WEBVTT - Trans Trailblazer: Dallas Denny 0:00:08.400 --> 0:00:12.640 Hello, beauties. I'm very excited about today's episode and I 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:15.400 want to get right into it. Season two is coming 0:00:15.400 --> 0:00:18.200 to a close with next week's episode. I hope you 0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:22.880 all will enjoy these next prolific trans trailblazers that I 0:00:22.920 --> 0:00:27.280 have lined up. Today's conversation is with Dallas Denny, a 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:30.520 legend in the trans community that many young ones may 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:34.239 not be aware of. She is the woman who created Aegis, 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:38.640 Chrysalis magazine and Southern Comfort Conference, to name a few. 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:55.920 Listen up for some hearts to read kids. Hello listeners, 0:00:56.080 --> 0:00:59.560 and welcome to another episode of Beauty Translated. This week, 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:03.720 I have another legendary trans elder here with me. She's 0:01:03.760 --> 0:01:06.560 a woman who paved the way and building trans community 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:10.440 before trans people were visible as they were today, before 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:14.280 the Internet connected us instantly with our community. Today I'm 0:01:14.319 --> 0:01:18.600 speaking with the prolific columnist, writer, activist, and teacher. Her 0:01:18.680 --> 0:01:23.760 name is Dallas Dinny. Please welcome her. Hi, Dallas Hikram. Yeah, 0:01:23.760 --> 0:01:26.840 we have a legend with us today. I'm I'm thrilled. 0:01:26.959 --> 0:01:28.280 I'm thrilled. Thank you for being in. 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:31.080 A very small way, maybe. 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:32.720 In a very big significant way to me. 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:36.000 I never wanted to be famous. I never wanted to 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:38.959 be rich, but it is nice to have when people 0:01:38.959 --> 0:01:41.560 know who you are. And so I got what I wanted. 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:46.840 Dallas, you have a prolific legacy of writing, you know, 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:50.520 all throughout like the eighties and nineties going into today. 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:54.160 But I want to make sure that the listeners who 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:56.440 are not familiar with who you are, are not familiar 0:01:56.440 --> 0:01:58.480 with your work kind of have an idea of who 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:00.680 you are. So could you starting with kind of maybe 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:03.960 where you're from and where you're raised, tell the listeners 0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:05.800 kind of a brief introduction of who you are. 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:10.359 Sure. I was born in Asheville, North Carolina, and lived 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:13.120 there on and off growing up. My father was in 0:02:13.560 --> 0:02:16.600 the US Army, so we lived a lot of places. 0:02:16.639 --> 0:02:19.960 We lived in Orleans, France for four years, lived in 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:25.440 Arizona twice, lived in Georgia, and when he would be 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:29.680 stationed in Korea because it was the media post Korean 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:33.880 conflict period, we would be in Nashville for a year 0:02:33.960 --> 0:02:37.040 or two. Wow. Yeah, so I bounced all around when 0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:40.680 I was The day I finished the eighth grade, my 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:43.640 parents picked me up and instead of going home, we 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:49.720 drove through Atlanta to Murphysboro, just south of Nashville. My 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:51.920 father had taken a job with the Park Service. So 0:02:51.960 --> 0:02:56.160 from age fourteen until I transitioned at age thirty nine, 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:59.760 I lived in Tennessee. And when I transitioned, rather than 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:02.000 do it where I was known, and I moved to 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:05.320 Atlanta where there was some support, first support I ever found. 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:09.200 Yeah, and I'm learning a little bit about that. You know, 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:12.760 nowadays trans people are not as familiar with the concept 0:03:12.880 --> 0:03:17.000 of having to necessarily move away from home in order 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:20.359 to be accepted you in your transition, because one of 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:23.040 the benefits of moving away from home is that nobody 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:25.520 knows who you are. You can kind of start over 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:29.359 fresh where nobody has to dead name you or misgender 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:31.840 you or things like that. And you can also, like 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:36.280 you said, get more access to support, which was here 0:03:36.280 --> 0:03:39.960 in Atlanta. And I lived in Atlanta my entire life. 0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:43.400 I'm going to be thirty this year, and I have 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:48.320 been researching and reading your writing, and I've been fascinated 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:53.760 by the amount of history we have trans history we 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:57.440 have in the city of Atlanta. To me, it seems 0:03:57.480 --> 0:03:59.640 like there was a lot going on in Atlanta at 0:03:59.640 --> 0:03:59.960 the time. 