Dallas Denny’s contributions to transgender activism, knowledge, and history are legendary and span four decades. She was the first voice thousands of desperate transpeople heard when they reached out for help, and she provided the information and referrals they so desperately needed. She is a prolific writer. Her books, booklets, magazines she has edited, and articles fill an entire bookcase and are in danger of spilling over into a second bookcase. She has created and led several national nonprofit organizations, been present at the creation of at least five transgender conferences, and led two long-lived support groups, She created the first trans-exclusive archive of printed and recorded literature, which today is available to the public at Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan. She has been a fierce advocate for transgender autonomy and access to medical care. Through it all, she has stayed on task, and made it all about the task at hand rather than about herself. Now, in her mid-seventies, she maintains the same frenetic pace she has kept up since the 1980s.
Dallas’ work is viewable in its entirety on her website.
In 1974, members of Boston’s Cherrystones support group read about what was most likely the first organized convention for crossdressers and transsexuals in the U.S. Unfortunately, it was three thousand miles away, in the Pacific Northwest. Thus Fantasia Fair, now Trans Week, was born.
Lynn Ann Conway was an electrical engineer, computer scientist, and an activist on behalf of transgender people. She died in Jackson, Michigan on Sunday, June 9, 2024 of heart trouble.
Dallas Denny has kindly allowed us to publish her notes for the keynote address she delivered at the third Paradise Conference, which was held in Atlanta from April 18-21, 2024. Her speech explores why Americans can believe transgender people are a menace. Exposure to misinformation and disinformation. When many believe that vaccines are a way to get tiny tracking devices into people why wouldn’t they believe the lies about transgender people?
On October 21 Angela Gardner was presented with the TransWeek (formerly Fantasia Fair) Pioneer Award honoring her work over the years on behalf of the transgender community. Dallas Denny writes about Angela’s contributions and lists previous recipients of the Pioneer Award.
Our title is Felicity Chandelle (1905–2008), Pilot and Crossdresser. At age ten, in 1915, young John Miller was spending his free time at a local flight school. His ambition was to become a pilot. Miller did that. First delivering the mail to Camden, New Jersey, in a gyrocopter that took off from the roof of the Philadelphia post office, and becoming an airline pilot. Then in `969 the urge for feminine glamor struck and Felicity was born. Attending crossdresser meeting and events all over the east coast she was there at historic places. This is her story, sent to TGF by Jan Brown and Dallas Denny.
Dallas Denny wraps up her five part series on the history of Tapestry Magazine with commentary on the role played by transgender publications in the formation of the transgender community.
Dallas Denny continues her report on Tapestry Magazine’s history, and expands today to cover efforts to preserve the written matter that comes from countless local group’s newsletters as well as the major magazines that were published in the 1980s and ’90s.
Part I of this series about the late trans magazine Tapestry followed its timeline across its thirty-year lifespan. Part II discussed the development of transgender personal ads in general and their trajectory in Tapestry in particular. In Part III, Dallas Denny discusses her personal experience as editor-in-chief and why she resigned.
Dallas Denny returns today with Part 2 of the history of Tapestry Magazine. It began in the late ’70s as a typewritten newsletter and became over the next decade the go-to publication for information on all things trans. Today Dallas reports on how personal ads became a part of Tapestry, and other transgender publications.
Dallas Denny joins our New Content today with Part 1 of the history of Tapestry Magazine. It began in the late ’70s as a typewritten newsletter and became over the next decade the go-to publication for information on all things trans. It was through one of the personal ads in Tapestry that our editor Angela Gardner first made contact with other crossdressers, including JoAnn Roberts, which led to a long association with JoAnn’s LadyLike magazine and TGFroum.
Our Retro Rerun today comes from 1990 and was written by Dallas Denny. It was published on TGForum in the ’90s and it has good information on successfully transitioning genders.
After a long battle with cancer, Alison Laing, a founding member of The Renaissance Education Association, Inc., board member and then executive director of IFGE, director of Fantasia Fair, author, and wine expert, passed away peacefully on January 22, 2019 at the Elizabethtown Masonic Village in Pennsylvania. She was surrounded by loved ones. Dallas Denny worked with Alison’s daughter to write this obituary. Many thanks to Dallas.
Dallas Denny met Alison Laing at a gender conference in 1991. That meeting turned into the decades long friendship of two transgender activists. In this post Dallas brings you some photos of Alison at work and play and she writes about her memories of those times.
