A Word from the Editor (Chrysalis, 1991-1998)

©1991, 2013 by Dallas Denny

Sources:

Denny, Dallas. (1991, Spring). A message from the editor-in-chief and publisher. Chrysalis Quarterly, 1(1), p. 3.

Denny, Dallas. (1991, Winter). A word on terminology. Chrysalis Quarterly, 1(1), p. 3.

View Chrysalis Page (PDF)

A Word on Terminology

The Editor-In-Chief has worked in the field of mental retardation for nearly twenty years, and has become sensi­tized to the application of stigmatizing labels to individuals.

Current thinking by many in her field is that persons have mental retardation. They are not retarded, not the retarded, but persons with mental retardation or persons who have mental retardation.

Like mental retardation, transsexualism is a stigmatizing label. Those with transsexualism are not transsexuals, Rather, they are persons who have transsexualism.

Consequently, rather than conceptually turn people into something less than human beings—”transsexuals”—we at AEGIS will strive to use, both in our publications and in our speech, the terms transsexual people and persons with transsexualism. Transsexual will refer to a characteristic of the individual and not the individual himself or herself.

The bulk of those in the crossdressing community have chosen the terms crossdresser and CD to replace the pejorative term transvestite. Rather than use the term person who crossdresses, we will adhere to this apparent preferred usage.

—Dallas Denny

Sources:

Denny, Dallas. (1991, Summer). A message from the publisher. Chrysalis Quarterly, 1(2), pp. 3-4.

View Chrysalis Pages (PDF)

 A Word on the DSM III-R

The inclusion of transsexualism in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM III-R) has legitimized it as a mental illness. In apparent hopes that it will somehow influence insurance companies to pay for sex reassignment surgery (SRS), some factions of the gender community embrace this DSM III-R status.

In a better world, perhaps insurance companies would line up to pay for SRS. But they do not line up to pay for liver transplants and other expensive procedures, and they are unlikely to change their policies about SRS. Although transsexual persons are crazy by DSM standards, they are specifically excluded from handicapped status by federal legislation, and their record in antidiscrimination cases is dismal in the courts of this nation. They have the worst of both worlds.

Psychiatric diagnosis is buying and will continue to buy transsexual people nothing but prejudice and discrimination. Status as handicapped persons will buy them little more. Transsexualism is a physical disability (the body is functionally and cosmetically unacceptable), and should be considered as such.

Only when transsexual people achieve acceptance as whole and sane persons will they stop being treated as devalued persons by this society. It is time for the gender community to petition the American Psychiatric Association for removal of gender dysphoria from mental illness status. It is likewise time to send lobbyists to Washington to wake up our legislators to the fact that transsexual men and women are just another of the many minorities that make up the citizenry of the United States.

A Word on the Standards of Care

We at AEGIS believe that transsexual people should go about their transitions in a logical and structured way. That elusive quality, common sense, is especially important when one is reinventing oneself. Each of us, after all, has only one body, and we can ill-afford to damage it.

When seeking help with changing your sex, there is every reason to take the same sort of cautious approach that you would take when purchasing a house or an automobile. You should shop carefully for service providers, proceeding only when you have checked them out and are certain that they are legitimate, well-trained and credentialcd, and well-intentioned. You should comparison-shop, selecting the person or agency which best fits your needs. You should frequently assess the services you are receiving and ask yourself whether your providers are doing an adequate job. You should not be afraid to “fire” psychologists, physicians, or clectrologists, or even gender clinics. Alternatives are available.

The Standards of Care of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, Inc., are a set of minimal guidelines. They exist to protect both transsexual people and providers of services for transsexual people.

The Standards are the Consumer Reports of transsexualism. They are the path through the maze. A reading of them will show you what you need to do, and what your service providers should be doing.

The Standards of Care are not just a series of hurdles that you must jump. If you follow them, you will be minimizing your chances of doing something that you will later regret.

