Dallas Denny is renowned for her work on advocacy, policy issues, and health practices involving transsexual and transgender people. She has served as adviser to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, The University of Michigan, the Centers for Disease Control, the city of Atlanta, journalists, and filmmakers. Shelly Anne Baker interviews her in the first installment of Tell Shelley Anne.
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.
Great minds think alike. That’s the cliche and it seems that two of the great minds at TGForum were running in the same track this past week. Or at least they were reading the same blogger. Blogger Meggan Summerville published a list she title “What Not to Say to a Transgender Woman.” Angela Gardner read it and was moved to write Transgender or Transgendered” for today’s new content. Dallas Denny also read the same blog and responds.
Stealth is useful when you don’t want your spy planes to be noticed by the people you are spying on. It’s not as useful and may be actually harmful when you’re transgendered. The burden of having to pass all the time, having to watch yourself constantly to make sure you don’t betray your gender status and then the damage to your personal relationships and career from being outed make it an unhealthy way to live. Dallas Denny read an essay by another TG writer on the dangers of stealth and has been inspired to expand on the subject.
Dallas Denny remembers her long association with JoAnn Roberts and shares what it was like to know her and work with her in several community organizations.
The eyes have it. Pain that is. Many people feel that those who are suffering express their pain through their eyes. The eyes are purported to be windows to the soul. Dallas Denny talks about her gender induced pain and illustrates her text with These Eyes.
Young Dallas Denny didn’t get much of a girlhood. For the most part she had to imagine being one of the girls. Then in her junior year she got some clothes and makeup and dressed up for an afternoon now and then. Find out what it was like being a trans student.
Dallas Denny wrote a paper 20 years ago. Forty years had passed since Christine Jorgensen’s return to the U.S. after SRS in Denmark, so Dallas called the piece Transsexualism at Forty. Now her paper is 20-years-old and transsexualism is 60. Here’s part II of her update.
Last month Dallas Denny’s column was a reprint of her original 1993 Chrysalis article, Transsexualism at Forty. This month Dallas look at the first three of her twelve observations from the original paper to see how they hold up two decades later.
For some reason radical feminists are upset about transsexuals. Are they not really feminists but just a man haters club? Quit possibly. A publisher was set to release a book by a radical feminist. Dallas Denny and and Jamison Green sent the publisher a letter and told them to stop.