Dallas Denny takes us back to the days of Germany’s Weimar Republic, a socially liberal, progressive democratic government that ruled Germany after World War I. During that time trans people became bolder and began to be seen out and about in public places. The good times ended when Adolph Hitler was elected chancellor and his National Socialist party came to power. Dallas feels that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it and she finds chilling similarities between the fall of the Weimar Republic and what is currently happening in the U.S.A.
Dallas Denny has written a piece on the confusion that can arise when gender specific pronouns are avoided. She feels that the world needs new pronouns to replace the old ones because when people start referring to other people as “they” or “them” instead of “her’s” or “his” the potential for increased misunderstanding grows greater. She likens it to the old Abbot &* Costello routine Who’s On First?
Dallas Denny, like many in the trans community, had her own reaction to Caitlyn Jenner’s “Vanity Fair” cover story. Everyone has an opinion about Caitlyn and the feeling range from total approval and “hurrah, way to go girl” to “she certainly doesn’t represent me.” Dallas sums it all up for us in a short, sweet piece that talks to the haters.
Dallas Denny gave the keynote address at the 9th Transgender Lives: The Intersection of Health and Law Conference in Farmington, CT on April 25, 2015. The title of Dallas’s speech was “Dismantling the Gender Binary.” Just recognizing that there is a gender binary is the first step toward dismantling it. Dallas discusses a few of the milestones along the way to the acceptance of many gender identities.
Virginia Prince was one of the first pioneers of the modern era of crossdressing. She was not afraid to go on television shows in the ’60s to discuss the concept of men wearing women’s clothing. She published the first crossdressing magazine, Transvestia, and she founded Tri-Ess. She also was homophobic, denied transsexuals entry to Tri-Ess and was an opinionated old curmudgeon. Dallas Denny shares some of her interactions with the woman she both admired and despised.
Dallas Denny is one of the founders of the Southern Comfort Conference. She was appalled to learn that the Conference is heading over 600 miles further south for next year’s event. Will this move help a gender conference that has been loosing steam? Or will the move mean a faster route to the extinction of SCC? See what Dallas thinks and be sure to post your comments.
Dallas Denny has allowed us to republish a piece she posted on her Chrysalis website. While she has not read the book she has skimmed it and found evidence that “Gender Hurts” is not an actual scholarly work on transgender issues but instead a book with an anti-trans agenda. It is very similar, but better written, to another work published over 30 years ago that claimed transsexuals were a plot to replace biological women.
The new play by Harvey Fierstein, “Casa Valentina,” as most everyone knows, is based on the real Casa Susanna. In the 1960s Virginia Prince attended a weekend gathering there to promote her idea for the Society for the Second Self. The play is a fascinating look into the transgender experience of the early ’60s and it is based on a book of photographs taken at Casa Susanna. In this article Dallas Denny reveals who took most of those photographs and how they ended up inspiring Harvey Fierstein to write “Casa Valentina.”
A few weeks ago the 2014 Trans 100 List was published. Dallas Denny looked over the List and posted an op-ed about it on her Chrysalis Quarterly website. She has graciously allowed us to re-publish it here. In their work, Brevard is GRATEFUL for the accomplishments of other activists. They ASPIRE to be the best […]
Our occasional contributor and TG icon Dallas Denny participated in the Moving Trans* Forward Symposium last month at the University of Victoria on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Also in attendance were several other TG icons including another occasional TGF contributor Ms. Bob Davis. Dallas posted a review of the event on her website and has […]
Those new to the transgender community may not have a grasp of what it was like for transgendered people before the advent of the Internet. Information about crossdressing, transsexualism, gender identity and all of the many issues and conditions under the transgender umbrella was hard to find. It was out there in pamphlets, books printed on mimeograph machines and office copiers. Some tomes were published by actual publishers with hard covers but copies could not be found at your local library. Much of what was printed by and about TGs from those days would be lost without the establishment of transgender archives. Dallas Denny tells of one such effort.
One of the main interests of Dallas Denny for over 16 years has been making the heterosexual crossdresser group Tri-Ess uncomfortable. Why would a TS like Dallas want to make the ladies of Tri-Ess squirm in their girdles? Is she just a mean girl? A trouble maker? No. Dallas sees hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty in Tri-Ess’ “heterosexual crossdressers only” policies. Has she had any success poking Tri-Ess regarding their rejection of TS and gay transgendered people? Read The Tri-Ess Wars and see.
©1995, 2013 by Dallas Denny Source: Denny, Dallas. (1995, November). FTM Conference a Huge Success! AEGIS News, No. 1, V. 5, p. 1. Here’s a bit of history for TGForum readers… Thumbnail Photo: Illustration of Jack Bee Garland, taken from the cover of Louis Graydon Sullivan’s biography. Garland was a female-bodied man who lived in […]
