Vitale Letter #256, February 17, 2003 --Last Edition Anne Vitale PhD, Editor
- Archives of back issues
- Notes on Gender Transition
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ANNOUNCMENTS
MEDIA WATCH USA: Free to be Fran / After years of leading a secret life, it was time to make the most important decision of her life San Francisco Chronicle Top Editor's Note: This piece is far too long to run here. Please use the URL provided to read the rest of the story...ed Free to be Fran / After years of leading a se... http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/02/09/LV159551.DTL Free to be Fran After years of leading a secret life, it was time to make the most important decision of her life Sam McManis, San Francisco Chronicle Deputy Living Editor Sunday, February 9, 2003 This is the first of a two-part profile of Frank (now Fran) Bennett, a San Jose disc jockey who for decades hid the fact that she was a woman trapped in a man's body. Part 1 today focuses on her years of deception and her coming to terms with being a transsexual. Part 2, next Sunday, will detail Fran's public struggle for acceptance and her changing personal relationship with her wife, Erika, and their family. . Happy hour at Santa Clara's Doubletree Hotel had reached a mirthful crescendo, and mike-toting KOME disc jockey Frank Bennett scoped out the crowd for just the right girl. There was a type "Uncle Frank" always sought: single, dressed like an MTV video diva, open to some harmless, suggestive on-air banter. It was a Friday night in 1987 but, really, it could have been any year. Bennett had been an afternoon drive-time staple in the South Bay for years, first at KOME and later at KFOX. His burnished baritone oozed manliness, flexed tonal muscle. That voice was kick-ass classic rock, man, the perfect accompaniment to a rip-snorting Stones song on the commute. In person, at promotional events, Uncle Frank's testosterone-fueled image flourished. He looked, everyone agreed, like Gregg Allman: a strapping 6-foot- 2, with long, straight blond hair, scraggly beard, black leather jacket. Women flocked to Bennett, and he played his part to the hilt. After work, he could often be found at a bar, a Black Russian in one hand, a Kool Super Long 100 in the other. But he was on air now . . . Top
LEGISLATIVE ACTION USA: Forum Coalesces Around Gender Bill in New York Top Source: Gay City News (glbt weekly, New York) Author: Duncan Osborne URL: http://www.gaycitynews.com/gcn207/forumcoalesces.html Date: Feb 14, 12003 ESPA makes little headway with effort at comprehensive human rights reform A community forum on advancing civil rights for New York's transgender community showcased a broad consensus that that goal is best achieved by passing the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA), a bill that would amend the state human rights law to ban discrimination based on gender identity or expression. An alternative approach aimed at comprehensive reform of the state human rights law, advanced by the Empire State Pride Agenda (ESPA), meanwhile, received no support at the forum. "We can all come together on a specific series of actions that I think we need to take and I have no doubt that we will be successful," said Deborah Glick, an out assemblymember (D-West Village). The forum, held on February 13, drew some 200 people to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center and it was sponsored by roughly 20 community groups, including ESPA, the state's largest, gay lobbying group. In addition to Glick, the forum featured state Senator Thomas K. Duane (D-Chelsea) and Assemblymember Daniel O'Donnell (D-Upper West Side), the other two openly gay elected state officials. The Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act (SONDA), a bill that amended the state human rights law to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, passed the State Senate and it was signed into law on December 17 without language protecting transgender people. That exclusion created tremendous anger on the part of many transgender activists and their supporters to the point where some were arguing for the defeat of SONDA. Much of that anger was directed at ESPA, SONDA's champion, though judging by the comments at the forum those passions have cooled somewhat. Following SONDA's enactment, ESPA had argued that the best vehicle for including transgender protections in state law was an omnibus bill that would revamp the state human rights law. Only Matt Foreman, ESPA's executive director, mentioned that approach during the forum. Both Duane and Glick have authored versions of GENDA, but they have yet to introduce those bills. The first hour of the forum was taken up with a "de-briefing" about SONDA run by Duane, who had been the leading voice in the State Senate to amend SONDA to protect transgender people. He avoided criticizing ESPA even when asked a question on ESPA's role in the SONDA debate by Alan Fleishman, a Brooklyn Democratic district leader, that pointedly invited Duane to take a poke at the group. Duane chalked up the divisions over SONDA, as he did throughout the evening, to a "flawed process" and "communication problems." There were moments when ESPA, certain segments of the gay community, and the entire community were chastised for their role in the SONDA. "I just don't get the gay community saying they don't understand transgender," said one transgendered woman at the forum. "They act like we don't exist and they know we exist· I am tired of the discrimination within the gay community." Charles King, co-president of Housing Works, the AIDS service group, and a leading proponent of transgender inclusion in