OK, so I'm in a bad mood. But it's not all me; just read this infuriating letter from the president of Verizon's GLBT employee group (GLOBE), posted by Autumn Sandeen.

Apparently, consulting with a transgender organization such as NCTE about adequate policy, instead of HRC or UUAC, is beyond the realm of possibility for GLOBE or Verizon. Instead, Mr. Perisie extends his benevolent oversight for our protections. Is he joking? Or just a Bush myopian? Absence of explicit protections is as inadequate for transgender persons as it once was for gay men.

Nobody's protection should depend on the benevolence of any leader. It should exist in writing so that when rights are abridged, victims have access to the means for redress.

snarl....

The surfacing on YouTube of video of Chanelle and Gabrielle Pickett inspired me to dig through my records of the time between Chanelle's death and the trial of William Palmer for murder. Now you can read a previously unpublished account written by me in early 1997, about the events surrounding the murder of Chanelle Pickett. I publish it here unedited. It is incomplete, but does include some details not published elsewhere. I've also collected links to the best sources of information on this case.

My primary source was Gabrielle Pickett.

Go to "The Chanelle Pickett Story"

Recently posted on YouTube is the early 90s Jenny Jones interview with twin transsexuals Gabrielle and Chanelle Pickett. Chanelle Pickett was strangled to death in the bedroom of William Palmer in November of 1995. Her twin sister Gabrielle is now missing and, by some reports, also murdered.

by Dallas Denny

[an editorial written for, but never published in, Transgender Tapestry magazine]

Until 1990 or so, the transgender community had little sense of its history — I suppose because we were so very busy defining ourselves. Outside of the hands of private collectors and the occasional gender-bending article or item in gay and lesbian archives, there was nothing. Even collectors had little idea of the value of something like a 1955 program book from Mme. Arthur’s cabaret in Paris, or a 1915 postcard of the famous female impersonator Julian Eltinge, or a program from the First International Symposium on Gender Identity or an issue of Virginia Prince’s early magazine Transvestia.

I remember, in fact, way back in 1993 discussing this with Ms. Bob Davis (then plain old Bob Davis) over the telephone. We decided that if we were patient, a market would develop and would determine values. Today, thanks largely to eBay and the emergence of booksellers who specialize in transgender materials, Ms. Bob and I have notions of what transgender historical materials are worth. One might expect to pay more than $400 for the Mme. Arthur’s program, for example, or $425 for an early copy of Transvestia, or $65 for an Eltinge postcard, or $50 for the rare, but rarely collected, symposium program.

The new century has brought increased interest in transgender historical materials.

Despite the best efforts of generations of activists, from the feminists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to the trans activists of today, the gender wars continue to take their toll. The latest horror story: a man brutally beats his young son for the terrible crime of putting on nail polish.

What young child, male or female, hasn't wondered what it would be like to put polish on their nails?

The good news? The idiot of a father was arrested for beating his child.

Read the story here.

The Washington Blade published a story, "Experts question HRC's ENDA survey", in which an HRC survey methodology is denounced as obviously biased. If you'll recall, in the 11th hour of the US House maneuvers that led to the passage of a trans-exclusive ENDA, HRC announced the results of their poll showing that 68% of GLBT folks supported passing a trans-less ENDA. This survey is exposed as prejudiced.

Clearly, this is evidence of less-than-ideal behavior at HRC. Fortunately, none of the rest of us have ever behaved less than ideally, so we can all rise up in righteous indignation. How dare they!

Any movement such as ours is bound to run into such snags. The question is, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to maintain our pressure on HRC to do the right thing, while looking forward to, and strategizing over, how we can ALL get the results we want, or are we going to watch as our hard-won movement disintegrates into self-righteous polarization?

I just hate to see the GLBT community - my community! - being torn apart by this. The women's movement foundered in the 70's over stuff like this, and suffered great setbacks thereafter. We need to keep looking forward, put our energy into progress, not recrimination, or else, guess what?

We've been divided and conquered.

This past year has seen tremendous gains in visibility and recognition of the legitimate needs of all people of diverse gender expression and identity. Let's not blow it like Bush did, wasting the gift of public support by going on the attack against the wrong folks. Instead, let's build on the good that has happened, while keeping up the pressure on HRC - and the money behind them - to do the right thing. There's a lot of education yet to be done, and we can't do it while we're frothing at the missteps, or even betrayals, of allies.