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:01.760 There really was. 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:05.560 So you ended up in Atlanta when you began your transition, 0:04:05.720 --> 0:04:07.240 and that was at the age of thirty nine. 0:04:07.960 --> 0:04:11.160 Yeah. I had been on hormones for ten years. Okay, wow, 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:14.240 and my name was always Dallas. I didn't have to 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:18.400 change my name, and I seemed to pass very easily, 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:22.000 So I had hopes. I didn't want to be unemployed, 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:24.839 and I worked before. I worked as a psychological examin 0:04:24.920 --> 0:04:29.760 or in Tennessee. But I didn't care. I was ready 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:32.600 to transition. Was I needed to transition, And I didn't 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:35.360 know if I'd ever work in a professional capacity again. 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:39.200 But within two weeks I found a job that I 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:41.719 worked until I retired with the Stage of Georgia, doing 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:45.480 essentially the same thing I'd done in Tennessee, which gave 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:48.039 me a stable base to do activism. I had a 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:50.360 place to sleep at night, for instance. 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:54.640 Right, and Atlanta really did become a stable base for 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:56.240 a lot of the work that you were doing at 0:04:56.240 --> 0:04:58.240 the time. I want to talk more about that, but 0:04:58.320 --> 0:05:00.599 can you before we get into your w work with 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:04.680 ages and the other several publications that you had, can 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:07.200 you kind of paint a picture for us of what 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:11.840 the Atlanta trans community was like at that time. 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:15.000 Now, all my life, I'd been looking for the community 0:05:15.600 --> 0:05:18.279 and couldn't find it. I went to the Vanderbilt Gender 0:05:18.320 --> 0:05:22.719 Identity program in the late seventies, where they told me 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:26.119 I was not dysfunctional enough to be transsexual. In other words, 0:05:26.120 --> 0:05:29.560 I had a job, I had to college degrees, so 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:32.320 they weren't going to help me with transition. And I 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:36.160 went and read the literature at the adjacent medical library there, 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:39.560 which suggested they were right, and I realized they wrote 0:05:39.600 --> 0:05:42.479 it so they had this idea that if you weren't 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:47.360 entirely dysfunctional in the male role or female role vice versa, 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:51.520 then you weren't really trans And I had questioned myself 0:05:51.520 --> 0:05:53.680 about that, read the literature and decided they were full 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:56.560 of bull. And I put myself on hormones at age 0:05:56.600 --> 0:06:00.000 twenty nine, so by age thirty nine, I was quite feminized. 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:03.440 I got rid of my facial hair and moved to Atlanta, 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:07.760 and having looked for community, the only thing I identified 0:06:08.040 --> 0:06:10.479 was the Society for the Second Self, which was the 0:06:10.680 --> 0:06:15.080 organization founded by Virginia Prince and Carol b Croft for 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:18.279 heterosexual cross dressers. And I was not welcome as a member. 0:06:18.320 --> 0:06:21.159 And I knew that because they were upfront stating that 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:27.800 it was, and so the only identified community and people 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:31.159 even remotely like myself I could find didn't want me. 0:06:31.920 --> 0:06:34.080 But I finally sort of held my breath and joined 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:37.800 after ten years because my reasoning was they have to 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:40.400 know people like me. And sure enough, after a few months, 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:43.680 incomes a woman named Jessica Britton with a copy of 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:49.360 Transgender Tapestry then it was TVTS Tapestry, and there in 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:52.440 the back was a listing of support groups. I looked 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:56.320 through it avidly, and there was a transsexual support group 0:06:56.560 --> 0:07:01.120 in Atlanta called the Montgomery Medical and Psychological Institute, and 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:04.919 I call him every day for about two months before 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:07.440 someone picked up the phone. We ranged for an interview. 