SONDA, charged that gay "power elites" were responsible. "As a gay man, I am absolutely mortified that a bill was passed that left the most marginalized constituency behind," King said. "It was also amazing to me the attacks by the power elites on the folks who were trying to get transgender inclusion through." Other speakers said that despite what they saw as SONDA's shortcomings, the experience also had value. Donna Cartwright, a member of the queer union group, Pride At Work, and a former board member of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy, said the debate over transgender inclusion had been covered extensively across the state and three major newspapers ˆ˜The New York Times, the Albany Times Union, and the Syracuse Post Standard ˜ had editorialized in favor of inclusion. "I think we made huge progress on that issue," she said. Similarly, Diana Montford, host of her own cable show on public access, also said that the transgender community had made progress. "When I transitioned in 1971 it was illegal for us to congregate," she said. "Look how far we've come." Top
IN THE COURTS USA: Maryland-- Key Transgender Rights Ruling in Maryland Top Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 From: "tgnews_moderator <tgnews_moderator@yahoo.com>" Source: Gay City News (glbt weekly, New York) Author: Arthur S. Leonard URL: http://www.gaycitynews.com/gcn207/keytransgender.html Maryland high court acknowledges nuanced reality in sexual identity changes Another state's highest court has been heard from on the question whether transsexuals are entitled to legal recognition of their preferred sexual identity. Rejecting the reasoning of recent appellate court decisions from Kansas and Texas, Maryland's Court of Appeals unanimously ruled on February 11 that the state's circuit courts may issue an order changing an individual's legal sexual identity, if the individual presents sufficient medical evidence to show that they have completed a permanent and irreversible change from one sex to the other. The opinion creates an important transgender rights precedent as well as an important victory for attorney Alyson Meiselman, a crusading Maryland advocate who argued the case and whose extensive brief provided the basis for much of the sophisticated written opinion issued by the court. The petition for recognition of a sex change filed in the Montgomery County Circuit Court bore the name of Robert Wright Heilig, identified on a Pennsylvania birth certificate as a male. Now living in Maryland, Heilig was transitioning from male to female and sought a legal name change to Janet Heilig Wright and an order that would legally change her sexual identity from male to female. The Circuit Court judge granted the name change, but held that the court did not have authority to issue an order changing a person's sexual identity, even though there is a state statute that authorizes amendments to Maryland birth certificates to indicate sex changes upon a court order finding that a person "has been changed by surgical procedure." Heilig had submitted her Pennsylvania birth certificate and letters from her endocrinologist, describing hormone and anti-androgen therapy that led to "hormonal castration," and from her social worker, describing her psychotherapeutic treatment and stating the conclusion that her gender identity was female. Heilig appealed the court's ruling that it lacked specific authority to order a change in sexual identity. The Court of Special Appeals, an intermediate appellate court, affirmed the lower courts finding Heilig had failed to provide evidence that she had permanently changed her sex from male to female. The letters introduced fell short of the evidentiary requirement of sworn statements. Writing for the unanimous Court of Appeals, Justice Alan M. Wilner found that the trial court misconstrued both the procedural situation and its substantive powers. The statutory authority of circuit courts to order amendments to Maryland birth certificates after determining that somebody has changed their sex clearly indicates the legislature's understanding that they have authority to make orders regarding a person's sex change. But since Heilig has a Pennsylvania birth certificate, the Maryland courts' authority under that statute does not extend to her case, a fact that begs the question of what a Maryland resident born out-of- state must do to gain formal legal recognition of her new sex as she goes about her everyday life. The Court of Appeals ruled that circuit courts have inherent authority to issue orders recognizing the change, even if an out-of-state birth certificate itself cannot be changed. A remaining important question, both for Heilig and future transsexual petitioners, is what circumstances must be proved in order to qualify for such an order, most importantly whether surgery is necessary. On this issue, Wilner refrained from opining directly, because that issue was not before the court. The Court of Appeals was limited to deciding whether the Circuit Court has jurisdiction to decide Heilig's petition. It seems clear from the opinion, which includes a lengthy summary of current scientific information about transsexualism and a review of decisions from a wide variety of jurisdictions (including the European Court of Human Rights), that the Court of Appeals was hesitant to step prematurely into what could be a real minefield. Wilner summarized extensive studies contending that sexual identity has a physical basis in the brain. Scientific opinion that sexual identity is not necessarily determined by genital anatomy would support the argument that a person should be entitled to a legal