Monday Edition Fresh From The Oven

Good Monday everyone! It’s time again for  the TGForum Monday Edition. And what a thrill packed compilation it is. As I was doing the final editing I saw a theme develop. It’s touched on in This Week In Transgenderism with stories about the popularity of RuPaul’s Drag Race and TG subjects in modern sculpture. There’s an article by a woman whose father is a crossdresser — and her hero. Christine Beatty brings us her TransActive column with the story of how shock jock radio dudes who dissed TGs got called out by a coalition of GLBT people and had to apologize and do the right thing by featuring TGs on their show. All of these things are really encouraging signs that the things we started to fight for through education and activism back in the 1980s are coming into being. To illustrate I will tell you a personal tale from last Saturday.

I, as you may know, produce parties for TGs in the Philadelphia suburbs. The parties are called Angela’s Laptop Lounge and they feature music DJed by me from my laptop computer. Saturday I brought the party to a new venue. I have been doing it at one spot for over four years and I have been wanting to move to a new place for some time but it’s hard to find a place that has a bar and no regular crowd already in place.

My boyfriend and I had been getting dinner at a diner near to my current party venue and one night the waitress asked if we would like drinks as they had just opened a full service bar. I did have a drink and soon I was asking the owner of the diner if I could bring the Lounge there and fill his bar on a Saturday night. He said he’d be willing to give it a try but he was a bit concerned about how his diner customers would handle it.

Saturday night there was a sign on the front door of the diner saying that Angela’s Laptop Lounge was happening. I was standing near the entrance to the bar area to meet and greet any arriving girls when the owner came over and said that a young woman wanted to talk to me. She was so young she couldn’t come into the bar. I went out to the entry area and a high school age girl (who came up to about my lowest rib, I was in four inch heels) asked me if I was Angela and what the party was about. I explained and she said she wished she could come in cause it sounded like fun. I told her the Lounge would welcome her when she turns 21 since we don’t discriminate and started to say goodbye so I could get back into the bar but she asked me to come to her table and meet her friends.

I walked through the main part of the diner to a booth in the middle where four high school age boys were seated. The girl introduced me to the table and their reaction was one of complete acceptance. A couple of them expressed frustration that they couldn’t come in to The Laptop Lounge to hang out. I have no idea if any of the boys were crossdressers longing to strut their stuff but I know they genuinely thought that my party and I were cool.

JoAnn was at the party and I told her about the encounter. I prefaced the story by telling her that I think the work we’ve done together, along with the work of many other gender pioneers and gender rebels, has begun to seep into the consciousness of  the country. If high school kids can be happy to meet a drag diva rather than yell at her or throw a rock I think we’ve come a long way, baby. It’s almost enough to make an old drag queen misty eyed. But, no, we can’t have any runny mascara and it’s also time you moved on to the rest of the Monday Edition.

First up is Ronnie Rho’s This Week In Transgenderism. Next is Christine Beatty’s TransActive column. Linda Jensen brings us more about her part time man, Martin with a column she calls My Favorite Martin and  Raina Rouse tells the story of her hero Jerry/Kimberly in A Struggle For Identity.

That’s the TGForum Monday Edition for May 3, 2010. Enjoy!

Category: TG Forum News