TransNation

The Trans Year to Come

Jacob Anderson-Minshall

With presidential elections looming, 2008 promises to be a politically contentious year. At least this summer’s Olympic Games promise to distract us from American politics, and there’s some hope—via trans cyclist Kirsten Worley (nominated as one of the most influential women in Canadian sports in 2007)—of having an openly trans contender. To get through the rest of the year, there’s plenty of trans-themed material coming your way in 2008.

BOOKS

When it comes to academic works, Haworth Press may cement its position as the leading publisher of nonfiction addressing trans subjects. Several of their new books address medical professionals, like Principles of Transgender Medicine and Surgery and Guidelines for Transgender Care; the latter written and edited in part by trans activist/health educator Joshua M. Goldberg. For a psychological and sociological perspective Haworth, offers Head Over Heels: Wives Who Stay With Cross-Dressers and Transsexuals and Male Bodies, Women’s Souls: Personal Narratives of Thailand’s Transgender Youth.

Duke University Press addresses a similar audience with Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category, which documents the rise and development of ‘transgender’ as a category of collective identity and political activism. The Lives of Transgender People, a collaboration between genderqueer college administrator Brett-Genny Beemyn and feminist scholar Sue Rankin will be published by Columbia University Press later this year.

Trans People in Love, edited by partners Tracie O’ Keefe and Katrina Fox, offers personal essays by notable trans folk (including yours truly). Other trans authors are releasing memoirs, including Kate Bornstein Is A Queer And Pleasant Danger; Two Lies and a Truth, Scott Turner Schofield's collection of autobiographical plays and former Sandy, Utah city councilman K J Jackson Prince’s Forbidden Identity, which details Prince’s return to a male identity—at the request of his son—after four years living as Jennifer Jackson.

Janice Josephine Carney will release Mantra’s From the Great Void—a collection of her “Perspectives from a Trans Woman” column along with new poems. Look for trans photographer Del LaGrace Volcano and Ulrika Dahl’s Femmes of Power: Exploding Queer Femininities. Homofactus Press, the growing trans publishing house will release Kicked Out! a collection of essays by current and former youth ejected from their homes for being trans or queer.

FILMS

Transparent filmmaker Jules Rosskam’s new feature film, Remember: Repair: Retell premiers this summer and he’s also working on a documentary with Boy I Am director Sam Feder, which examines feminism through the eyes of trans women. Meanwhile, Feder is completing Funny, You Don't Look Like a Jew, an experimental documentary examining the implications of assumptions about people’s appearances.

Rosskam and Feder are also collaborating with trans band Actor Slash Model to create

a new bi-monthly queer film/video screening series in Chicago. “Threat Level: An Evening of Queer Shorts” is recruiting submissions from around the globe. One of the first to screen was Actor Slash Model’s documentary-in-progress about trans musicians, which features Lipstick Conspiracy, Katastrophe and Anderson Toone.

This year may also spark an explosion of adult videos featuring trans men. In January 2007, the original FTM porn star, Buck Angel won Transsexual Performer of the Year at the Adult Video News Awards, the first female-to-male performer to do so. He’s nominated for a second award this year, and he belives the industry is ready for some other trans guys. Angel will be moving behind the camera, directing and producing adult films and ushering other trans guys into adult entertainment.

Meanwhile, Trannywood Pictures, the guys behind Cubbyholes: Trans Men in Action hope for greater distribution of the film while releasing their second, Couch Surfers, and developing sexual educational resources, including the instructional First Timers Guide to Playing with Trans Guys. Look for Couch Surfers 2 this summer. And finally, after some delays, trans filmmaker Luke Woodward’s queer bicycle porn, Tour de Pants, will debut in 2008.

TELEVISION

Making history, two shows focusing on trans women are coming soon to the small screen near you. Debuting on Logo next month, Transamerican Love Story, is a one-hour reality dating show starring transgender activist, actress and author Calpernia Addams and featuring her best friend, fellow trans activist Andrea James. FX okayed 4 oz., a drama by Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy about the metamorphosis of a male-bodied individual who realizes she’s transsexual. No word yet on actors involved, but Brad Pitt is reportedly attached—as an executive producer.