declaration of sexual identity without regard to whether they have undergone surgical alteration. On the other hand, Wilner noted that in all but a very few of the jurisdictions that have authorized a legal change of sexual identity statusˆˆsome 22 states and the District of Columbiaˆˆsurgical alteration of genitals has been a prerequisite to legal change. Similarly, in countries that recognize a marriage between a transsexual and another person of the transsexual's birth sex, the law premises such a marriage on the transitioning person having been surgically altered. Thus, there is substantial legal precedent for refusing to recognize a sex change in the absence of surgery, although Wilner also notes that many of the statutes do not describe with any particularity what surgery is necessary. Courts seem concerned that hormone treatments by themselves do not effect a permanent transformation, because the treatments must be continued to maintain the physical appearance of the desired sex, and that petitioners who have not had surgery could later "change their minds." The Court of Appeals also refrained from taking any position on whether somebody who has obtained a court order "changing" their legal sex would have the right to marry, or to have their sex change recognized in a variety of other circumstances. The Court of Appeals concluded its opinion by directing that the case go back to the Circuit Court so that Heilig can present evidence to show that she has made a "permanent and irreversible change" from male to female, but refrained from specifying whether the hormone and anti-androgen treatments alone would meet that standard. Thus, the decision falls short of a complete triumph for transsexuals seeking legal recognition of their desired gender. Surgical procedures are very expensive, not routinely covered by insurance policies, and may be viewed as undesirable or unnecessary by some transsexuals who have accepted the physical and psychological fact of their gender identity. Still, it marks a major breakthrough as one of the few decisions by the highest court of an American state to attempt a state-of-the-art scientific analysis of transgender identity, to signal acceptance of the view that anatomical gender at birth as defined by genitalia is not the sole basis for determining somebody's real gender, and to find that the courts haveˆˆeven in the absence of specific legislationˆˆinherent authority to recognize and validate a person's desired gender identity upon medical proof. Arthur S. Leonard is a professor of law at New York Law School and editor of Lesbian/Gay Law Notes. Top
HEALTH AND SCIENCE USA: Stanford University--Sex and gender scientists explore a revolution in evolution Top From Brenda Lana Smith R.af D. Sex and gender scientists explore a revolutio... http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-02/su-sag021003.php Public release date: 16-Feb-2003 Contact: Dawn Levy dawnlevy@stanford.edu 650-725-1944 Stanford University Sex and gender scientists explore a revolution in evolution Darwin may have been wrong about sex. Or at least too narrow minded. At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, leading researchers and theorists in the evolution of sexual behavior will gather to present the growing evidence that Darwin's idea of sexual selection requires sweeping revisions. ''I don't have a theory to address it all by any means,'' says Stanford biologist Joan Roughgarden, who organized the Feb. 17 symposium. ''I'm just trying to get the extent of diversity on the table.'' Roughgarden will present the evidence that gender is not limited to the static male/female binary and that sex can have social as well as reproductive roles. Robert Warner of the University of California-Santa Barbara will speak about fish that change sex. David Crews of the University of Texas-Austin will address the tenuous path linking genetic sex to behavior. Patricia Gowaty of the University of Georgia will present a new hypothesis on how animals select their mates. And Paul Vasey of the University of Lethbridge will discuss his research on homosexual behavior among female Japanese macaques. Sex and Darwin Darwin's theories of natural selection are well established and generally accepted: ''Survival of the fittest'' leads to the evolution of a particular species over time, and species evolve from other species. But a third theory has piggybacked upon the success of these other two: Darwin's theory of sexual selection. Sexual selection explains the evolution of physical and behavioral traits that increase the odds that an animal will reproduce. These same traits do not necessarily help the animal survive, as do naturally selected traits. The male praying mantis, for example, will sacrifice himself for love - the female begins to eat him even as they copulate. He doesn't survive long after finding his mate, but he does pass on his genes. Darwin postulated that females are ''coy,'' mating rarely and choosing their mates carefully, presumably betting their odds on the males with the best genes to contribute to their offspring. For their part, males are ''ardent'' and promiscuous, and fight amongst themselves for female partners. Later theories added that males are promiscuous because they have less to lose by making babies - unlike eggs, sperm are plentiful and small. Plus, females usually do most of the work to raise the offspring. Sexual selection theory helped Darwin explain many traits, especially in males, that otherwise seemed maladaptive. The unwieldy tail on the male peacock, for instance, makes him more vulnerable to predators but more attractive to females. Many behaviors do not