Angela Gardner, 2023 Pioneer Award Winner
Angela Gardner, Dallas Denny and Dee LaValle sort out the Award presentation.
Angela Gardner posts new content to TGForum with the most amazing consistency. Every week, it seems to pop up like clockwork at exactly midnight, Eastern time. Having edited two magazines and a number of newsletters, that impresses me!
TGForum readers might have noted last week’s addition appeared a little later than usual. That’s because Angela and her friend spent Sunday driving from Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, to Pennsylvania. Even editors with clocklike skills must rest!
The honor presented to Angela was the Transgender Pioneer Award. Conceived in 2001 and first given in 2002, the Pioneer Award is given annually during Transgender Week by the nonprofit International Transgender Education Organization for lifelong achievement by leaders and activists who have given and given of themselves, sometimes to the detriment of their careers, fortunes, and relationships. Angela certainly met our criteria—she has been working selflessly on behalf of the transgender community since the late 1980s. She is a heroine to many, including me; the award was hard-earned and richly deserved.
Angela joins a growing list of transgender legends. Here are the previous years’ awardees:
- Jude Patton (2022)
- Rupert Raj (2022)
- Reverend Moonhawk River Stone (2021)
- Marisa Richmond, Ph.D. (2019)
- Aaron H. Devor, Ph.D. (2018)
- Gwendolyn Ann Smith (2017)
- Martine Rothblatt (2017)
- Jennifer Finney Boylan (2016)
- Monica Roberts (2015)
- Jamison Green (2014)
- Mariette Pathy Allen (2013)
- JoAnn Roberts (2013)
- Yvonne Cook-Riley (2013)
- Mara Keisling (2012)
- Monica Helms (2011)
- Sandra Cole (2011)
- Ethan St. Pierre (2010)
- Dallas Denny (2009)
- Alison and Dottie Laing (2008)
- Stephen Whittle (2007)
- Holly Boswell (2006)
- Joanne Law (2005)
- Nancy Nangeroni (2005)
- Sister Mary Elizabeth / Joanna Clark (2004)
- Judy Osborne (2004)
- Phyllis Randolph Frye (2003)
- Ariadne Kane (2003)
- Merissa Sherrill Lynn (2002)
- Virginia Prince, Ph.D. (2002)
Our thanks to Angela for agreeing to travel to Provincetown to receive her award.
Category: Transgender Community News
About the Author (Author Profile)
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.Subscribe
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