Meanwhile trans actress Candis Cayne will continue her role on ABC’s Dirty Sexy Money and has a guest spot on Logo's new series Sordid Lives playing a trans therapist. Real life trans doctor Marci Bowers has a busy year, appearing on MSNBC’s special Girls will be Boys, 20/20 with Barbara Walters and the BBC docu-series Sex Change Hospital (airing on WE beginning in January). A proposed follow-up series has reportedly sparked interest from Bravo, TLC and A& E.

OTHER PERFORMANCES & SHOWS

You can catch another trans actress this spring when Alexandra Billings appears in the theater version of cult fav, The House of Yes. Award-winning performer Scott Turner Schofield will spend the year touring his one-man-show, Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps, and speaking at high schools about trans discrimination.

Aaron Raz Link, author of the biographical What Becomes You—out in paperback this April—has developed a solo performance based on the book that will be part of University of Maryland’s Take Five series. Link currently has two art shows touring: Other Visions, an ethnographic exhibit of an imagined culture, and FAMILY, a collection of objects and stories inspired by the word “family.”

In January trans musician Joshua Klipp has his second appearances on The Tyra Banks Show with comedian Margaret Cho. Then he’ll be singing and dancing with his girlfriend’s dance company, the Sarah Bush Dance Project, in the 8th annual San Francisco Women on the Way Festival. Klipp’s own company, Freeplay Dance Crew, will be part of the 2008 San Francisco’s National Queer Arts Fest in June. Klipp will be on tour twice this year; one to the Southeast in May, the other through the Northwest in August.

In the art world an unlikely collusion brings the Genderqueer Hackers Collective’s safe2pee—an online database of gender-friendly bathrooms—to New York’s prestigious Museum of Modern Art where it will appear this in the exhibition “Design and the Elastic Mind.”

THE ONLINE WORLD

Speaking of digital projects, Nancy Nangeroni and Gordene MacKenzie, the trans women behind and co-hosts of the now-defunct GenderTalk Radio are developing a video follow-up, GenderVision (gendervision.org).

Early in 2008, trans photographer Kael Block will launch a new website for his XX Boys project—photographs of trans men from around the globe that honor their sex appeal. The new site will feature Block’s photos, invite other FTM artist to showcase their work and display trailers of trans films and music videos by trans musicians.

Last but not least, you can now find the transgender comic Between the Lines online at BetweenTheLines.sosdg.org.

Trans author Jacob Anderson-Minshall has an essay in the forthcoming anthology Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex and Power. He apologizes in advance for failing to mention the work of other notable trans folk. If you or someone you know deserves attention for their work, please contact jake@quirkyguys.com.

TransNation

Twisted Sister

Jacob Anderson-Minshall

Twist, a queer pop-rock musical that opened December 1st in L.A., weaves Victorian erotica, dark comedy and gender-bending into Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist.
Driven by physical desire but begging for more, Oliver journeys into an underworld ruled by a male dominatrix—Fagin—played by Alexandra Billings.

“[This] is the first time in twenty-plus years of theater that I’ve ever played a man,” exclaims the trans actress, whose novice years included shows with luminaries like Carol Burnette, Yul Brynner and Sandy Duncan. Formerly a female impersonator, Billings made the leap to professional acting in the 1980s, when she starred in Chicago’s rendition of Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, a role that won her an After Dark Award for Best Actress in a comedy

“My past…helped me get my foot into that particular door, which was some weird bridge between female impersonation and legitimate theater. Everything that I had done before helped me on the road ahead.”

Billings has since appeared in dozens of plays, including Xena! Live!, Larry Kramer’s Just Say No, and her one-woman autobiographical show, Before I Disappear. Her first television role was on the ABC movie Romy and Michelle—A New Beginning. She’s appeared on ER, Karen Sisco and Grey’s Anatomy.