fit sexual selection theory, however. Says Vasey of his work with Japanese macaques: ''I see females competing for males all the time. I see males ignoring females that are desperate to copulate with them.'' A great deal of empirical evidence exists that refutes Darwinian sexual selection. It's difficult to tell just how many exceptions there are to the rule because observations may have been skewed by Darwinian biases, says Roughgarden. ''The exceptions are so numerous they cry out for explanation,'' says Roughgarden, who has outlined a stunning array of behaviors that don't fit the mold in her upcoming book, Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender and Sexuality in Nature and People (University of California Press, 2003). Sex and society Roughgarden thinks that a more comprehensive theory of sexuality should take into account social as well as sexual selection. Mating can function to build and manage relationships as well as to procreate. ''Female choice, I'm pretty sure, has much more to do with managing male power than it does with trying to obtain good genes,'' says Roughgarden. For instance, anthropologist Sarah Hrdy studied langur monkeys in the 1980s and found that females promiscuously mate with many males. These females are attempting to protect their offspring, hypothesized Hrdy. Dominant male langurs regularly kill babies that aren't their own, so females protect their infants by spreading the possibility of paternity among several males. Other sexual traits, says Roughgarden, may represent a ''market economy'' dedicated to trading sexual opportunity for other resources. In many species, some individuals act as helpers to dominant males and reap some rewards in the process. Dominant male waterbucks, for example, establish a territory along a lakeshore and wait for a female to enter. Subordinate, ''satellite'' waterbucks help to defend the territory, and in turn may mate with a few females and get a shot at inheriting the territory when the dominant male retires. The payoffs for the dominant and satellite waterbucks may balance out in the long run. Homosexual behavior is common but unexplained by Darwin. Over 300 vertebrates, including monkeys, flamingoes and male sheep, practice homosexual behavior. Homosexuality in some species appears to play a social role. For instance, bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees) will have sex with same-sex partners to calm tensions after a squabble, or to make sure that a large amount of food is shared. But for some species, humans included, homosexual behavior may have no adaptive value at all. ''Looking for any single conceptual framework to explain homosexual behavior is an unattainable goal,'' says Vasey, one of the leading researchers on homosexual behavior. In female Japanese macaques, homosexual behavior appears to have evolved from female strategies to coerce reticent males to mate with them. Eager females will mount unwilling males and prompt them to mate with them - a strategy that was easily expanded to mounting other females. Despite these evolutionary origins, however, homosexual behavior among Japanese macaques may have no adaptive value - just as our tailbone evolved but is no longer useful. This finding is important because it suggests that sex may have functions other than procreation - a healthy ecosystem sports diversity for diversity's sake. Beyond male and female While two types of sex cells exist - sperm and eggs - it is more difficult to sort individuals into these binary classes. Several species have more than just male and female genders, where gender is defined as the body and sexual behavior of an individual. In some species, an individual's body may be difficult to classify as male or female. Most plants and some fish are hermaphrodites - capable of producing eggs and sperm. Some lizards are unisexual. There are no male whiptail lizards, and females will mount each other, prompting hormonal changes that result in cell division - a true ''virgin birth.'' A single individual also may switch from male to female or vice versa and back again - that is, may switch from producing sperm to producing eggs - due to a change in hormones triggered by external circumstances. In any coral reef, for example, about 25 percent of the fish have changed sex in their lifetime. Over 50 species of angelfish, wrasses, parrot fishes and groupers have changed from male to female or vice versa. Other invertebrates, such as shrimp and oysters, also may change sex. ''Gender can be surprisingly labile,'' says Bob Warner, who was among the first to study sex-changing fish in the 1970s. ''The young themselves may develop as one sex or the other, depending on the environment in which they find themselves. And individuals may function first as one sex, then another, over the course of their lives, and the change can be socially controlled.'' For instance, if the sole male is removed from a group of cleaning wrasse, the largest female will start to behave like a male within hours. Within 10 days she - now he - will produce sperm. Behavior is not tied to one's chromosomes, either - many species have three or more genders. For instance, bluegill sunfish have two different male genders - ''parental'' males who control territory and mate with females, and ''end-runner'' males, who are smaller with different coloring. End-runners will dart in and release sperm where a female and parental male are mating. So you say you want a revolution? ''The whole context for Darwin's theory of sexual selection is dissolving,'' says Roughgarden. ''So, Darwin is incorrect in the particulars, but more importantly, [his theory of sexual