0:07:07.480 --> 0:07:10.360 I came down and they almost immediately drafted me to 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:13.960 run their group because both of the founders had health 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:17.040 issues and they liked my credentials. All I was looking 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:21.000 for was a little bit of just ability to be myself. 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:24.720 I wasn't looking to be an activist necessarily, but I 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:27.320 realized that all my training and all my skills really 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:32.120 were a good fit. So Jerry Lynn Montgomery wore couple. 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:37.800 Jerry was he died recently, was a transman. Lynn had 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:41.440 worked in the gender Identity Clinic, which was co run 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:45.280 by Emory University and Georgia Mental Health Institute. There was 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:47.840 a when I got to Atlanta, there was a physical 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:51.640 building about a half mile from the center of Emory 0:07:52.160 --> 0:07:56.240 and they were still doing gender reassignments there. I don't 0:07:56.240 --> 0:07:58.240 know if they didn't do the surgery because it was 0:07:58.240 --> 0:07:59.160 a big brew haha. 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:01.920 They still do not in this state. We still do 0:08:01.960 --> 0:08:05.840 not have any gender affirming surgeries. Well, which is crazy. 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:11.880 Back and must have been the seventies, they the Department 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:16.320 of Vocational Rehabilitation funded one or two surgeries and it 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:18.160 just the brown stuff hit the fan. 0:08:18.880 --> 0:08:23.680 Yeah, because you can see as you want by the way. 0:08:22.680 --> 0:08:26.080 Yeah, the ship hit the fan. Everyone was outraged. The 0:08:26.120 --> 0:08:31.760 governor was deluged with letters, but the clinic was still open. 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:36.240 They were not surgical. I learned there were surgeries done 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:41.280 because immediately after my genital surgery, I went to Michael 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:44.920 Seegers and Brussels and he told me that there's a 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:47.840 chance that I would start that I would start having 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:51.760 difficulty urinating after a couple of months because the scar 0:08:51.880 --> 0:08:55.000 tissue will form, and he says a simple dilation will 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:58.600 fix it. And it did. But the first place I 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:01.120 went was to a doc who other people had I 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:04.440 knew had seen, and he said his partners had sort 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:08.719 of forced him out into not treating transsexual people, so 0:09:08.840 --> 0:09:10.960 I couldn't see him. I went to another place and 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:14.000 they sort of ran around waving their hands in the 0:09:14.040 --> 0:09:16.440 air and decided they were going to put me under 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:21.040 into an exploratory procedure instead of fixing the problem. I 0:09:21.080 --> 0:09:23.400 remember being in the lobby. I don't usually cry, but 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:25.800 I don't remember being in the lobby crying, and I 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:29.640 decided again that this is bull. And the third place 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:33.480 I went was a surgeon called Stephen Morgenstern who had 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:36.680 an office on the North Side. He was known for 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:41.880 like penal enhancements at that time. But I went to him. 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:46.120 He fixed the problem immediately, and he told me that 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:49.720 he had done surgery back in the day, you know, 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:54.440 probably in the eighties. So I never found out, you know, 0:09:54.520 --> 0:09:56.800 exactly where he was based to do that, probably at 0:09:56.800 --> 0:09:59.640 Georgia Mental Health Institute, because they might have done some 0:09:59.720 --> 0:10:03.319 surger from people who were able to get it covered 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:07.120 under private insurance, which only rarely happened then, or had 0:10:07.120 --> 0:10:11.720 the money not nearly as expensive then as it is now, 0:10:11.720 --> 0:10:13.080 but it was still quite. 