She currently appears in Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)’s “Be an Ally & a Friend”
public service advertisements that encourage viewers to treat people with respect regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.

As the first openly trans actress to play the many theatric roles of her career, and the first trans woman to play a transgendered female character on television, Billings has broken many barriers. But don’t call her a pioneer.

“You say the word pioneer and I think of some woman wearing a bonnet and churning butter. I just wanted to work. Now, when I look back, I think to myself, ‘Wow, I guess that is kind of important.’”

“I’m 43 years old and I’m everybody’s grandmother in this town,” Billings jokes. “All the roles that didn’t go to Jessica Tandy are going to me. But that’s just sort of the nature of the beast. The camera is just a very unforgiving monster.”

Billings (alexandrabillings.com) identifies as a lesbian woman and is married to director Chrisanne Blankenship, who she’s known since high school, where they were cast in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night as brother and sister. “Of course we look nothing alike.
I’m brown and have dark hair and she’s practically invisible because she’s so white. [But] I was in love with her and I had to have her close to me.”

An accomplished singer, Billings was awarded the New York MAC Hanson Award for Cabaret Artist of the Year in 2004, and release two cds, including her debut Being Alive that was up for Grammy consideration.

HIV-positive for several decades, Billings has sat on the Board of Directors of Season of Concern and worked with Healthworks Theatre, an AIDS educational theatre geared towards teens.

To combat HIV in the trans community, Billings argues that more trans people need to come out. “There’s no reason to lie to your partner; there’s no reason to make up a past. You’ve got to embrace what happened to you because…whatever happened to you informs what’s happening to you now.”

Billings has found her own past relevant to her role of Fagin, who—half way through the play—changes into a dress. “He plays the rest of the show as sort of a female impersonator! So all of my past…[I] just dig that up.”

Playing Fagin has led to some unusual compliments, as when an audience member asked her to sign his program:
“I flipped open to my picture and signed. And he said, ‘That’s you? I thought you were this guy.’”

Twist plays at LA’s Avery Schreiber Theatre through December 30. Tickets can be purchased at Theatermania.com. Spring 2008 Billings will appear in The House of Yes.

The trans writer Jacob Anderson-Minshall co-authored Blind Leap, the second installment of the Blind Eye mystery series available now. For more information visit anderson-minshall.com or email jake@trans-nation.org.

TransNation

Changing Sexual Orientation

Jacob Anderson-Minshall

“If gender identity is fluid, then sexual orientation is as well,” contends psychology grad student lorne m.
dickey, who identifies as a gay FTM and spells his name entirely with lowercase letters.

Though many scientists and laypersons believe sexual orientation is fixed and immutable, dickey disagrees.
His own experience suggests otherwise: “Prior to transition, I identified as a lesbian. I’d never once had sex with a man. Shortly after beginning my transition, it was clear…I was more interested in being sexual with a man than I was with a woman.”

The 45-year-old Arizona native began his transition eight years ago in Seattle, where he received a Master’s degree from Bastyr University. He’s currently enrolled in a counseling psychology PhD program at the University of North Dakota, where he’s studying the effectiveness of support groups for the FTM community and the development of sexual orientation in transsexual men.

“Sexual identity development is a deeply personal process and I don’t think that there’s a simple formula for how that works. Why is it that some people stay straight or gay after transition? Logic would hold that if I’d always been attracted to women pre-transition, that I would be straight post-transition. But that’s not what happened.”

Dickey sits on the board director of the Association for Gender Research, Education, Academia & Action (agreaa.org), a new professional development orgaznisation dedicated to supporting those researching, advocating for and teaching about diverse gender identity experiences, histories and communities. AGREAA has taken over running Trans-Academics.org as their flagship project.

Another dickey study, examining the impact and effectiveness of support groups for FTMs, has revealed mixed results. “There’s a general sense that once you’ve transitioned…you no longer have need for support. [But] there was no difference whether someone had just started [testosterone] or had been on T for ten years; all of the respondents said they had ongoing needs that weren’t being met by support groups.”

