowth
products are safe and effective. The FDA says only two drugs are proven safe
and effective for growing hair. One is minoxidil, and the other is a
prescription drug sold under the brand name Propecia, which is only approved
for men, as one of the active ingredients may cause a specific kind of birth
defect. 
   
But even these two drugs are limited. They don't work for everyone, and they
don't work on all areas of the head. Both are far better at maintaining the
hair you still have rather than re-growing new hair on your bald spot.
   
Minoxidil works as a baldness treatment, but Reed says the Jungle MD Web
site is exaggerating when it says minoxidil is "proven to rejuvenate hair
growth in more than 90 percent of people who use it." In fact, as FolliGuard
notes in the fine print on its own packaging, clinical studies show only 26
percent of users get moderate to dense re-growth.
   
To the best of his knowledge, none of the FolliGuard ingredients, with the
exception of minoxidil, can re-grow hair, Reed said.
   
FolliGuard claims another ingredient, saw palmetto, is also "clinically
proven to encourage hair re-growth," but the experts who Good Morning
America spoke to dispute that claim.
   
The cost of FolliGuard is also prompting questions.
   
"That's a big rip-off quite frankly, economically speaking, because you can
buy minoxidil for $15 a month, you know, generically in any pharmacy and
it'll do the same thing as, as, as what FolliGuard does," Reed said.
   
Money Back Guarantee?
   
The words "risk-free" and "guarantee" appear six times in one FolliGuard
print ad, and in the TV commercial, the announcer says, "It's the answer
you've been waiting for. Guaranteed, call now!"
   
But Krainock said he was not able to get his money back, despite the
product's money-back guarantee.
   
"I didn't get anything back at all," Krainock said.
   
Farrand had the same problem.
   
"They had a money-back guarantee that they refused to honor," Farrand said.
   
Bob Williams, of the Better Business Bureau, in Eastern Massachusetts, Maine
and Vermont, said that guarantees can be risky.
   
"The money-back guarantee is only as good as the company giving it,"
Williams said. 
   
The Better Business Bureau says Jungle MD has an unsatisfactory record, and
a pattern of complaints it has failed to correct, including "failure to
deliver product, failure to honor on a timely basis, or honor at all, money
back guarantees." 
   
Farrand said that if she could sum up her experience with a phrase, there is
just one. 
   
"Taken advantage of," she said.
   
END
   
© 2002 ABCNEWS Internet Ventures.
   Top
   
   
   [21]USA: Popularity of Breast Implants Rising Health Impact, FDA Oversight Questioned
   Top
   
   Popularity of Breast Implants Rising (washing...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49462-2002Sep21.html
    
   
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
   
Sunday, September 22, 2002; Page A01
   
Jennifer Moore had been "very, very conscious" of her bust size for years,
and this summer the 24-year-old decided to do something about it. It cost
her $6,000 and a few days of pain and swelling, but the woman who was a 32A
is now a 34C, thanks to her new breast implants.
   
"I just love how it looks, and my boyfriend really does, too," said Moore, a
sales clerk from Frederick. "My mom said that if she was my age again, she'd
do it, too."
   
The number of women electing to have their breasts enlarged through implant
surgery is increasing rapidly. A record 220,000 American women chose to
undergo breast augmentation last year, and the industry projects an almost
10 percent increase this year.
   
That is twice the number of women who were getting cosmetic breast implants
a decade ago, before the Food and Drug Administration strictly limited use
of the most popular type of implant -- the kind filled with silicone gel --
after reports that it might cause debilitating illnesses.
   
At first slowly, and now quite eagerly, many American women have turned to
the saltwater-filled alternative to silicone implants. The two breast
implant manufacturers in the United States recently reported record sales
and profits for their spring quarters, and cosmetic plastic surgeons say the
operation has reached a level of social acceptance unimaginable not many
years ago. And not only are more women choosing implants, but they are
choosing ever-larger models -- from an average of 250 cubic centimeters in
the 1980s to about 350 cubic centimeters today.
   
Even concerns about silicone implants have eased significantly, and one
manufacturer is expected to ask the FDA later this year to approve them for
general use once more.
   
But some public health advocates and physicians remain alarmed about
implants of all types -- especially now, with their resurgent popularity.
Additional research, they say, has confirmed that planting a device in a
woman's breast can cause serious, predictable and often costly
complications, and they say the FDA is not providing American women the
information and protection they need.
   