0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:17.120 Expensive, right, And I mean just hearing that whole history 0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:20.760 of you trying to even seek out that treatment here 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:25.080 in Georgia, it amazes me just because today not that 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:30.199 much has changed unfortunately here in Georgia. And I mean 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:32.960 even famously, I don't know if this was around the 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:38.520 same time, but famously Robert Eves, who died of ovarian cancer, 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:44.680 could not find any treatment in this state. Robert Eves 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:48.240 was a transsexual man from Tacoa, Georgia, who died trying 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:51.920 to find treatment for his advanced ovarian cancer. More than 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:55.359 twenty doctors turned him away, many because they were practicing 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:58.840 obgi ns and did not want to be associated with 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:01.840 treating a man such as him. You can watch the 0:11:01.880 --> 0:11:06.520 documentary Southern Comfort, following the last four seasons of Robert 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:10.000 Eves's life, for free on YouTube. It is an amazing 0:11:10.000 --> 0:11:12.240 film that I highly recommend, and a link will be 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:15.679 in today's episode description. If you want to know what 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:18.839 trans medical discrimination looks like, just a little bit of it, 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:21.480 and what life for trans people was like in the 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:26.760 South in the nineties, you must see the documentary Southern Comfort. 0:11:28.160 --> 0:11:31.040 I was running easiest at the time, I had compiled 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:34.080 a list of places to go for help for treatment 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:38.480 for support groups all over the country, and I knew 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:40.640 Robert from Southern Comfort. Why was one of the many 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:46.240 people who started that conference, and as was Robert. And 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:50.720 Robert called me one day and he wanted to referral 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:54.040 to a guynecologist. I gave him three names. One was 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:57.800 the guynecologists I saw after my surgery after I'd been 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:02.079 to Dr Morgenstern. The second had just done a HYS 0:12:02.120 --> 0:12:05.240 directory on another transman, and I forget the third. But 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:08.640 I don't know what happened that he couldn't get treatment 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:11.960 from someone, especially from the you know, although it could 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:15.840 have been people's partners freaking out and saying, you know, 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:17.480 we're not going to be appreciated with you if you 0:12:17.520 --> 0:12:20.880 do this again. But yeah, and then, and of course 0:12:21.040 --> 0:12:24.600 Robert developed ovarian cancer and died, and everyone loved him 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:28.720 at Southern Comfort. He was such a Southern, classic Southern gentleman. 0:12:28.800 --> 0:12:30.160 He was always so polite to me. 0:12:30.880 --> 0:12:34.440 I've watched the documentary Southern Comfort, and that is a 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:38.680 really awesome kind of glimpse into Southern trans life. 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:42.480 At the time, I had never been to clubs because 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:45.040 in Nashville they wouldn't let me in. Wow, you know, 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:46.680 because I had a male id. 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:48.079 Wow. Wow. 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:51.240 I think it was because they were afraid of the police. 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:55.840 Nashville had and still has a history of LGBT places 0:12:56.200 --> 0:12:57.520 mysteriously burning. 0:12:57.679 --> 0:12:58.000 Wow. 0:12:58.440 --> 0:13:01.120 So it was it was to me. So I had 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:03.440 no experience, So I got to go to the clubs 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:05.760 when I transitioned and came to Atlanta. There were some 0:13:06.320 --> 0:13:11.240 fabulous entertainment at the clubs. But aside from that, and 0:13:11.280 --> 0:13:13.800 there were a lot of trans women that were drag 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:17.360 queens at the time. There still are and I believe 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:21.120 in the last season of RuPaul's Drag Race four people 0:13:21.480 --> 0:13:23.960 yes with trans and the cast of about twelve. 