TGForum’s Mr. Spock is our in-house scientist and fact-based life form, Dana J. Bevan. Today she applies science and logic to the manner in which transgender people are exploited by politicians. She does not recommend or endorse one party over another but presents factual information about where we are today and what should be done to achieve full rights for transgender people. Give her blog a read and use the comment area to weigh in with your opinion.
New Contributor Chrissy Gann joins us today with her “origin story.” Chrissy grew up in a video tape world where one had to go to a retail establishment and rent a VHS tape in order to view a movie in the privacy of ones home. In her local video store Chrissy ran across Let Me Die A Woman, and Glenn or Glenda? While her usual tastes ran to B movies about alien invaders and mutated monsters something in these two films spoke to her deep inside. That was the beginning of her journey to a feminine lifestyle. Read on for the details.
Kristy Leigh takes a scholarly look at three of the films in the 1990s that presented transgender characters as not just freakish beings who defied gender norms but began to move toward more diversity for transgender characters. The films she discusses are “Paris is Burning”, “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”, and “The Crying Game”. There are footnotes.
Kristine Holt starts to recognize people throughout the ages who are seen as role models for transgender people. Along the way she gets caught up in not just the individuals who have helped transgender people win recognition but list many of the events that occurred because of trans people’s effort to be seen and accepted. She starts off in 204 BC and follows our progress up to 2015.
Words. We use them everyday and generally we know what we mean. But too often people use words believing they mean one thing and others who hear those words interpret a completely different meaning. Words like gender identity, sexual identity, identity groups, identity disorders, gender identity development, social identity and more are examples of words that can mean one thing to one group of people and something else to another group. Today Dana Bevan takes you through the history and the different meanings of the word identity.
A common truth in all people’s lives is that eventually they get older. Today Linda Jensen blogs about aging and takes a moment to look at her memories of the good times she’s had while being Linda. She offers a sort of memory test that will let you situate yourself on the transgender timeline by bringing up places, publications and online addresses which either mean something to you or don’t spark a memory. For example, how many remember Paradise in the Poconos? Take a sashay down memory lane with Linda Jensen.
Our Retro Rerun today comes from the TGForum Archives from 1998. TGF reader Robin Jean Peters wrote a piece titled We’ve Come A Long Way, Baby. She told our readers that no matter how oppressed they felt about the social stigma of crossdressing in 1998 it was way, way worse forty years before that. In 1958 she made the mistake of getting out of her car to just walk around the block and hear her high heels clicking on the pavement. Robin tells you what happened and why she found things to be much better for crossdressers in 1998.
Last month Sophie Lynne wrote about the demise of a gay club/hotel in New Hope, Pa. that had been an important part of her growth. She had only been there a few times but every other month there was a gathering of trans people and Sophie had attended some of those. Places you go when you’re finally finding your true self can be important. Today Linda Jensen laments the closing of yet another t-friendly gay resort. This one is in Florida, near her usual stomping grounds.
We dive into the TGForum Archives and pull out a Transgender History Quiz from 1996. It was put together by Dr. Barbara Anderson for a local California support group’s newsletter and then presented on TGForum. See if you know the answers to the quiz.
Back in 1996 Aleisha Michelle Emerson contributed some columns to TGForum that explored the transgender side of rock and roll. She began the columns in the 1950s and covered up to 1970 with her first column which we brought back last month. Today we present her column on the influence of David Bowie and the Glam Rock of the ’70s.
Back in 1998 there was a lot of concern about the coming turn of the century. Would all the computers go crazy after midnight on the last night of the 1900s? Using that and other concerns about what would happen when the world entered the 21st century Hebe Dotson wrote a pair of contributions to TGF. The first was an imagining of a conversation between two people in 1899 in which one person has foreknowledge of the nature of the 20th century. And of course they possess knowledge of what will happen surrounding the LGBT community. Which in 1900 just didn’t exist. Right.
Guest Contributor Angela Stephanie Haddow reports on the New York City Pride March and reminds us all of the history of LGBTQ rights in the USA. As she marched through Manhattan proudly being herself she thinks about how the fight for rights began and while the advances, evidenced by participation in the Pride March by public officials and businesses, have been great there are still miles ahead on the road to full equality in the eyes of society.