Additions to the CQ Staff

CQ is lucky to have Margaux Ayn Schaffer, a talented graphic artist, joining the staff. Her input shows up for the first time in this issue, augmenting the excellent work of Stephanie Rose, who singlehandedly laid out the premiere issue. Stephanie and Margaux have worked long and hard to give an already impressive magazine an even better look. Margaux has designed the new AEGIS logo, as well as the new logo for CQ.

Holly Boswell is also a graphic artist, although she joins us as Associate Editor. Her article “The Transgender Alternative” appears in this issue, and her editorial input will be apparent in future issues.

We’ve been busy, moving into new and more spacious offices; this explains why it’s been a while since you saw an issue of CQ.

The new offices will allow us to have design and printing services on the same premises, giving us in-house turnkey production, from writing to editing to pre-press production to printing to distribution.

AEGIS is growing by leaps and bounds. Creative and energetic people have appeared and are continuing to appear to take on the many burdensome tasks that need doing. We have successfully launched a magazine which has drawn only raves, produced an amazingly thorough bibliography of gender dysphoria (and we are negotiating to have it published), and distributed the first several of a series of booklets designed to help transgendered persons help themselves. We have started a support group (which is now independently operating, and thriving), maintained a telephone help line, and begun a speaker’s bureau. We have made liaisons with service providers and with many individuals and groups in the gender community. We have been involved in the planning and running of Southern Comfort, the first-ever major gender event in the South, and are deeply involved in the planning of the second Southern Comfort.

I am amazed by the talent and energy which the AEGIS staff has shown, and by the ideas that they generate. My hat is off to each and every one of them.

Introductions

After two successful issues of Chrysalis Quarterly, perhaps it is time to introduce ourselves.

I am the founder and Executive Director of AEGIS. I am a youthful and exuberant 42-year-old. I am employed at a sheltered workshop for adults with mental retardation, doing case coordination, psychological testing, and applied behavior analysis. I find the work very fulfilling. I am a licensed psychological examiner in Tennessee.

I am working hard to finish my doctoral degree in special education from Vanderbilt University.

Stephanie Rose is Assistant Director of AEGIS. She is in charge of pre-press production on all AEGIS publications. She singlehandedly designed and laid out the first issue of CQ and the Transition Series booklets. Stephanie was the first person to share my vision for AEGIS, and I will always love her for it. Her hard work is in a large measure responsible for our success.

Stephanie is a graphic artist by profession. She is a member of Sigma Epsilon, the Atlanta-based chapter of Tri-Ess, and she was very active in the planning committee for Southern Comfort, designing the logo and promotional materials.

Margaux Ayn Schaffer is Publicist for AEGIS and Art Director of Chrysalis Quarterly, and AEGIS representative to the Southern Comfort Convention Planning Committee. Margaux is an extremely talented graphic artist who specializes in corporate identity. Her work can be seen on the signs for and facades of many familiar Atlanta landmarks. She designed our letterhead and business card, and is in charge of the “look and feel” of all AEGIS materials. She and Stephanie designed a cookbook which was included in the Southern Comfort registration packet.

Margaux is the model of an enlightened consumer, well-read and articulate. She and I have spent countless hours on the phone and face-to-face, discussing gender issues. Most of the things I have said and written in the past two years were first brought to light in those discussions. Many of my ideas were originally hers.

Victoria Germonde is Production Director for all AEGIS publications. She is responsible for the beautiful production of CQ. A printer by trade, she has volunteered her time to help make CQ the most attractively produced magazine in the gender community. It’s wonderful to watch the pages of CQ as they come out of her offset press. Each page looks better than the last.

Holly Boswell, a resident of beautiful Asheville, North Carolina, is Associate Editor of Chrysalis Quarterly. Holly is married, and has a 4-year-old son. An editor by trade, she is currently doing graphic work for several books.

Holly is founder and director of Phoenix, a transgender support group which meets in Asheville, NC. Phoenix has been in operation for about four years, and in recent months, membership has snowballed. Holly was active at the Southern Comfort meeting, where she presented a workshop on transgender lifestyle options. She will be the editor for an upcoming issue of Chrysalis Quarterly which will examine the duality of human nature.

