SpringOut 2009

Its that time of year again… the run up to November, the month of Canberra’s local Pride Festival. A Gender Agenda and NewCTN are holding a joint stall at SpringOut’s Fairday this year. We’ve got lots of fun activities and events planned for the day, so come along and check out the festivities!

Also during November we have planned an Art Exhibition of Trans Political Art, with the grant kindly provided to us by Pink Tennis, the local Gay and Lesbian Tennis Club. This will be shown both in the Legislative Assemblies Exhibition Space, and in another Art Gallery, that we are still confirming.

There will also be an A Gender Agenda Picnic on the last Saturday of November, so mark the 28th of November in your calendar, and keep it clear!

In less cheerful news, we will be marking Transgender Day of Remembrance again this year. TDoR falls on the 20th, which is a Friday this year. We are hoping to have a ceremony inside a building, but again we haven’t yet confirmed locations. More details will be posted closer to the date.

Anyway, we hope to see you at an event soon.

From Transgender Day of Action 2009

June 26 saw our first ever Transgender Day of Action fundraiser. I have to admit it, I was nervous in the lead up, terrified even! However, on the night, things went incredibly well!

The venue was HUSH Lounge, and the price was right. People started rocking up well before we opened the doors. I’ve never seen Canberran’s looking so queer and fabulous. There were queers that had come all the way from Sydney and Melbourne because it seemed like such a novel event.

There were several main events. We had stage performances from the Canberra Kings, and a belly dancer who left all the ladies drooling for more. We also Auctioned off volunteers, including a Bondage Rope master, a Photographer, a Chef, and of course all the Drag Kings. One of the local dykes fetched the hefty price of $500 in return for one dirty dance!

We departed from the usual trans event policy of Unisex toilets, and split the bathrooms at HUSH along another binary. Head and tails! Our polite Toilet Valet would toss a coin, and tell you whether you were allowed to use the Heads or the Tails bathroom. Most people took this with good nature, in the spirit it was intended, but unfortunately one person took offence, and verbally harassed our valet. I find it utterly remarkable that anyone would come to a trans event, thinking that they can cause a fuss about being asked to use the men’s toilet! At least surrounded by trans folk, and our allies, she would have been thoroughly embarrassed for being the one scolded by the MC’s.

By the end of the night, I was exhausted. I’d MC’d with Mr Rocco Hardness, and staved off disaster when the Auctioneer called to say he couldn’t make it, 15 minutes before the Auction was due to begin. One of the local dykes, who usually Drag Kings but hadn’t been on stage that night, kindly volunteered to run the Auction for us.

We made about $2000 in donations, and it was truly a community effort. We couldn’t have done it without the support of the Canberra Kings, HUSH Lounges staff, and all the volunteers from A Gender Agenda who faithfully ran the Toilet stall, took donations at the door, and generally made sure the night ran nice and smoothly.

Our Entry in Mardi Gras was a raging success. We had 22 people show up on the day to march with us. We wore fantastic green t-shirts, had awesome placards, and made waves with the crowd, the other floats, and the commentators alike!

It was my first ever Mardi Gras, and the feeling of marching with 21 other trans people, genderqueers, and our friends and families while being cheered on by the crowd, was an incredibly empowering experience. We handed out hundreds of stickers that said “Gender Rights are Human Rights” and lollipops with “Trannies are Sweet” written on them. Trans people and their supporters in the crowd screamed “I love trannies too!” at us from the sidelines, and we had post op FTM’s flash their scars at us.

I was thrilled to see the level of support for our community from other LGBT organisations, and from the wider community. Some people were obviously confused by our marching group, and our placards gave more than a few cause to pause and think about their preconceived notions of what a trans person looks like, and what they experience.

So, maybe next year YOU will be marching with us too! :)

This year A Gender Agenda are marching with Tranny Panic Art Project. They are providing the art, we’re providing promotion and awesome awesome t-shirts. If you want to join us, there is still time. We’ve got a facebook event, and you can email us for more details.