selection] is inadequate even as an approach.'' Both Roughgarden and Gowaty think it's time for a revolution, but not everyone agrees. ''This may be better viewed as a refinement of Darwinian theory, rather than a revolution,'' says Warner. Vasey agrees, however, that something has to give: ''What I'm seeing, in my one species [macaques], is an unbelievable amount of sexual diversity that is very common. I see it every day, and traditional evolutionary theories for sexual behavior are inadequate and impoverished to account for what is going on.'' What conclusions can we draw about gender and sexual diversity in humans from such findings? Both Vasey and Roughgarden caution strongly against extrapolating animal behavior to humans, as evolutionary psychologists have done for decades. ''People often look to animals to decide for themselves what's natural and what's not natural,'' says Vasey. ''I don't think that's necessarily a good thing to do. I mean, animals engage in cannibalism and infanticide. They also don't take care of elderly individuals. Just because animals do something doesn't make it right or wrong.'' Still, a revolution in the biology of sex relates to our perceptions of ourselves - and our sexual politics. People, like fish, can change sex midlife - the method is surgical, but the expression is one of gender identity. We also have a variety of sexual orientations - straight, lesbian, gay and bisexual. There are men who dress like women, women who dress like men, hermaphrodites born with both sex organs, and others with sex chromosomes that seem to have played musical chairs, resulting in such variations as XXX, XXY and XYY. Biology is destiny, but biology is diverse. ''This type of research [makes] us reflect on the categories that we use to describe nature and that we use to describe each other,'' says Roughgarden. ### Stephanie Chasteen is a freelancer and doctoral student in physics at the University of California-Santa Cruz. CONTACT: Dawn Levy, News Service: 650-725-1944, dawnlevy@stanford.edu COMMENT: Joan Roughgarden, Biological Sciences: 650-723-3648, rough@pangea.stanford.edu EDITORS: Important embargo clarification: Joan Roughgarden is speaking at a special AAAS news briefing (''Gender, Sexuality and Evolution'') on Sunday, Feb. 16, at 4 p.m. MST, and at a symposium (''Evolutionary Aspects of Gender and Sexuality'') on Monday, Feb. 17, at 8:30 a.m. MST. The embargo lifts when the Feb. 16 talk begins. In addition, Paul Vasey is confirmed for both events. Patricia Gowaty is confirmed for Monday only. Robert Warner and David Crews are not speaking Feb. 16. This release was written by freelancer Stephanie Chasteen. A photo of Roughgarden is available on the web at http://newsphotos.stanford.edu Relevant Web URLs: American Association for the Advancement of Science: http://aaas.org News Service website: http://www.stanford.edu/news/ Stanford Report (university newspaper): http://news.stanford.edu Most recent news releases from Stanford: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/html/releases.html To change contact information for these news releases: news-service@llists.stanford.edu Phone: 650-723-2558 Top
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT USA: NEW JERSEY--Directing N.J. operas, former diva plays it straight Top From Brenda Lana Smith R.af D. Directing N.J. operas, former diva plays it s... http://www.nj.com/entertainment/ledger/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-1/10453 80275307770.xml Directing N.J. operas, former diva plays it straight Sunday, February 16, 2003 BY WILLA J. CONRAD Star-Ledger Staff Here might be Ira Siff's personal motto: To go all the way within an inch of going too far. Or perhaps, as his alter-ego, the glamorous diva Madame Vera Galupe-Borszkh, might say (with thick Russian accent): "An arteest must zink a leettle bel canto, a leettle can belto, a leettle can't belto, and a lot of can't canto." Such delightful nonsense, uttered in dripping diamonds and glam gowns, was once the primary public persona of Siff, a native Brooklynite who discovered the Metropolitan Opera as a teenager and never looked back. "I was a total lunatic," Siff says, speaking in his tiny, rent-controlled East Village apartment. "I'd never seen anything like this carrying on. I was immediately captivated by how funny it was, so dramatic at the same time. I once slept in the streets three days and nights to see (Maria) Callas do Tosca." Siff's New York-based La Gran Scena Opera Company, formed in 1981 and now defunct, had the distinction of being the country's only "serious" transvestite opera company. "If the music is not excellent, then the comedy is not justified," says Siff, who as Vera, or "La Dementia," sang more than 500 performances of scenes from Verdi to Werther, Dido to Donizetti, in his distinct falsetto. Unwittingly and without any planning on his part, Siff's career as opera spoof impresario prepared him for his current career as a serious stage director, thanks to the intervention of his manager, Robert Lombardo. Now, two years and 11 operas into this most unexpected shift of direction, Siff returns to an old love, the New Jersey State Opera, for his company debut as director of the upcoming duo-opera bill of Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" and Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci." The double dose of verismo opera -- "super truth" as Vera's commentator, Sylvia Bills, calls it -- will be anything but funny, Siff says, but surely his experience with Gran Scena will be brought to bear. A longtime voice and opera coach and regular contributor to Opera News magazine, Siff says Scena was "my way