He believes support groups have difficulty meeting the
spectrum of needs in the community.

“When a new person shows up at meeting most people are concerned that the individual’s basic questions get answered. So a person who’s struggling with issues of employment or relationship concerns walks out of the meeting feeling like there isn’t anything there to help their situation.”

After completing his graduate program in 2010, dickey hopes to teach, continue his research and maintain a private practice. In the meantime, he frequently gives presentations at trans conferences and meetings.
In addition to the topics of his academic research, dickey speaks on male privilege.

“Even though I wasn’t socialized as male, I still benefit from male privilege,” dickey argues. “Others perceive me to be male and therefore automatically ascribe certain characteristics to me.”

The experience of privilege by trans men, dickey acknowledges, is intrinsically tied to race. “White FTMs have a very different experience than FTMs of
color.” But he says, those with that privilege have
a responsibility to use it, “to dismantle the oppression of others. Those with privilege should feel an obligation to help those without.”

As a psychology student, dickey recognizes that the discrimination and hatred trans individuals experience can often lead to depression and anxiety disorders.
He says, “I really believe that these issues should be addressed as well, but not be [used to] paint a pathological picture of the trans person seeking care.”

He believes that gender identity disorder—GID, the psychiatric diagnosis for transgender identities—should be removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

“I know this is a touchy topic…[but] I think that gender identity disorder is a medical condition and it should be handled in the realm of physical medicine, not psychiatric medicine.”

TransNation

Indian American Fights for LGBT Families

Jacob Anderson-Minshall

Every year, beginning November 9th, South Asian communities from around the world come together to celebrate Deepavali (also called Diwali), a five-day event, known as the “Festival of Lights.”

“Some of my strongest early memories are of Deepavali celebrations,” recalls trans Asian American artist/activist Aakash Kishore. “To me, it means new beginnings. Growing up in St. Louis, the Indian community was quite segregated…because of different language preferences and cultural practices. I often found myself straddling this line between social groups and between familial networks. Deepavali was a time when these communities came together. It was a time when I got to feel more whole.”

Family is very important to Kishore, who identifies as a queer, Hindu, Midwestern raised upper-class, south Indian American boi, transman, FTM stud and works as a community organizer for API Equality-LA, a coalition of organizations and individuals dedicated to equal marriage rights and fair treatment of LGBT families within the Asian and Pacific Islander communities of Greater Los Angeles.

The 22-years-old says he also connects to the Deepavali holiday—and to Hinduism as a whole—as a trans person.

“I’m empowered by the simultaneously non-gendered, highly-gendered and two-spirited nature of Hindu deities. Though I identify as a trans guy, I consider my gender to be dialectic: to be both masculine and feminine, neither and other. Hinduism has helped me to view my trans identity as something holy.”

At API Equality-LA, Kishore delivers presentations to local community groups and builds networks with organizations like California Faith for Equality, where he strategies with API faith leaders; and Trans Equality-LA, where he’s developing training material for partner organizations.

Earlier this year Kishore helped generate Asian American support for California’s marriage equality bill and the coalition of 50 local, state and national Asian American organizations that filed a legal brief with California’s Supreme Court, supporting marriage rights for LGBT couples. The brief drew parallels between past marriage discrimination against Asian immigrants and the current marriage inequality faced by gay and lesbian couples.

As Kishore explains, “Asians and Pacific Islanders have endured a history of marriage discrimination in the United States—immigration restrictions, wartime internment, and laws banning interracial marriage.”

Taken together, Kishore contends, these laws not only denied Asian and Pacific Islanders rights of citizenship, but also destabilized API families, and made it difficult to establish communities, leaving them more vulnerable to social discrimination.

“All Californians deserve the freedom to marry, including API and LGBT people,” Kishore argues.
“Today, LGBT families are under attack. I’m not just talking about LGBT individuals who want to marry or raise children, but about parents of LGBT people as well. My mother deserves the security of knowing that her child can enjoy the safety and warmth of a loving family.”