Carol Miller, M.Ed., is a licensed professional counselor in Georgia and Mississippi, an advisor to AEGIS. She graciously allows the support group we started to meet in her offices.

There are other AEGIS personnel I would like to mention and thank: Geneva Deveraux, who came up with the idea for the Southern Comfort 1991 Cookbook, and provided the recipes; and Brenda and Tamara, who proofread CQ and our other materials.

Are any of us transgendered? Yes. No. I don’t know. I’m not saying. The point is, does it matter? Each of us is participating on the basis of our education and experience. We are productive and talented and well-balanced and stable, and we have something to say. Whether all of us were born women, or whether some of us are new women is irrelevant, and should not influence what you are about to read.

They Infested a City

Dr. Richard Ekins, of the Transgender Archive, graciously sent us several copies of his Archive News. A 1954 press clipping caught my eye, making me aware of just how bad things once were for transgendered persons.

 The discovery of a small black book with the names, addresses and telephone numbers of scores of men living in the Midlands led to the exposure of what was described at Birmingham Assizes as “a vicious clique who had infested the city for many years….” The court was told that the men called themselves by names such as Tiger Lil, the Duchess, Garbo, Rita, Jezebel, and Nina. It was said also that the men held parties at which some were dressed as women… All the 28 men pleaded guilty to serious charges… At the end of the case the judge said, “I feel the police have shown considerable care and assiduity in these investigations and it is extremely fortunate that this disgusting clique has been brought to light.”

—News of the World, 1 August, 1954, p. 8.

If there has been improvement in the status of transgendered persons, it has been largely due to the dedication and hard work of professionals who have chosen to work with them. Beginning with nothing, they have built a literature of gender dysphoria, created standards of care, and perfected hormonal and surgical procedures and other treatment techniques. They have helped tens of thousands of transgendered persons in their quests for personal happiness and gender consonance.

Nevertheless, there have been and continue to be problems in treatment. In some instances, transgendered persons have been ignored, maligned, mistreated, exploited, or turned away by those who have sworn to help. This has been due to ignorance on the part of a few service providers; proper training in matters of gender is unfortunately rare in training programs. Although dramatic improvements have occurred, it is still difficult for transgendered persons to find service providers who are able and willing to help them.

Ignoring treatment problems will not make them go away. They must be confronted head on, so that those who have been responsible for sexism, prejudice, and unprofessionalism can come to understand how they have wronged transgendered persons and move to remedy their mistakes.

In our coverage, we will avoid sensationalism, and, whenever possible, back up our observations with references and quotations from the literature. We will try to point out solutions as well as problems. We realize that not everyone will agree with what we have to say we say, but we hope we can make those who read CQ realize that there is great room for improvement.

Public Service Advertisements

We have begun a series of public service advertisements, designed to make transgendered aware of some common dangers. Last issue’s “Dangerous Curves” ads was the first in the series, and this issue contains the second. In hopes that they will help us to carry our message to everyone in the gender community, we are sending the ads to support groups and publishers around the world.

The ads were conceived and designed by Margaux Schaffer.

Few things on the planet generate as much heat and as little light as the controversy surrounding sex reassignment surgery (SRS). The effectiveness, morality, and legality of this procedure has been debated in the pages of scientific journals, religious tracts, and daily newspapers, as well as on the television screen. Few people are neutral on a subject that has been called at various times humane, lifesaving, mutilating, noneffective, and sacrilegious; which some feel to be psychosurgery, changing the body to match a diseased mind; which has been said to turn men into “constructed” women and women into “constructed” men; which has been called cosmetic and unnecessary in some theaters, and medically and psychological essential in others.

Few would argue for SRS; its proponents campaign for freedom of choice of genitals, much as the pro-choice movement is hardly a pro-abortion movement, but instead campaigns for the freedom of women’s bodies. As Dr. John Money has noted, the opponents of SRS would demedicalize and criminalize it. They would give it the back-alley status abortion suffered in the 1940s and 1950s, and turn transsexual people and the surgeons who treat them into outlaws. Others, not enemies, perhaps, of transsexualism, but certainly not friends, would have SRS performed only as an experimental procedure, in limited numbers at government-selected centers.