It was fabulous to spend the afternoon with such a diverse range of people.
The vibe was amazing – a truly honest celebration of diversity with a sense
of community that felt REAL…

Thanks to everyone who attended and made it such a wonderful day.
(and of course we encourage even MORE people to attend our next event!)

– Peter

As Peter said, the BBQ was a great success. We had a whole host of people we’d never met before rock up. There was such a good vibe over the entire day. We had WIN News show up and film us for a while, but we haven’t seen that broadcasted yet. If anyone knows when that will be aired, please let us know.

So, a toast to new friends and old! I hope to see even more new faces at our next event.

- Ryan

Trans Women and Trans Men can be Friends Too! The art is from Sleazo Sketch Town's talented writer/artist.

There seems to be a massive cultural and political divide between trans men and trans women. Trying to get us all to work together can be like herding cats at times! There are naturally vastly different perspectives on what is important, and what needs time and attention. There are different ways of communicating, and different ways of organising. All of these differences need to be acknowledged and compromised on.

I know that on the trans-masculine side of the divide, there are a lot of boys who have significant passing privilege, and want to just fade into society. On the trans-feminine side there’s a lot of girls that just wanna have fun! And when we are all thrown together, we can throw one hell of a party, but getting political work done is more of a challenge.

A Gender Agenda has always had a mix of trans men and trans women, but somehow we still developed a reputation for being an organisation by and for trans men. Recently we’ve been making an effort to dispel that myth. We are for all trans people, and not just those physically transitioning.

We think its very important for people questioning their gender identity to be able to contact us and speak to someone who they can identify with. Our organisation has a variety of people actively working with us, and with people that contact us looking for advice, and support.

Peter Hyndal is available for gender-questioning people, and trans men to speak to. He’s been working with the trans community, and in trans politics for years now, and was a founding member of A Gender Agenda.

AbbeyJane is our new contact for Trans Women. She’s the founding member of NewCTN, and over the past few years NewCTN has grown into a flourishing social organisation for trans people and crossdressers. We are very pleased to have AbbeyJane on board with us.

Robyn Grafkin is the person I jokingly call our ‘Pride Officer’. Robyn’s job is to collaborate with other queer and pride organisations such as Tranny Panic (who we are attending Mardi Gras with), and the SpringOut Committee, who organise Canberra’s local Pride Festival.

I publish the website and research political actions and events that are happening around the place, to keep us all informed. I’m the person to contact if you want to get involved in organising stuff with us, want to write for the website, or have a gender-related event you want to promote.

Obviously, in our society where gender related hate is so commonplace, not all of our members are comfortable being openly associated with us. We are extremely accepting and facilitating of this. We have people that attend our events, and help out with other projects but who’s names will never be mentioned on this website. If you think that you would like to get involved, but want to remain stealth… don’t let the few of us that choose to be openly mentioned on the website intimidate you!

We hope to see many more talented individuals get involved with us in the near future, so don’t be shy. Drop by one of our events and say hello, or shoot us an email. :)

To celebrate Gender Diversity Day we will be holding a BBQ. It will be a laid back, no pressure event. A bunch of us will be around eating food and hanging out for several hours, so even if you don’t feel like staying for an entire meal, feel free to just drop by and say hello.

This event celebrates Gender Diversity in all its forms, and so we encourage everyone to come along… whether you are gay, lesbian, straight, trans, non-trans, genderqueer, a parent, a partner, or a friend of someone who would like to come. The more the merrier is our philosophy!

The BBQ will be in Glebe Park at 1pm on the 28th of February. Bring your friends, and family and partners. This is a kid friendly event, and is definitely open to non-trans people as well as trans people and their families.

I’m not asking for GLSEN to change the name of their event, but I think that Australian organisations could hold an event with a name that sounds a little less like a day when you do your banking. I think that “Trans Awareness Day” is an excellent title, and one that as far as I can tell isn’t taken. (Gendered Intelligence in the UK ran a single Trans Awareness Day back in 2007, but it hasn’t been held since). However, it is very trans-centric. Perhaps “Gender Diversity Day” would be a more inclusive and appropriate name?