The most recent data presented to the FDA showed, for instance, that almost
one-quarter of all cosmetic saline, or saltwater-filled, breast implants
will need to be followed by another operation within five years, and that
few implants can be expected to last more than 10 years. Studies have also
found significant levels of internal infection, hardening of the tissue
around the implanted device and implant leakage and deflation.
   
"This is a cosmetic operation with serious health consequences, and the FDA
is just not treating it with the seriousness it requires," said Diana
Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Policy Research for Women &
Families and a longtime critic of the breast implant industry. "The benefits
are so small compared to the very real risks, so it should be getting more
scrutiny, not less."
   
FDA officials say the agency has spent years reviewing breast implants and
allows them on the market because they meet the standards for safety and
effectiveness. They also say it is important that implants are available to
women who have lost breasts to cancer; they accounted for an additional
80,000 implants last year.
   
The popularity of cosmetic breast implants is taking off with questions
remaining about the largest implant manufacturer, Mentor Corp. of Santa
Barbara, Calif. A long-standing criminal investigation has focused on
Mentor's research procedures and allegations of document destruction and
faulty manufacturing. In addition, at an FDA hearing in July, the company
was sharply criticized by experts for the small number of women it was able
to contact for an FDA-required follow-up study.
   
The potential problems at Mentor are receiving renewed attention because a
former compliance officer with the FDA has gone public with what he says
were his long efforts to push the agency to redress problems at the company.
James Austin Templer, who was the FDA official in charge of overseeing a
Mentor plant in Texas in the mid- and late-1990s, has said that the company
was in violation of good manufacturing and record-keeping rules, and that
the FDA has not been sufficiently aggressive in its oversight. Templer quit
the agency in protest in 2000.
   
"I was very concerned about the products that Mentor was putting out,"
Templer said in a deposition last month. "And I felt that the agency had
just not done a good job with handling it."
   
The FDA has declined to comment on Templer's charges. Mentor said in a
recent filing that it had no contact with federal investigators since early
2001, and that its research and manufacturing are regularly reviewed and
approved by the FDA.
   
The willingness of many women to undergo surgery to gain larger breasts
indicates that many American women are unhappy with the way their bodies
look, according to David Sarwer, a psychologist at the University of
Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
   
His research, consistent with statistics collected by the American Society
of Plastic Surgeons, shows that although many women are getting implants in
their twenties, as many are getting them in their thirties or forties, after
they have had children. A surprising number -- more than 5,000 in the past
two years -- are 18 or younger.
   
"The bar has gotten higher and higher for positive body images," Sarwer
said. "We're seeing increases in all forms of cosmetic surgery as women try
to keep up with the images they see all around them. Instead of putting
their money into a 401(k) or going on a vacation, many women see this kind
of surgery as an investment in themselves." Most, he found, are dissatisfied
with how they look but are not more prone to depression or other
psychological problems than other women.
   
The new acceptance of breast implants is remarkable, given the nation's
response a decade ago to reports of problems with silicone breast implants.
   
Research linking silicone with a class of often-debilitating illnesses known
as connective-tissue disease caused a sensation then, and led to class
action lawsuits and big (though still unresolved) cash settlements. Silicone
gel implants were limited to women who needed breast reconstruction after
surgery or who would take part in FDA-reviewed clinical studies.
   
But the agency was sharply criticized by women who wanted implants and by
plastic surgeons who lost a profitable business that they believed was safe
and useful. An Institute of Medicine report in 1999 concluded there was
unlikely to be a correlation between silicone implants and connective-tissue
disorders, and to many, that settled the question. Since then, the FDA has
struggled in this charged atmosphere to regulate implants.
   
Since the agency gave its retroactive approval to saline devices in 2000, it
has reported that many women are satisfied with their implants and that the
implants help them feel better about themselves. (Implant manufacturers say
their studies show that many of the follow-up operations are performed for
women who want even larger implants.) But the FDA also says that some health
problems are inevitable, and that implants can make it more difficult to
detect breast cancer; can cause numbness in the nipple; and can make it
difficult or impossible to breast-feed an infant.
   
The experiences of Lisa Marie Channing of Arlington, who wanted implants
after she lost weight and was unhappy with how her breasts looked, show some
of the possible pitfalls.
   
The saline implants put in by her board-certified plastic surgeon in 1998
were bigger than she expected -- a double D, she said -- and they became
hard and painful. After two months, she was so upset that she asked to have
them removed. She said her surgeon initially balked but later acquiesced.
The surgery, however, left visible scars on her breasts, she said. She has
spent the past several years trying to have her breasts restored.
   