In these pages, I have likened surgical treatment of transsexualism to Pandora’s box. Those who demand SRS will not be gainsaid. A population that was undreamed of before 1952 is manifesting itself in growing numbers. We can expect more men and women to request SRS in the nineties, and even larger numbers in the 21st century. More and more transsexual people will come forth, playing havoc with incidence rates. They will declare themselves, form alliances, demand their place under the sun. They will be hungry; they will be vocal; they will be restless; they will want.

And what will they want, these men, and increasingly, these women? They will want SRS, most of them.

For some, surgery will be appropriate; for others, it will not. But the demand—the large number of people determined to have this procedure—will ensure that it remains available. The supply will grow to meet the demand. This has already been happening, and it will continue to happen. Wendi Kaiser, of The Human Outreach and Achievement Institute, told me over the telephone that 43 postoperative pre-registrants for Outreach’s New Woman Symposium in September, 1991 reported 42 different surgeons. Wendi said The Outreach Institute had over 200 sources for reassignment surgery in its files. She estimates that in the U.S. alone, there may be more than 500 surgeons doing SRS.

Yes, it is too late to slam the SRS door shut.

For many people, reassignment surgery is the culmination of a long journey toward congruity. It enables them to have normal sexual relations; it removes those last traces of insecurity about their physical selves, and it gives them genitalia which are more appropriate for their appearance and their social role. For them, it is, to use Donald Laub’s term, gender confirmation surgery, and they accept it, with all its limitations.

But for every legitimate candidate, there are scores of others who want surgery: often unrealistically, often with no notion of passing in the gender which matches their desired genitalia, often without the necessary persistence or stability of purpose, often without funds—they want SRS. They declare their transsexualism, and set their surgery date, some of them, on the same day.

It is unfortunate that we live in a society with a strongly bipolar view of gender, a culture which defines sex primarily on the basis of one’s genitalia. It is unfortunate because many transsexual people subscribe to this view, believing they will not be women or men until they have the correct genital equipment. Often, this segment of the transsexual population desires and values surgical change over the more important and realistic goals of coming to look and act like a member of the gender of choice and establishing a viable life in that gender. These people forget, or do not care, that their genitalia are tucked away, hidden by clothing, unseen by the masses. They know they don’t have what they want. They want what they want, and pursue it monomaniacally, like Ahab after the White Whale. They never think about the social and financial difficulties involved, the medical risks, the fact that their money and energy would be better spent on facial plastic surgery or psychotherapy or electrolysis, that they are sacrificing perfectly functional equipment for something from the surgeon’s trick-bag. They want SRS, and too often, they get what they thought they wanted.

But in too many cases, it is not what they expected, for they had unrealistic and perhaps fetishistic notions of what it would mean to have the new equipment. They find that it does not help them to pass, that their level of sexual pleasure is diminished, that they still have trouble attracting sexual partners, that the new equipment requires upkeep that they are unable or unwilling to carry out, that life is no better, that it was not worth the pain and the money and the bother, that all things considered, they would rather be in Philadelphia with their original genitalia. They grow despondent, and sometimes suicidal; they (if male-to-female) lose vaginal depth because they will not dilate (sometimes dreaming of further surgery to increase vaginal depth!); they begin to regret having the surgery. They discover that life is not magically different because they have changed plumbing. They have lived their fantasy, and they find it wanting.

I am not saying here that SRS is a bad thing. It is a miracle of modern science, and I would not have it done away with. But blind pursuit of SRS can be a bad thing. It is one thing for someone with a viable appearance, living and working in the gender of choice, to seek SRS as a sort of closure to a process they began years earlier; it is quite another for someone who has not yet begun to live in the gender of choice, or even to alter their appearance, to be consumed with fantasies or thoughts of surgery. Such fascination is not healthy. It is counterproductive; it is fruitless; it is a waste of time and effort that could be better applied elsewhere.