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:24.280 Yep. 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:28.080 So the clubs had a scene. You know. There was 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:32.400 a nurse who used to go around doing silicon pumping 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:35.439 in the back rooms of bars and hotel rooms. 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:39.840 Yeah. Perhaps the most famous in all the South, hosted 0:13:39.960 --> 0:13:44.720 at Atlanta's very own Backstreet, Charlie Brown's Cabaret was the 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:48.640 pinnacle of drag entertainment. Most of the cast members were 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:52.280 sis came in. It even featured the Goddess Raven friend 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:55.640 of the pod Beyunknn called Bowser's drag Mother, but the 0:13:55.679 --> 0:13:59.480 cast also featured several trans women such as Seanna Brooks, 0:14:00.120 --> 0:14:04.360 mother of the House of Brooks, and Heather Daniels, Pam Anderson, 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:05.240 bombshell type. 0:14:06.040 --> 0:14:08.240 And I had some friends in that community. And then 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:11.719 there was the Montgomery Institute, and you know, they had 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:14.880 a monthly support group meeting which I said they drafted 0:14:14.880 --> 0:14:22.680 me to run and based upon sort of tapestries publishing. 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:26.040 Of all these other organizations, there was a pretty lively 0:14:26.440 --> 0:14:30.680 national scene of people doing zines, you know, little newsletters 0:14:30.720 --> 0:14:34.239 and little magazines, and there was a lot of discussion. 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:36.280 One of the things that was under discussion was why 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:39.480 do we call ourselves? Because we have these medical names. 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:43.680 You know. Anne Boleyn, an anthropologist I know, called them 0:14:43.760 --> 0:14:47.000 slave names or similar to slave names. You know. We've 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:52.760 even names like transsexual and transvestite, you know, and those 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:55.560 were not the names we chose for ourselves. You know, 0:14:55.640 --> 0:14:58.960 we were living with those names, but they weren't. So 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:01.520 what do we want to call our And I believe 0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:06.440 it was out of that discussion that the term transgender arose. 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:10.440 It was one of many terms tossed out. I remember 0:15:11.120 --> 0:15:17.520 Virginia Prince, who founded that, you know, homophobic, transphobic organization 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:21.800 back in the seventies. I guess it was she suggested 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:25.240 by genderist. She was always making up words, and someone 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:27.640 moved the hyphen to make it big enderous, and that 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:31.280 was sort of the end of that. About the time 0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:35.120 of the March on Washington, Philis Fry and a couple 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:37.520 of other activists were really up in the face of 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:41.400 the organizers, and suddenly all of the gay meteor were 0:15:41.400 --> 0:15:45.320 talking about transgender, which was functioning as an umbrella to 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:49.840 describe everybody under the term. Although it was not yet 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:52.480 an identity. It was a descriptor. If you were a 0:15:52.560 --> 0:15:54.600 drag queen, you could be under the umbrella, if you 0:15:54.640 --> 0:15:57.960 were a cross dresser, if you were transsexual, And of 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:00.760 course it quickly became an identity, and a lot of 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:04.560 people today who might have identified as either a cross 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:10.000 stress or transsexual or today identifying as trans or non binary. Right, 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:13.280 And in fact, those old labels are becoming antiquated. 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:16.320 Well, I want to talk more about that in just 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:19.000 a second, because they're actually coming back in a lot 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:21.560 of ways. But I want to back up here just 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:23.960 something that I've noticed, you know, like I said, eighties 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:28.640 and nineties. From what I've read, Atlanta had a lot 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:33.120 of conventions. It had a lot of publications, as you said, 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:35.960 zines and magazines and things like that. It had a 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:39.760 lot of transactivity going on compared to like, you know, say, 0:16:39.800 --> 0:16:42.680 the rest of the South. Why Atlanta? What was special 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:43.360 about Atlanta? 