A preliminary survey of my friends revealed a strong leaning towards Gender Diversity Day. What do other folk think? Suggestions for other names are also welcome!

This video is an advertisement for an Argentinian bank, and features a trans woman. I say, good on Banco Provincia! May they get throngs of new customers for this!

Transcript after the cut.

[Speaking to a customer] Trans woman: Its more natural…

[A car pulls up and an elderly man gets out and walks over.]

Trans woman: Mr Lopez, how strange to see you around here!

Mr. Lopez: I’d like to know… When a bank credit was granted to you to open the hairdresser, did they ask for your identity card?

Trans woman: Yes.

Mr Lopez: But the document shows that you are a man!

[The woman frowns and folds her arms]

Trans woman: Yes.

Mr Lopez: And did they grant it anyway?

[The woman nods]

Mr Lopez: This is the same bank that has granted me a credit to buy the car.

Trans Woman: Mm.

Mr Lopez: That made me think. And so it encouraged me to come and apologize to you for treating you badly all this time. For not knowing how to treat you. Have this.

[Passes her a wood carving of a ballerina]

Trans woman: For me?

Mr Lopez: I’m sorry.

Trans woman: Thank you, Mr Lopez!

Mr Lopez: Bye!

[Mr Lopez's wife and the trans woman wave as one another as he gets back in the car.]

Caption: Your life changes when there is a bank disposed to change

Narrator: You have a life, you have a bank.

Banco Provincia.

Hat tip to Jacky for this one.

In it he discusses how queer youth are faced with the problem of finding and then reproducing queer culture often without the benefit of mentorship by the previous generations of queer people.

Because of the highly lateral dispersion of queer people in our society, (being that there are few indicators showing that queer people are more likely to come from one part of our society than the other), from our entrance into the world, the queer nation is constantly a nation in diaspora. With each successive generation, the new queer generation is mustered together by a collective sense of “otheredness,” and introduced to a radically new culture to which we may choose to cleave to.

However this process is highly individualized and extremely informal, with very few opportunities for mentorship or leadership. What often occurs is learning through mimicry and trial and error. Queer youth learn to copy examples of queerness that they see in television, in film, the older queers they might see on misadventures into queer life. But most importantly, queer youth learn about being queer mostly from each other.

This process of recreating queer culture is not without its benefits. It means that we are a highly adaptive culture, and although there is a massive ‘generation gap’, I think that young queers are moving in the right direction, particularly when it comes to accepting gender variance and making cultural space for all kinds of trans people and new sexual orientations.

However, there are also problems. For example, we forget our history so quickly. The history of the LGBT movement is not taught in school. When I came out, I had no idea what ‘Stonewall’ was and was quite alarmed when I saw a documentary about the first Australian Mardi Gras. (Police brutality!? IN AUSTRALIA? What a shock!) Then on the trans side… who knew that the first medical transitions occurred only a few decades ago? Amazing!

Another notable issue for young people, is that even today, and particularly sex and gender diverse children and teens, we are still often rejected by our families, leaving us alone, and somewhat vulnerable. We create new queer families, and tribes, but we miss the mentorship from the older generation. Sometimes we wonder what on earth will become of us… we wonder if we’ll ever grow up, what we’ll look like when we are 40, 60, or 80. We wonder how other, older people coped with transition, with being genderqueer, whether they lost their family and friends too, or maybe they patched things up? If so, how? How hard is it to have kids? How do you go about having kids? What about negotiating the legal minefield surrounding marriage?

There are so many questions, and its often hard for young sex and gender diverse people to find older mentors who can help them with their unique gender journey.

There are ways to combat these problems. There are websites about our history that celebrate successful trans people. Organisations like AGA have members who range in age, providing a valuable source of mentorship. As individuals we can all do our bit, helping out young people, and people who are newly awakening in their identity as gender diverse.

Its very important that older people understand how important they are to the next generation of gender diverse people, and that young people have access to safe mentors and leaders.