of supplying audiences with the simultaneous experience of laughs about an art form they loved and real, no-holds-barred live performance opera the way I grew up on it. It was funny, but I was totally committed." "Gran Scena was mostly about characterization -- my pieces were not about parodies, they were vehicles for performers," Siff says. For his own characterizations, he mixed a bit of Zinka Milanov, Renata Scotto and Montserrat Caballé. Disgusted by the homogeneity of American opera houses in the early '80s, Siff says his goal was to remind audiences how grand an art form opera was. "I felt the singing at the Met was getting so generic at that time that singers were like a viable alternative for Valium." Certainly, the real-life Russian soprano Olga Romanko, who will sing the roles of Santuzza in "Cavalleria" and Neda in "Pagliacci" in New Jersey, may find Siff's ability to sing to her, in her vocal range, exactly the way he wants a particular phrase, to be disconcerting. "They get used to it," he says. Perhaps he'll share some of Madame Vera's secrets: "I used to drink coffee before performances to get more vibrato," Siff says. Siff has sung his version of Santuzza, which he plays eight months and 29 days pregnant with a red-checkered maternity blouse ?a Lucille Ball, about 100 times. But what matters to him, he says, is that viewers "get it" that Santuzza is "an ordinary, jealous woman who is pregnant, excommunicated, the village outcast, obsessed with her boyfriend who is not interested anymore," he says. "To me, 'Cavalleria' is total realism, understatement even. We once crashed our car in Florence and spent three days in a garage trying to fix it and they drove us nuts with the arm waving and screaming -- then we posed for pictures like best friends when it was over. It's this Italian thing, like the drama is over, now let's eat." While he chafes at the impossibly tight rehearsal time for the financially strapped New Jersey company -- just three hours with chorus for each opera and no technical rehearsal -- Siff says company director and conductor Alfredo Silipigni is a longtime idol of his. "I want to do a beautiful job for maestro because I adore him," Siff says. While a fine arts and printmaking student 30 years ago at Manhattan's Cooper Union, Siff regularly trekked over to Newark to catch Silipigni's latest coup. Trained, as he calls it, as a "bari-tenor," Siff started too late to aspire to a singing career, hence his devotion to the stars. "(Silipigni) was the only one bringing Magda Olivero here. He brought (tenor Franco) Corelli out of retirement for a concert in 1981. I saw 'Turandot' with Birgit Nilsson, Placido Domingo and Licia Albanese in Newark. In its heyday, the company was quite remarkable," Siff says. Now, alas, the singers are not nearly as prominent nor the budget secure. Romanko has been a true find for Silipigni; Canadian tenor Manrico Tedeschi will sing both male lead roles, having sung them before at La Scala in Milan. While Siff has staged a few contemporized classics, like "Madama Butterfly" set in occupied Japan or "Cosi fan tutte" set in South Beach, he says he's strictly a traditionalist. "I'll update if I think it brings the opera closer to the audience, but I won't distort the text or the intent or put my concept above the genius of someone like Mozart, Puccini or Verdi," Siff says. Following the score is another lesson he learned in Gran Scena. "If you follow a Verdi aria, all the markings, which is all Callas did, you get every indication -- sforzando, marcato, diminuendo, crescendo -- singers ignore them because they are just interested in producing tone," Siff says. Such detailed observance, he says, was a trademark of Gran Scena, where "we got across what we were doing to the most minute detail in the libretto without supertitles. I would sing 'Vissi d'arte' very straight -- you could hear a pin drop. But soon after you'd discover that Scarpia had fallen asleep." For serious stagings, Siff says he's only needed to make a subtle shift in focus, to eliminate the interjected gags and walk back that inch from going too far. "I want to present an extremely vivid portrayal of the characters and motivation behind the drama," he says. These days, gigs as Madame Vera are in short supply: "At 57, keeping the falsetto up there has become difficult," Siff says. Yet Vera gives her annual solo comeback recitals April 23, 30 and May 7 at La Belle Epoque, 827 Broadway. (Call (212) 254-6436 for details.) In the meantime, Siff's lovingly lathered approach to grand opera can be seen near at hand in the verismo double bill of New Jersey State Opera. It will be the truth, Siff says, as he sees it. Or, as Sylvia Bills would put it, "Instead of opera about gods and goddesses, kings and queens fighting it out, verismo offers ordinary people in ordinary places doing ordinary things -- just what you want to see for $150 top." -- Copyright 2003 The Star-Ledger. Top