"I really didn't know what I was getting into, and now I'm disfigured," said
Channing, 29. "My doctor told me it was all perfectly safe, but it wasn't
and has caused me incredible problems."
   
While the average breast augmentation costs $5,000, Channing said she has
paid much more to have her breasts repaired. Since cosmetic breast
enlargement is not covered by insurance, as reconstructive surgery is, women
pay for the surgery and any future operations -- work that earned plastic
surgeons $669 million last year. As the number of cosmetic implants has
skyrocketed, the number of expensive breast implant removals has also
increased, to 42,000 last year alone.
   
While pain and hardening from the scar tissue around the implants are
common, the biggest medical issues involve implant deflations. The leakage
of saltwater is generally not considered dangerous -- though it can
contribute to infections. The health risks from leaking silicone implants
remain controversial. Research by the FDA and National Institutes of Health
has recently found increased fibromyalgia (a disease of generalized pain and
tenderness) in women with silicone implants, as well as an unexplained
increase in brain cancer.
   
Plastic surgeons insist that women are made aware of the possible
complications and say they require a signed "informed consent" form before
implant surgery. But online chats with women who have had bad experiences
with implants are filled with stories of unaware patients. And Leroy Young,
a St. Louis doctor who is a breast augmentation expert for the American
Society of Plastic Surgeons, said that in his experience, many women don't
take the warnings seriously. "Women see this mostly as a legal thing, since
the actual results are so good," he said.
   
Unlike the experience of a decade ago, the problems with implants today have
drawn little attention. The breast implant debate is likely to heat up soon,
however.
   
Officials at Inamed Corp., also of Santa Barbara, have said they are
finishing clinical studies of silicone gel implants and hope to apply for an
FDA review later this year. The United States is the only major country
where silicone gel implants are limited, and women elsewhere overwhelmingly
select silicone over saline when they have the choice. Reflecting its
expectation that silicone implants are here to stay, Mentor just announced
that it will build a large silicone implant facility in the Netherlands.
   
David Feigal of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health said
the agency will surely hold a public advisory committee hearing on silicone
implants.
   
"There are certainly remaining issues out there about silicone, but they
shouldn't keep us from focusing on what we already know: that there is a
likelihood that a woman with any implant will have to have additional
surgery in the future," Feigal said. "Women need to know that once they go
down the path of having breast implants, their bodies will be changed and
there are predictable problems some of them will face."
   
   
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
   
   Top
   
   [22]USA: California--AIDS Confab Focus: Transgenders
   Top
   
   AIDS Confab Focus: Transgenders
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,55247,00.html
 
AIDS Confab Focus: Transgenders
 
By Randy Dotinga 
   
2:00 a.m. Sep. 19, 2002 PDT
   
ANAHEIM, California -- After two decades on the sidelines of the AIDS
epidemic, transgender activists are ready for their close-up.
   
Thursday, they will play a prominent role in a national AIDS conference for
the first time and spread the word about the special health needs of women
who were formerly men.
   
While their sexual habits may render them especially vulnerable to HIV
infection, transgender persons are hardly ever the targets of AIDS
prevention programs. The federal government considers them to be no
different from gay men, and even the liberal stronghold of San Francisco
only began a sexual health program for transgenders in 1999.
   
"Transgenders are still not part of the picture and that's our problem,"
said Brenda Thomas, a male-to-female transsexual with AIDS who works as a
senior public health educator for the city of Houston. "There are no funds
to target transgenders, there's no data, there's no tracking.
   
We don't know how big or small the numbers are. It's a population that
doesn't exist." 
   
Thomas and several other transsexuals will demand more research into HIV
rates among transgenders during a landmark day-long panel discussion at the
U.S. Conference on AIDS. "This is monumental," Thomas said. "It sends a
message to the 3,500 people attending that they need to pay attention to
this population." 
   
But the very concept of transgenders may be a challenge for public health
officials to understand, whether they are gay or straight.
   
"Most people look between their legs and know what they are, but it's not
that easy for transgender people," said Jessica Xavier, a male-to-female
transsexual who is a volunteer director at the Whitman-Walker Clinic, a
health center established by and for the gay community in Washington D.C.
Even some members of the gay community are uncomfortable with transgenders.
   