If a walk-in SRS clinic were to open its doors, there would be long lines of people, most of whom would be asking for genitals which contrasted with their social role and outward appearance. Most of these people, if given surgery, would later regret it.

It is for this reason that there needs to be quality control—that it is important that there be standards and guidelines which will minimize the chance of any individual undergoing irreversible surgery which he or she will later regret, and yet minimize the chance of the truly deserving being turned away. We have achieved the first part of this equation; I would argue we have a long way to go before we can say the equation is balanced.

The tightrope walk of transition should not be negotiated blindly, but with illumination provided by the helping professional. The object should not be to knock the individual off the rope, but to help him or her to maintain balance. And if the individual falls, there should always be another chance to walk the tightrope. Unfortunately, this does not always happen.

Given that SRS is occurring and will continue to occur, and that it is decidedly inappropriate for a considerable percentage of the people who desire it, some sort of regulation is needed. We need to move now to ensure not only that those for whom surgery would be inadvisable at that time are required to wait, but that those who need and desire surgery get it. We need to switch from what is essentially an exclusionary model to a criterion-based model.

The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, Inc., publishes the only commonly accepted guidelines for hormonal and surgical treatment of transsexual persons. Their Standards of Care provide minimal requirements for both service providers and transsexual people.

The brilliance of the Standards of Care lies in the placement of SRS at the end of a period of real-life rest, in which the individual must live successfully in the gender which will match the new genitals. Because many find this impossible, and opt to return to their gender of original assignment, they are spared irreversible and potentially humiliating change. Those who persevere can expect to find SRS at the end of the tunnel.

Unfortunately, the Standards of Care are minimal guidelines, and as such are subject to overenthusiastic excesses by service providers. As Dr. Anne Bolin has pointed out in her book, In Search of Eve, the Standards of Care turn service providers into gatekeepers, giving them inordinate control over something that perhaps can be best viewed as the business of the individual. Worse, sexist and inappropriate notions of the gatekeeper can keep deserving persons from surgery.

What is needed is a balance.

The problem is one of locus of control, and it is a sticky one. Because surgical treatment is a medical procedure which can be done only by licensed physicians, the individual must give up some autonomy, just as is done with zoning laws and traffic regulations. But control should not be placed entirely in the hands of service providers, who are subject to failure and bias, and who are, as I have mentioned, making a determination of gender that is more the business of the individual than it is theirs.

Where is the balance? I’m not sure, but I suspect that the answer may lie partially in supply-side economics. If individuals are free to choose among service providers, then they can avoid those who are unnecessarily strict or unsympathetic. The risk here is that by shopping around it may be possible to find a service provider ignorant enough or unscrupulous enough to recklessly give the green light to irreversible procedures like SRS. But it does give the individual some semblance of control—unlike the case when staying with a single service provider, who has final and absolute say-so about hormones and surgery—and hence, the fate of the individual. I think the advantages of this á la carte method outweigh the risks. By comparison shopping for service providers—or even for gender clinics—the individual maintains some control over his or her life and destiny.

Another point of balance may lie in reification of the real-life test as a prerequisite for surgery. Unfortunately, there are sometimes disagreements between transsexual people and service providers as to what constitutes success in real-life test. Here, too, I think the locus of control must shift a bit. Currently, the service provider is in the driver’s seat. Criteria for success should be arbitrated and contracted, with both the service provider and the transsexual consumer coming to a clear understanding of what “success” is. It is important that success not be limited to the service provider’s notion of what is feminine or what is masculine, or what constitutes “success.” If necessary, a third party should be invited to facilitate agreement. A binding written contract should be produced, clearly stating what the transsexual person must do in order to receive the go-ahead for surgery. It is imperative that both parties understand clearly what is expected, and follow through with the written plan.

To this end, it is critical that the consumer be provided with a copy of the Standards of Care. It is morally indefensible and medically unethical to keep a consumer ignorant of these rules. And yet, this sometimes happens, even in the most prestigious treatment settings.