COMMENTARY USA: Transmissions --Why we need to be visible (column by Gwendolyn Smith) Top Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2003 Source: Philadelphia Gay News (glbt weekly, Pennsylvania) Author: Gwendolyn Ann Smith URL: http://www.epgn.com/StoryPages/Columns/Transmissions.html Date: Feb 14, 12003 A couple of recent incidents have reminded me of why it is important to be an out and visible transgendered woman. First off, the death of Nizah Morris. The Philadelphia Police Department has finally decided that yes, indeed, Morris was the victim of a homicide, but I wonder if they would have finally come around if not for the insistence of such a large and active community that made its voice heard. How many others may have been lost in Pennsylvania and elsewhere without the benefit of the pressure brought to bear on the local police? Too many, I am sure. Then there is a recent decision or two from the Vatican. At first, the Roman Catholic Church decided that transgendered people do not exist. My initial thought was that I didn't have to pay rent this month. After all, if I don't exist, then I obviously didn't need a place to stay. Of course, the Vatican made things a little clearer in a confidential document that - whoops - ended up in the public eye. It has apparently figured out that transgendered people do exist, and as such, need to be expelled from the church - and I quote - "for the good of all the souls." I wonder if anyone took into account the "souls" of those being expelled? At any rate, I guess it is progress to go from nonexistence to expulsion in such a brief period of time. After all, it took the church more than 350 years to reverse its decision on Galileo's crazy notion that the Earth revolved around the sun. At that rate, transgendered people will be welcomed into the Catholic clergy in the early 2360s. Doesn't the Vatican have more important things to focus on right now, anyway? Maybe the pedophilia scandal? But I digress. The third thing is a story out of St. Louis - one that really brought it all home for me. In this case, a transgendered woman, about eight years after she started living and working in her preferred gender role, opted to chaperone her kid on a school field trip. It's not the first time that she's been involved at the school, and there hasn't been an issue with this in the past. This time, a parent or two got wind that this woman was going to serve as a chaperone. Word is they had an ax to grind to begin with. The night after this field trip, these two get on the phone and start telling every other parent about the "cross-dressing dad" who was with their children. You can guess how well this went over. In fact, it even ended up on the national news. That's when I came in - I found myself as a guest on that snake pit of a show, "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News. Like so many other outlets that covered this story, Fox had turned this transgendered woman into the devil incarnate. She opted to remain outside of the spotlight - I certainly do not blame her - so the media made up their own vision of this woman, comparing her to "men in belly dancing outfits" or "in leather outfits with whips and chains." No, I'm not making this up. So what was she wearing? A sweater, a pair of women's pants, a little makeup, some nice-looking shoes. Oh, and she was wearing her hair in a feminine style. None of the kids on the trip acted untoward to her, nor did any other educators or chaperones on the trip have any issue with this woman. She wasn't passing out copies of "My Gender Workbook" to the kids, either - just serving as any other chaperone on a school trip. Scary, isn't it? So I ended up trying to counter some of the images that the media created by showing up on this television program, to take the other side of the issue. And while I feel I held my own in the discussion, I wasn't really there to play some televised chess game with Bill O'Reilly. I was there to represent. I was there because I wanted to show people - in this case, the fine upstanding viewers of Fox News - just what a transgendered woman really looked like. For me, this is key. It is important that people actually see just what this all means, this thing called transgender. It is far to easy for people to demonize us when they are only given pictures of demons, rather than seeing the real people. If you assume the worst of a person, then it becomes very easy to declare them unfit to serve as a chaperone on a class trip that their own child is attending. It becomes even easier to dismiss the "soul" of such people. It even becomes easier to kill us, and to dismiss our deaths as just another accidental death. Prick us and we do bleed, I assure you. I do know that not every transgendered man or woman out there is able - or even willing - to be out about being transgendered. In the world we live in today, the risks are many, and I can certainly appreciate such. There have been times in my own life that I have had to remain very safely tucked away in the woodwork. Yet for me at this time in my life, with what I see around me, I simply have to make my voice heard. I hope that there are enough others willing to be visible and out as transgendered, so we may dispel our detractors' petty demons. Maybe the Vatican can lend us some holy water for the job. Gwendolyn Ann Smith is a transgender activist, writer and a Web designer, not necessarily in that order. Her work is at Gay.com's "Transgender Gazebo" and at http://www.gwensmith.com © 2003 Gwendolyn Ann Smith Top
