From: nyxfer%panix.com@UMCVMB.missouri.edu (N.Y. Transfer)
Subject: NEWS:Buffalo-Transgendered Women Honored
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: University of Missouri
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@UMCVMB.missouri.edu>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 21:56:06 GMT



Via The NY Transfer News Service ~ All the News that Doesn't Fit

Buffalo, NY:

            `PASSING FANCY' HONORS TRANSGENDERED WOMEN

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if
source is cited.)

The program was billed as "Passing Fancy"--a slide show on the
history of women who have passed as men, followed by Buffalo's
first all-women's drag show. Four hundred women and men packed the
April 10 event. A long line of people wound down the block. Some
waited all evening in hopes of getting inside the women's bar
where it took place.

The ground-breaking program drew carloads of women and men from
Toronto and St. Catherine's, Ontario, New York City and
Rochester, Syracuse and Albany, N.Y.  The program was videotaped
so people at the bar could watch the event simultaneously on
closed-circuit wide-screen TV monitors.

The unique program was jointly organized by ACT UP/Western New
York and Workers World Party to raise funds for AIDS education and
pro-choice organizing.

Stunning color posters for the event had created an air of
excitement all around town. Organizers published a 16-page program
that described Passing Fancy as honoring "women who so defied the
boundaries of gender expression and were so oppressed as a result
that many were forced to pass as men to survive."

"Reclaim our past, fight for our future"

The first half of the event was a premier showing of Leslie
Feinberg's slide show "In Our Own Voices--A visual history of
passing women."

Feinberg came out in Buffalo as a young butch lesbian more than 25
years ago.  She's been a member of Workers World Party for 20
years. Her novel on gender oppression, "Stone Butch Blues," is
being published by Firebrand Books and two of her short stories
are being released next month by Alyson Press in an anthology
entitled "Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader."

"In Our Own Voices" consisted of 90 slides that began with a look
at transgender expressions throughout history. Feinberg stressed
that although gender has been expressed differently in diverse
cultures, there have always been "cross-gendered" women and men.

Industrial capitalism forced legions of women to pass as men.
Feinberg showed slides of dozens of these passing women. However,
she said, "while capitalism created profound social and economic
pressures on women to pass, these arguments alone leave out the
struggles of transgendered women who passed out of desperation and
exhaustion.

"The implication is that we're merely a product of decadent
patriarchal capitalism and that when genuine equality is won we
will disappear. We've always been here. We are oppressed. But we
are not merely products of oppression." Feinberg urged the largely
youthful crowd to "study your history, not just since the
Stonewall Rebellion, but earlier. You need to know how mighty
strikes were won and lost, why revolutions were victorious and why
some have been set back. Don't trust Ted Koppel to interpret
history for you."

She concluded, "When genuine bonds of solidarity are forged
between people who respect each other's differences and are
willing to fight a common enemy together, we can win true
liberation."

Women's Drag Show

The drag show featured participants from Buffalo, Rochester, New
York City and Toronto. Models wore "men's" fashions from the
1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.  A mock 1940s-style tux-and-gown
wedding of two women turned tradition upside down. The greatest
fun was the raucous chemistry between the models and the audience.

Two solidarity messages had opened the event. Joan Nestle,
co-founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, wrote that she and
the Archives "want to join in your celebration of passing women.
For so long you have been the shadow warriors, adored historically
and shunned personally. Your voices, your bodies and your loves
must never be silenced again."

Amber Hollibaugh, a founding member of the San Francisco Lesbian
and Gay History Project, wrote that in the 1980s a slide show
about passing women in that city was put together. But "there were
no passing women working on that slide show. Tonight, a lesbian
passing woman has claimed and created the beginnings of a history
whose stories will change us all."

                               ***

This article originally appeared in Workers World newspaper. A
10-week trial subscription is available for $2. A year's
subscription costs $15. Makes checks payable to Workers World, and
send to 46 W. 21 St., New York, NY 10010.Phone (212) 255-0352. You
may contact Workers World editors on NY Transfer or PeaceNet at
"workers."

from the FEMINIST Newsfeed - NY Transfer News Service
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