TransGriot Note: Longtime transphobe Jim Fouratt has been trying to spin his divisive image in New York City and gay history recently by appearing on a 2009 episode of the Colbert Report. But Colbert or the writers trying to sanitize this image didn't ask him about this. We folks with long memories in the trans community won't forget this transphobic email. It was his response to the NY Times magazine article entitled 'An Inconvenient Woman'.
It's as Dr Lynn Conway wrote about later, a classic example of the transphobia that runs rampant in the gay men from that time period.
<<Forwarded Message:
Subj: ALERT: New York Times promotes sexual reasigment (sic) as a solution to gender varinace (sic)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000528mag-calpernia.html
Date: Saturday, May 27, 2000 2:58:21 PM
From: JimFour@aol.com
I am shocked to hear a member of the Imperial Court endorsing this blatantly homophobic article written by a gayman. Yes, this is a tragic story. Murdered because he was perceived to be gay, Barry Winchell deserves all our grief and anger. As do his loved ones including a gender variant gayman self named Calpernia Sarah Addams, a professional gender illusionist.
All around us we see these attacks on gaymen who do not conform to some kind of Tom of Finland or Andrew Sullivan image, What is new is we now see gay academics and pop journalists embracing this new push to make gaymen and lesbians straight by leading them to endure painful physical body manipulation and dangerous hormonal injects to take on the topography of the conventional definition of what is male and what is female. Modern medicine is once again trying to cure us of our desire for same sex love.
Our gender variant gay and lesbian population is under intense pressure to deny their homosexuality and to take all physical, hormonal and emotional steps in order to be accepted into heterosexual society.
First we had Boys Don't Cry which told the horrific story of a 19 year old baby butch lesbian who was first raped and than murdered because she had the audacity to role play and act on her desire to love and have sex with women. In death Brandon Teen became the poster girl of the reparative therapy movement (aka transgendered) for adult gender variant gaymen and women and in this guise was deemed acceptable frirst to Hollywood and than to a larger straight audience.
We are familuar with the smarmy tabloid journalism of gaywriter David France. Who could forget his bizarre book on Andrew Crispo? But does the New York Times need to sink to the level of the National Inquirer doing a Talk-ish sex/celebrity/death feature? I would hope not.
The Barry Winchell story needs to be told. How homophobia both external and more importantly internally puts at risk most homosexuals and lesbains and all gender variant individuals, How the rush to gender reassign through the wonders of modern medicine has ultimately failed ... where in the sensational picture of a professional skin strutter was there any reference to the 30 year John Hopkins study of sexual reassignment and how ultimately it did not improve the self image or well being of the subjects in their program. The results of this study caused John Hopkins to cease sexual reassignment as a solution to gender dysfunction. Or where is the information on how most transsexuals who are not closeted have very few job options other than in the adult entertainment and/or sex industry...Wendy Carlos and Dr. Renee Richard's are the exceptions.
The Imperial Court can be a powerful voice in confronting the solutions that are now being promoted by mainstream publications like the New Times and by the toxic, anti-gay/lesbian "queer" academics. Neither group is a friend of the Cherry Grove and/or Court community, Why can't Calpernia Sarah Addams dress, act and be himself as a gaymen, The Court sets a powerful role model of how to be who ever you want to be and to be true to your gay male identity. After all, this construction of 'women" is totally informed by gaymale sensibility and has little in reality to do with the essence of being female.
Speak up. Help those gender variant gaymen and women who are under siege to save their pennies to mutilate their bodies to gain acceptance into the heterosexual society.
Would be most interesting in hearing each of your response to this increasingly serious attack on who we are and how we live.
Jim Fouratt >>