W ... He'll Be Remembered as an Asshole: Peaceniks Win War! by Ben Tripp Top (repost) Saturday February 15, 2003 Ben Tripp is a screenwriter, political satirist and cartoonist. -- CounterPunch February 14, 2003 He'll Be Remembered as an Asshole Peaceniks Win War! By BEN TRIPP http://www.counterpunch.org/tripp02142003.html Hey, gang! We won, if you don't mind Pyrrhic victories. I feel like the guy at Hiroshima who was in a fart-lighting contest just as the A-bomb went off. His last words were "beat that". In a topsy-turvy way that would baffle the Cheshire Cat, we who desire peace will triumph in the event of war. You see, if there's a clear loser in the pending savagery, it's George W. Bush and his administration of barking scrotum monsters. Right now it doesn't look like they've lost. They'll have their war on Iraq; they will rain bombs down on that godforsaken patch of petroleum-soaked dirt and before you know it instead of the Iraqi population being 50% children, it will be 20% children, because kids can't run as fast as adults. After a few days of hand-to-hand combat through the streets of once-legendary Baghdad it will all be over. But George never read the Arabian Nights- too long and too dirty. So he doesn't know that Baghdad is infested with genies, and we're not talking about the cute blue ones with ADD who talk like Robin Williams. The ones in Baghdad are the djinn, ancient magical spirits that inevitably trick their masters into self-destruction. Voila! Or if you're Mozart, viola. But the effect is the same. George W. Bush has already lost the most important battle of all: the battle for the future. Setting aside money and power for a moment (sometimes I do), what really matters to a guy like George is that he should someday join the pantheon of Great Americans whose marble busts inhabit the halls of our nation's capitol. He's got all the power and money he could ever misuse in a thousand lifetimes. What he needs now is to be honored by posterity. This is where he loses and we win. One could argue that George is a marble-headed bust already: that's as close as he'll come to being pals with posterity. Posteriority, yes. Posterity, no. He will not be remembered as a brave warrior, a noble patriot, a statesman, a father to his country, a son of God, or even a well-meaning delusional psychotic. He will be remembered as an asshole- and that's exactly how it will read in the history textbooks, although they'll spell it a**hole so as to avoid mantling the kiddies' cheeks with blushes. In the future, assuming we can still hope for one, George XLIII's reign will be derided, scorned, mocked, and other words to that effect. jeered and disparaged at the very least, maybe even subject to opprobrium. We-- the unlikely alliance acting against his lunatic regime, we Liberals and Conservatives, Libertarians and Progressives and Pentagon generals and disenfranchised veterans, mothers, fathers, mimes, entomologists, podiatrists and transsexuals, all sons and daughters of a government that has turned its back on the principles upon which we were nurtured from cradle to shallow grave-- we will bask in the hallowed light of kind remembrance, not George. A fat lot of good it will do us, but there we are. I didn't say victory would be sweet. Those kids who took a bullet at Kent State? Martin Luther King? The Kennedy brothers? King Kong? They had to die at the hands of The Man to get immortal- it's a mug's game. George W. Bush, how will we loathe thee? Let me count the ways. Foremost among his epic buggerations, history will record that Bush precipitated modern America's first utterly unprovoked war and rekindled the arms race. Saddam's not even a communist. A war of opportunity, possibly World War III: this is what Bush will be remembered for, not the inevitable victory over some whiskery homunculus in Baghdad. And that's not all. Another first: George will be remembered for reversing the outcome of both the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. He will be remembered for mixing Church and State: his invisible cloud superhero and your tax dollars, together at last. He will be remembered for nose-diving the economy from a great height. For record deficits and massive bureaucratic expansion- he'll knock Reagan off the charts. For 50 bankrupt states. He will be remembered for turning his back on treaties. For insulting great nations. For calling the leader of Russia 'Pooty Poot'. For oppressing the weak and unleashing the mighty upon them. For eviscerating the Bill of Rights, and for secret detentions. For ignoring the desperate environmental crisis which grips the globe like a gut-spasming case of Montezuma's Revenge. For slipping the government's unclean fingers back into the womb of every woman in America. For stealing the election of 2000. For rigging the election of 2002, and probably for canceling the election of 2004. Need more? You can't spin the history of the future, which will read something like this: Bush, G.W. 43d American President (locum tenens) In private life an unsuccessful oil executive, George W. Bush was installed as president of the United States by the Supreme Court in the year 2000. At first an ineffectual president both at home and abroad, he was invested following the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001 (see sidebar) with enormous political authority. Seizing opportunity in the name of fighting terrorism, Bush advanced an aggressive agenda to secure the world's natural resources for private interests, especially the petroleum industry. After initiating a disastrous program of economic, military and diplomatic actions coupled with severe domestic security measures, Bush's administration collapsed under a wave of scandals. The impact of his presidency on America's international standing is still felt today. According to an obscure satirist of the period, "George W. Bush was the a**hole that ate the world." See also Stalin, J. and Hitler, A. Just you wait and see. The genie is out of the bottle, and this is one bottle George won't put down. Us real patriots, the dissidents, have already won- and we'll get our country back someday. What's left of it. Hell, in ten years we'll be able to travel overseas again. History will smile on us. Meanwhile, buckle up your poniards, because we may have won the war, but the battle has only just begun. -- add your comments http://sf.indymedia.org/comment.php?top_id=1574060 © 2000-2003 Center. Top
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