A third point of balance might be for service providers to rethink the business of counter-sex hormones. Certainly, they are not without risk, but they are frequently withheld for social and psychological, rather than medical reasons, turning the physician into a social worker/psychologist—omething he or she is probably not trained to do (and besides, for what other conditions is necessary medical treatment withheld for social and psychological reasons?)

Some service providers, and even some gender clinics, like the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in Toronto and the Program in Human Sexuality in Minneapolis, require long periods of cross-living before hormones are prescribed. For a variety of reasons, this causes problems: 1) the physical effects of hormones, which are largely reversible simply by stopping their use, are less damaging, especially in the short term, than the global effects of terminating marriages, telling family and friends, and dealing with employers, all of which are necessary in order to even start to live in the other gender; 2) cross-living before hormones have changed the habitus to approximate the other sex is discriminative, giving unfair advantage to those who are lucky enough to be young, to those who have physical characteristics which help them to pass, and to those who have (often illegally) had previous hormonal therapy; and 3) requiring crossliving before hormones places the individual in a situation in which verbal abuse and ridicule is highly likely—and at risk for physical abuse, in this era of minority-bashing. I would add that hormonal therapy and SRS are separate and distinct, with SRS being much more intrusive, and that hormonal therapy does need not necessarily lead to the desire for surgical reassignment. An increasing number of people who identify as nontranssexual are coming forward, requesting hormones. What are we to do with these people, who call themselves transgenderists? Finally, failure in real-life test is extremely traumatic, and can do lasting psychological harm—and failure in real-life test leaves the person not only without a viable life in the new gender, but with the original life thoroughly dismantled. The service provider should support the individual in real-life test in every way, rather than throwing up needless and harmful obstacles like the real-life-test-before-hormones requirement.

We are coming to an era in which transsexual persons are becoming comparison shoppers, are starting to stand up for their rights, and are proud of who they are, refusing to slink back into the closet after SRS. They are beginning to question methods of treatment, and are already demanding reform. They are demanding a shift in the locus of control. This is a mark of social and political maturity.

Transsexualism is coming of age, and service providers should be glad of it.

A Word on Terminology

The Editor-In-Chief has worked in the field of mental retardation for nearly twenty years, and has become sensitized to the application of stigmatizing labels to individuals.

Current thinking by many in her field is that persons have mental retardation. They are not “retarded,” not “the retarded,” but “persons with mental retardation” or “persons who have mental retardation.”

Like mental retardation, transsexualism is a stigmatizing label. Those with transsexualism are not “transsexuals.” Rather, they are persons who have transsexualism.

Consequently, rather than conceptually turn people into something less than human beings— “transsexuals”— we at AEGIS will strive to use, both in our publications and in our speech, the terms “transsexual people” and “persons with transsexualism.” Transsexualism will refer to a characteristic of the individual and not the individual himself or herself.

The bulk of those in the crossdressing community have chosen the terms crossdresser and CD to replace the pejorative term “transvestite.” Rather than use the term “person who crossdresses,” we will adhere to this apparent preferred usage.

In February, I was at the Texas “T” Party in San Antonio. The “T” is one of the better-attended events in the gender community. There were perhaps 300 people present, but with the exception of the females who came as wives or girlfriends of crossdressers or to sell merchandise for Jim Bridges or others, and a couple of dozen transsexual people, the conference was made up of males. And not only males, but middle-aged, middle-class, heterosexual, Caucasian males. The diversity which I know to characterize the gender community was lacking. I saw only one or two persons of color, just one obviously gay male (“I’m here for the same reason you are, Honey,” I heard her tell a crossdresser in the bar), and one or two persons with physical handicaps. Everyone else could have come out of the Tri-Ess cookie cutter, except, distressingly enough, about half seemed to be on hormones.