While many gay groups have added the word "transgender" to their names over
the last five years, activists say prejudice remains. "There's a reluctance
on the parts of many gay men and lesbians to embrace the transgender
community," Xavier said, partly because early gay-rights efforts emphasized
assimilation into the "straight-acting" world. "It's been changing, but
slowly. It's a generational thing."
   
The word "transgender" encompasses a diverse sexual world comprised of
everyone from cross dressers and drag queens to transsexuals (those who have
had sex-change operations) and "intersexes" (those who have sex organs of
both genders). 
   
According to activists, the wide majority of transgenders are biologically
men but, at least for part of their lives, identify as women. Sex-change
surgery is expensive (as much as $77,000 for female-to-male, and $35,000 for
male-to-female) and health insurance usually doesn't cover it (with the
notable exception of the city of San Francisco).
   
No one knows how many transgenders are infected with the AIDS virus,
although a 2000 San Francisco study found that 15 percent of those tested
were HIV-positive. Women who were formerly men are at the highest risk of
getting AIDS for a variety of reasons, Thomas said.
   
Many transgenders aren't IV drug users but still share dirty needles when
they give themselves hormone injections, Thomas said. Also, the technical
challenges of looking feminine -- including body shaving and manipulation of
male genitalia -- can increase the risk of AIDS transmission because of
chafing and bleeding, she said.
   
In addition, many transgenders work as prostitutes because they can't get
jobs. "Validation is a really big factor," Thomas said. "They want to
validate that they're female, so they'll resort to unprotected sex faster
than a lot of other people."
   
But as transgenders call for more attention, public health officials may
discover that it isn't easy to discuss their high rates of prostitution and
drug and alcohol abuse, said Steven Tierney, director of HIV prevention for
San Francisco's Department of Public Health.
   
"We have to figure out a way to deliver prevention messages without assuming
that being transgender equals any of those things and without being seen as
complete outsiders who are making judgments."
   
END
   
© 1994-2002 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.
   
   Top
   
   
   ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
   
   [23]SOUTH AFRICA: Cape Town--Madness, muscle and mascara
A Shawn Michael experience at The Warehouse @ On Broadway in Cape Town
   Top
   Q-online - News: A Shawn Michael experience a...
http://www.q.co.za/2001/2002/09/19-capetown.html
   
Way Out Tosurs
   
September 19, 2002 
     
Madness, Muscle and Mascara revolves around the avant-garde and funny, yet
sad lifestyle of an actor and the influences of the colorful people he has
met through his life with the undertones of masculine, feminine and
trans-gendered cultures he has experienced.
   
The illusion of life and the reality thereof.
   
Shawn Michael the wild and lovable actor is a product of society generated
by the fantasy of changing appearances and personas in front of the
audiences he encounters.
   
As a child when mom and dad left the house he played all the records that
his father had gathered through the years to create the woman the audience
see before them. The characters of Victor Victoria played by Julie Andrews
and Lisa in Cabaret come to life finally after 27 years into show stopping
numbers. The live rendition of Sweet Transvestite brings him back to the
reality of the illusion of life. To remind him of where he came from, he
always throws the line to audience:
   
"And thanks to you I can afford it now. You are the little people out there
that make this show a sensation and sell out show."
   
The medium of digital sound, dance, live vocals and mime art form are
combined to give artistic legitimacy to the creativity of art forms used in
the production which are often overshadowed by stigmatization and even
discrimination. 
   
This is not a drag show, this is reality.
   
Production format 
   
Duration 1 hour 10 minutes excluding intermission
*    Start (sample)
*    Introduction - set to the Titanic score - live
Shawn Michael instills within the minds the illusion the audience is about
to discover and be drawn into. "Ladies and gentleman please fasten the belts
on your lifejackets we are about to collide with an illusion so great it
shall blow all our minds. Thank you… Team take your positions the show is
about to begin!" 
   
The musical score creates a sense of suspense and anticipation to what is
about to transpire.
   
*    "Le Jazz Hot" from Victor Victoria - mime
The first act opens in Paris 1932 where we meet Victor Victoria the
avant-garde man/woman. She is a character of dynamic strength and beauty.
The audience realizes that appearances are deceiving as she changes from a
man to a full glamorous woman within a blink of the eye.
   
*    "Mein Herr" from Cabaret, live
The lifestyle and true colors of cabaret performer Shawn Michael is shown
for the first time as Lisa: "You have to understand the way I am Mein Herr"
   
*    "Proud Mary" - live
Shawn Michael gives a live rendition of Tina Turner as he sees her as a wild
cocaine addict with this energetic track. He lets the audience assist him in
choosing the appropriate garment to wear.
   