The theater of the ancients of Greece and Rome was different in several ways from theater today. At that time all of the actors onstage were male, no matter if the the character being portrayed was male or female. This type of casting was present up to the first century BC when female actors began to appear. Former TGForum contributor Hebe Dotson wrote about the presence of crossdressing and transgender characters and themes in Greek and Roman plays back in 1998. We bring her article back as today’s Retro Rerun.
The Jim Jefferies Show on Comedy Central traveled to Thailand for a segment on the transgender women there known as “ladyboys.” The segment was part of Jefferies’s April 9, 2019 show that focused on LGBTQ rights. In the segment, which you can watch below, Jefferies interviews three transgender sex workers and a transgender rights activist. […]
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.
A few months ago David de Alba sat down in front of a camera and talked about his life as a female impersonator. The filmmakers sent David a link to a rough cut of all the footage that was shot that day in his home in Las Vegas. Now you can view the interview right here on TGForum. A must for David de Alba fans.
On 10 December 2017 Paul Ryner, David de Alba’s long time partner and “the wind beneath his wings, passed away. He will always be loved and remembered by family, friends but most of all his devoted life partner Heri (aka David de Alba). This is a tribute to commemorate the one-year anniversary of his passing […]
in September our contributor Pauline Estelle reached the age of 83. She has been dressing up for many, many years and enjoys being a girl as much today as she did way back when. Today Pauline has assembled a random collection of thoughts and opinions she has gathered over the years. She likes the term “bi-gendered” instead of “crossdresser.” Likes having a large bosom, and bemoans the loss of the ability to wear high heels. See what other thoughts and opinions she expresses and read her post.
Years ago on TGForum Laurie Sheril did a series of articles on drag in the cinema. She started back in the days of silent film and worked her way forward in time to the ’90s. Today we dip into the TGForum Archives to bring you her review of a holy relic of crossdressing — the Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis classic film Some Like It Hot.
There are dozens of interviews with The Cuban Legend, David de Alba that have been conducted in English. David’s cousin Mario Jimenez came to visit David in Las Vegas and conducted the following interview in Spanish.
Suzzie has been participating in the crossdressing scene since before it was a scene. She’s been dressing up and going out for fun for 75 years. At one point, while attending a get-together at The Tiffany Club in New England she saw someone in a wheelchair dressed in male attire except they wearing a lady’s shirt. She noticed the way the buttons worked. His name was Bill and he was an older man who Suzzie surmised was unable to fully crossdress but still attended the group’s meetings. That was the first time she noticed that time marches on, and one day she might be that person. But even though adjustments had to be made Suzzie is still living the crossdressing life and having fun.
Years ago on TGForum Laurie Sheril did a series of articles on drag in the cinema. She started back in the days of silent film and worked her way forward in time to the ’90s. Today we dip into the TGForum Archives and pull out her article on characters dressing in drag in the post war ear. First she talks about the angora sweater loving fetishist Ed Wood then goes on to write about Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis and other who dressed up in ’50s films. Learn more in this Retro Rerun from the Archives.
Years ago on TGForum Laurie Sheril did a series of articles on drag in the cinema. She started back in the days of silent film and worked her way forward in time. Today we dip into the TGForum Archives and pull out her article on characters dressing in drag during World War II. From college boys in chorus girl outfits to Jimmy Durante doing a French Apache dance in drag, Laurie covers the plentiful drag to be found in those films. Learn more in this Retro Rerun from the Archives.
Susan Grant is one of the lucky ones who got to patronize the legendary Finocchio’s nightclub in San Francisco back in 1958 when men were men and and men were women onstage. She visited the club while she was in the Navy and Finocchio’s was on the Navy’s “Off Limits” list. That only made her want to check it out more. She returned to visit the club 30 years later and found that it no longer the same experience. Today she writes about the club and passes on a juicy bit of information on what may have happened after Howard Hughes visited Finicchio’s.
In the 1990s TGForum had an expert on drag in movies who wrote a series of articles for us. Laurie Sheril was her name and she covered the instances of movie crossdressing through the different historical periods of film-making. We’re bringing her series out of the archives as a Retro Rerun beginning with her article on drag in the early years of the talkies.