0:16:43.400 --> 0:16:46.200 You think, Well, I think for the same reason San 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:49.600 Francisco and New York or centers. It's a place where 0:16:49.640 --> 0:16:53.440 people can come from their rural towns. It's sort of amazing. 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:56.560 On RuPaul's drag Race, I'm married to someone who's infatuated 0:16:56.600 --> 0:16:57.640 with RuPaul's drag Race. 0:16:57.680 --> 0:17:01.240 Really, I'm friends with somebody who one season seven, so 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:03.520 you can tell her that, well, we. 0:17:03.800 --> 0:17:08.399 Want drag Race Sweden, and drag Race Belgium, and Dragwace Spain. 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:10.440 I love Aspanya, that's my favorite one. 0:17:10.640 --> 0:17:13.399 She's a virtuoso with a VPN. So we lug in 0:17:15.440 --> 0:17:17.479 so that that scene was going on. You know, there 0:17:17.520 --> 0:17:20.199 was the Sweet Gumhead, which was famous. It it just closed, 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:23.880 I believe before I came RuPaul worked in the clubs 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:25.680 before he became famous. 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:27.800 Back up for a second about the Sweet Gum Club, 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:29.720 because there's a book actually about. 0:17:29.680 --> 0:17:30.800 I just bought that book. 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:32.359 It's a fantastic book. 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:34.000 I may have learned about it from you. 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:38.119 In fact, Oh wow, tell me about Sweet Gum a 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:38.960 little bit about it? 0:17:39.080 --> 0:17:42.359 Well, no, I did. I never went because close there 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:45.960 was a place called, at various times Lipsticks and Levitas, 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:49.000 next to the Terra Theater, and they had some fabulous 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:50.840 shows there. Or they did, like the Phantom of the 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:53.040 Opera that I might as well have been on Broadway, 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:56.639 it was that good. Yeah, they had pageants, so I 0:17:56.640 --> 0:17:59.520 would go to the pageants sometimes and be there five 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:02.080 in the morning while I was working my full time 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:06.800 job and running the Montgomery group. But except for that scene, 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:09.400 and of course you know, I'm liking on the name 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:10.760 of the punk singer. 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:12.240 That Jane County. 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:17.000 Jane County, Yes, I'm sorry, I'm seventy three. That happened sometimes, 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:17.640 no worries. 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:22.399 Jane County is a living legend from Dallas, Georgia, and 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:25.160 the first trans woman to front a punk rock band. 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:27.399 She was one of the trans women present at the 0:18:27.440 --> 0:18:29.919 Stonewall Riots of nineteen sixty nine. 0:18:35.640 --> 0:18:38.400 You know, and Rue Paul was waiting in the clubs, 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:40.679 waited on some friends of mine, you know, before he 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:43.600 became famous. But except for that, it was just the 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:49.040 Montgomery Institute and there was a gay center, and Lynn 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:52.920 and Jerry had been working with the center to educate 0:18:53.240 --> 0:18:56.919 the lgb people, and b was at that time recently 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:01.000 tacked on, so it was fairly new, and the tea 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:06.679 wasn't yet associated. It was not LGBT in any measure 0:19:06.720 --> 0:19:09.200 at that time, because even the tea word was not there. 0:19:10.200 --> 0:19:12.359 And that was sort of it for the scene. But 0:19:13.359 --> 0:19:16.760 Sabrina Marcus was a trans woman from Florida, and she 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:20.600 went to the headquarters of the International Foundation for Gender Education, 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:23.560 which published Tapestry, and said, you know, there are these 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:26.760 conventions in other places around the US. Why isn't there 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:31.080 one in the South? Once, do one in Atlanta. It 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:34.080 seems like a central location. That's another thing about Atlanta. 