Now admittedly, the “T” Party is just that—a celebration largely for heterosexual couples, largely for first-timers (so why were so many on hormones?)—and not a working meeting like IFGE’s Coming Together conference, which I also attended in April, in Houston. But IFGE’s convention had a similar constitution—largely male, largely Caucasian, largely heterosexual—and so did the first Southern Comfort convention.

It was, in fact, Southern Comfort which got me to thinking about our community, and the diversity within it. It was my first gender convention, and I was amazed by what I saw. There were people who I had once interviewed to join a support group, now in real-life test, and some even post-op. There was a 70-year-old male in a square-dancing skirt at high noon on Friday. There was a 6’2″ male-to-female transsexual person with her 5’6″ boyfriend, and a 5’4″ female-to-male transsexual person with his 5’11” girlfriend. There were legends of the gender community, and there were first-timers. There were transsexual lesbians, professional female impersonators (“Don’t try this at home, folks!), pre-ops, post-ops, non-ops, never-ops, TSs, TGs, TCs, CDs, SOs, and all the rest of the gender alphabet. It was a wonderful melange. But it was largely a male, middle-class, Caucasian, heterosexual melange, and I gradually came to see that Southern Comfort was an expensive-to-attend, selective slice of the gender pie. Why were there crossdressers there from California and Florida, while many transsexual people I knew from Atlanta were unable to attend, or were able to do so only by working registration or doing other chores? Where were the transsexual people from California? Where were the racial minorities, the sexual minorities? (A friend kept anxiously asking, “Were there any persons of color there today?”) Even the programming was representative of middle-class, heterosexist norms. Where were the lectures on AIDS, on safe sex, on gay relationships?

But it was the men who really made me see the light. There were seventeen female-to-male crossdressers and transsexual people, and they caught us unawares. We didn’t have enough for them, and to make matters worse, we slighted them time and again—unintentionally, to be sure, but an insult is an insult. I heard more than one banquet begin with the salutation, “Good evening, Ladies.” I heard the word “she” used time and again, but rarely heard “he.” It concerned me and has eventually come to obsess me that one-half of our population gets so very much less than half of the space in our publications and so little programming in our national conferences.

It was after Southern Comfort that AEGIS began seriously thinking about the diversity within the gender community, and how to reach out to groups which are ignored or shunned by the rest of us. This issue of CQ is an attempt to make the bulk of the community aware of some of these special groups, and we have begun to reach out in others ways—by pressing (successfully) for inclusion of more female-to-male, health, and transgender information at the 1992 Southern Comfort, for instance, and by appointing a National Minorities coordinator.

The demographics of Southern Comfort and other conventions are not surprising, and are really nothing to be distressed about. It is, after all, mostly middle-aged Caucasian males who can afford to come to such meetings. The organizers of the Texas “T,” the Coming Together, and Southern Comfort deserve only accolades and applause, for these meetings are open to all of the segments of our community, even if some are underrepresented, and the organizers do everything possible to cut costs.

The community needs organizations like Tri-Ess, which are limited to sub-sections of the population, and admirably meet the needs of their members. But other segments of the population have needs, also, and they do not seem to be getting addressed. Where are the national organizations for gay crossdressers, transgendered persons of color, transgendered persons who are HIV-positive, new men, female-to-male crossdressers, and transsexual lesbians?

We need to encourage such people to increase their visibility within the community, but it will not happen so long as we allow racial prejudice, heterosexism, anti-transsexual feelings (for crossdressers), and anti-crossdressing feelings (for transsexual people) to drive us. It will not happen until we stop bashing prostitutes and offer them a helping hand. It will not happen until we tolerate differences of opinion and stop putting each other down. It will not happen until we stop practicing the politics of exclusion. It will not stop until the petty and senseless feuds between various groups and individuals are put aside in the interest of all. Can we not be big enough to do that?

It is largely through the efforts of Merissa Sherrill Lynn and Ariadne Kane, and Virginia Prince before them that there is a community. They have influenced the gender world and built it into what it is. But it does not need to stop here, nor would any of them want it to. At the “T,” Virginia said that we are entering a new phase. I hope it is an inclusive one.