“As a South Asian pre-op trans guy,” who hasn’t always fit in the predominately white LGBT community, Kishore says he spent many years in women of color circles, because “it was the closest thing that I found to a shared experience.”

Kishore engages elements of his “intersecting and fragmented identities”—including the parts that don’t seem to fit, like his goal to become a cognitive neuroscientist—in his artwork.

Not yet examining how psychological and cognitive functions are produced by neural circuitry, he’s completing complex pieces like the nine-canvass painting, he recently unveiled at L.A.’s trans art event Trans/Giving.

“Painting is the place I go when words fail me,”
Kishore says. He describes the Trans/Giving piece as “an interplay between construction, sustention, and destruction.”

“When I started this piece…destruction really spoke to me…and [I was] depicting the parts of me that I wanted to destroy. As life changed…I gained…renewed faith in myself and in the strength and beauty of being a trans guy. The process…helped me connect to the creation that stems from destruction and vise versa. ”

As a whole, Kishore believes that trans
artists—particularly other trans artists of color—have the “gift of nuance,” and complexity: “It’s that element that comes through between the words and between the brush strokes.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Portland, OR (November 13, 2007) When author Jacob Anderson-Minshall wrote his first TransNation column for the San Francisco Bay Times he had no idea how popular it would become. Now, as he releases his 100th column, the weekly, syndicated article appears in LGBT publications from San Francisco to New York—and on GayWired Media’s portals Gaywired.com, 247Gay.com and LesbiaNation.com

“It’s been an amazing two years,” says
Anderson-Minshall. “I’ve interviewed some of the most renown trans people in the world—from actors like Candis Cayne (from ABC’s Sexy Dirty Money) and Calperina Addams to authors Kate Bornstein and Jamison Green, musicians like The Cliks, Katastrophe and Joshua Klipp, porn star Buck Angel, former Las Vegas showgirl Jahnna Steele, and literally dozens of other activists, politicians, artists, scholars, athletes, filmmakers and folks from every walk of life. I feel incredibly honored to have spoken with these remarkable individuals.”

Kim Corsaro, the Publisher and Editor of the San Francisco Bay Times says that TransNation has been “an important voice in the paper,” and has sparked numerous letters to the editor. GayWired’s L.A. Vess concurs, “We've gotten great feedback on the column.”

Unlike most columns which tend to be personal essays or opinion pieces, Anderson-Minshall—who transitioned from female to male less than a year before TransNation debuted—has positioned the weekly column as a space to profile remarkable individuals from the trans community. In doing so, he says, “I try to let my subjects speak for themselves—even when that means setting my personal opinions aside.”

Anderson-Minshall formatted TransNation this way so he could increase coverage of the trans and genderqueer communities and illustrate the great diversity of gender expressions that are often lumped under a transgender umbrella.

“There’s a significant population of people who were assigned one sex at birth, and now live as a different sex, but do not identify as transgender or transsexual. They are men and women. Period. Because they often don’t feel like they are a part of the LGBT community, their voices frequently go unheard in queer press. TransNation is a forum willing to share these perspectives.”

For his 100th column, Anderson-Minshall profile’s activist Donna Rose, a former Human Rights Committee board of directors’ member who left her post in protest of the organization’s unpopular position on the stripped-down Employment Non Discrimination Act (ENDA).

“The debate over ENDA and the unparalleled support of transgender rights, from over 300 LGBT organizations, that has come out of it, make this the biggest trans story of 2007,” Anderson-Minshall contends. “That makes it fitting as the topic for my 100th column. By my 200th, I hope I’ll be celebrating the passage of a gender-inclusive ENDA.”

Anderson-Minshall co-authored Blind Leap, the second installment in the Blind Eye mystery series he writes with his wife of almost 18 years, Diane Anderson-Minshall, the executive editor at Curve magazine, with whom he also co-founded Girlfriends magazine.

For more information or to set up an interview with Jacob Anderson-Minshall, contact Quirky Guys Publicity at jake@quirkyguys.com or 503-752-7191.
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Photo of Jacob Anderson-Minshall by Darcy Padilla