*    Roxy - "Chicago" from Victor Victoria - mime
The lovable Roxy tells her story of corruption and crime and takes us into
intermission with style.
   
Intermission - 20 minutes
   
*    "Wilkomen", from Cabaret - live
We join the second half of the show with a welcome back to the illusion and
escape to Carnegie Hall to meet dazzling Bernadette Peters.
   
*    "Broadway Baby" - recorded by Bernadette Peters - mime
Bernadette is shown to the audience as a sexual blond bombshell with no
limits. She strips to reveal her hot pants and follows through into her show
stopping second number with a high-energy choreographed dance routine.
   
*    "You Could Drive A Person Crazy" - recorded by Bernadette Peters - mime
*    "Stop" - live
Shawn Michael gets interactive with the audience telling them of his
lifestyle and draws into the dialogue the contemporary funny happenings in
the world today.
   
*    "Sweet Transvestite" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Live
The realization of impersonating stars brings the actor back to reality of
being a man who has been inspired by masculine, feminine and trans-gendered
cultures of people he has experienced in his life.
   
*    "All By Myself" recorded by Eartha Kitt - mime
   
The actor leaves the audience with the moving song and lifestyle of his icon
Eartha Kitt and notes: "You and me we are destined you'll agree to spend the
rest of our lives with each other, the rest of our days like two lovers,
forever - yeah - forever. My Bijou …"
*    "Bijou" - mime
Shawn Michael reveals his true identity by stripping away the garments, wig
and makeup and walks off stage semi naked.
   
*    The End - sample
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Madness, Muscle and Mascara is on at The Warehouse at On Broadway, Sunday 22
September at 20.30
   
For bookings: 021 421 0777, (021) 422 1567, or email bmtait@netactive.co.za
or info@rainbowtrade.co.za
   Top
   
   
   [24]AUSTRALIA:Sidney--Wood's tour de force faces kiss of death
   Top
   Source: Brenda Lana Smith R.af D.
   
   
Wood's tour de force faces kiss of death - th...
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/09/18/1032054868888.html
   
   Wood's tour de force faces kiss of death
   By Jo Roberts
   
September 19 2002
   
Despite rave reviews for its star, John Wood, "appalling" attendances at The
Elocution of Benjamin Franklin are forcing the play to close this Saturday
night, after just two weeks at the CUB Malthouse.
   
The play was originally planned to run until September 28, with a possible
extension to October 5. But Wood, who plays a transvestite elocution teacher
in the one-man play, said poor bookings in the first week of the play's
Melbourne run had prompted an amended closing date. Subsequent audiences
have barely touched the venue's 400-seat capacity.
   
"The bookings have just been appalling," Wood said yesterday.
   
"Less than 30 today for the matinee, about 45 for the Saturday matinee ...
generally speaking, it's been considerably less than 100.
   
"It's terribly, terribly depressing, to be honest, to be doing something
this good and nobody's coming."
   
The play's Sydney season this year was considerably more successful. The
co-production between the Sydney Opera House and Christine Dunstan
Productions enjoyed almost a month at the Opera House's Playhouse.
   
There, Wood's performance attracted similarly glowing reviews to those
received in Melbourne.
   
Sunday Age reviewer Steven Carroll called Wood's performance "exceptional",
while Age reviewer Helen Thomson wrote that Wood's "extraordinary acting
ability" had produced "a triumph of performance". Yet the high praise has
failed to translate into extra ticket sales in Melbourne.
   
"I couldn't have written Helen Thomson's review, it was an amazing review,"
Wood said.
   
"It's wonderful to be spoken about in such glowing terms. I thought it would
have sent the box office through the roof, but it's had no impact at all."
   
Why?
   
"I've got no idea, no idea at all," he said. "It's sort of hard not to (take
it personally). I don't know what it is, whether people are no longer
interested in the play, or maybe they don't want to see Sergeant Tom Croydon
in drag" - a reference to Wood's character in the television show Blue
Heelers.
   
Wood also does a brief, fully nude scene in the play. Could it be perhaps
the thought of seeing the boy in blue a shade, er, bluer?
   
"Well, it could be that too," he said.
   
For producer Dunstan, however, it is a dire situation, Wood said. (Dunstan
could not be reached for comment yesterday.)
   
"For her it's quite scary," he said. "She's wondering whether there's a
place for an independent producer in Australia any more. Someone of my
standing in the industry doing a classic Australian pl