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:37.320 It's a day's drive from the majority of the population 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:42.199 of the United States. And if to E said, no, 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:45.000 we won't put one on, but we'll show you how 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:46.720 to do it, if you'll just get a bunch of 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:50.119 people together. So using the resource list and I have 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:54.680 to E had something called the Congress of Organizations, and 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:58.880 you know, everyone was sort of at their conferences. Congress 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:01.640 would meet and people will would meet one another and talk, 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:04.399 and we were talking in all the newsletters, which is 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:07.760 a slow way to go. Article comes out, you write 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:10.040 it in two months later you see it your letter 0:20:10.119 --> 0:20:14.320 in the letter's column. But all of the organizations in 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:19.399 the South met in Atlanta at Piedmont Boulevard. It was 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:21.520 then a Lakina. I don't know what it is now. 0:20:21.920 --> 0:20:27.399 Hotels have a habit of changing through three years. And 0:20:27.760 --> 0:20:29.280 we met and we said, well, what are we going 0:20:29.320 --> 0:20:33.280 to call this conference? You know, what's the what's the function? 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:34.560 What are we going to do? And out of that 0:20:34.600 --> 0:20:40.320 came Southern Comfort and that was just such impetus. Also 0:20:40.400 --> 0:20:44.119 at the time, the groups, a lot of the groups 0:20:44.160 --> 0:20:46.560 in Southern Comfort would kind of I'm sorry, a lot 0:20:46.600 --> 0:20:49.359 of the groups in Trias a society for the second self, 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:52.760 the heterosexual cross dresser group, we'd go wild and just 0:20:52.840 --> 0:20:56.040 let anybody go and anybody participate who wanted. So they 0:20:56.040 --> 0:21:00.119 were having like weekend long mini conferences every week, and 0:21:00.160 --> 0:21:02.920 every trans person in town would sort of show up. 0:21:03.720 --> 0:21:06.320 It didn't cost any money, and you know, people would 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:08.119 go shopping and they would go out to eat and 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:10.960 sit around and shoot the bull and play music, So 0:21:11.960 --> 0:21:14.199 Southern Comfort was a huge drive. I think we had 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:17.400 one hundred and fifty people maybe the first year, and 0:21:17.560 --> 0:21:19.399 you know, they were up to nine hundred at the 0:21:19.400 --> 0:21:25.280 peak before it sort of imploded. And that just made 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:27.879 for synergy, you know, and I within a year I 0:21:27.920 --> 0:21:31.440 had split from Linen Jerry. They were very old school 0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:36.399 about transsexualism. You know, our girls have a birthday fact 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:40.679 and we fix them and then they're normal, and I 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:42.679 was that was not where I was coming from. I 0:21:42.800 --> 0:21:45.880 was first I wanted to be inclusive. I didn't want 0:21:45.920 --> 0:21:48.080 anyone to be cut out, and I got a lot 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:51.320 of sniping from the lines when I was running the group, 0:21:51.960 --> 0:21:54.679 So and so is not really a transsexual, They're just 0:21:54.680 --> 0:21:57.080 a cross dresser. And then someone else will say so 0:21:57.119 --> 0:21:59.400 and so is just really a drag queen, And I'm like, 0:21:59.720 --> 0:22:02.480 any one, you know that once treatment should be able 0:22:02.520 --> 0:22:05.080 to get it, and there's no reason to not have 0:22:05.160 --> 0:22:07.600 an open group. And open groups were sort of rare 0:22:07.680 --> 0:22:11.040 at the time, but so for about a year or two, 0:22:11.640 --> 0:22:15.760 the Triass group function as an open group, and Montgomery's 0:22:16.040 --> 0:22:21.840 weren't an open group. But eventually one of the founders 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:26.520 was sort of organic. She had chronic fatigue syndrome and 0:22:26.600 --> 0:22:31.200 was having some brain issues and she got very paranoid, 0:22:31.280 --> 0:22:33.719 and so I moved out. And I continued to go 0:22:33.760 --> 0:22:35.880 to their meetings until they told me I couldn't come 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:40.200 because I was a threat because I was writing. So 0:22:40.480 --> 0:22:44.640 I founded the Atlanta Gender Exploration Support Group, which ran 0:22:44.760 --> 0:22:48.320 until recently. It was an open group. And I founded 0:22:48.359 --> 0:22:53.679 the Atlanta Educational Gender Information Service when I chose that 0:22:53.760 --> 0:22:57.479 acronym because it could easily become America. And I launched 0:22:57.560 --> 0:23:01.160 Chrysalis Quarterly and it was It started is two sheets 0:23:01.200 --> 0:23:04.399 of paper, one for Chrystalis and one for AGIS, and 0:23:04.480 --> 0:23:07.720 I launched it, and a woman called a trans woman 0:23:07.760 --> 0:23:11.080 called Margot Schaeffer sort of did a design for us. 0:23:11.119 --> 0:23:14.040 She gave us like a font and a look for 0:23:14.119 --> 0:23:16.919