A ROVING REPORT

Our very own Diane S. Frank brings us words of insight, acknowledgement, and wonderment.

Ok, we've got some catching up to do.

First of all, we need to acknowledge our February meeting speaker from "The Gathering Place". Her presentation struck a lot of notes with our members in part because of the series of unfortunate events in our lives. The approach "The Gathering Place" takes with cancer patients and the people in their lives, the people affected by cancer is a model for support. They meet people where they are and walk with them where they need to go. I thought that this was very much what we hope to do at Alpha Omega. But a little voice might ask, "well, Alpha Omega isn't for everyone...so how can you seriously talk about meeting people where they are?". My response is that just like the Gathering Place is about cancer support and not heart disease support or diabetes support, we are focused on our particular area, supporting people affected by heterosexual crossdressing. But we can and do still meet people where they are and don't tell them where they are supposed to go. We offer ears and experience, not mouths and doctrines.

Then we need to acknowledge our speaker for February. We had a fascinating presentation about the how gender ideas in art affect the work and what it reflects back on society. We do have a copy of the power-point presentation and I have cleaned up the sound so that I could put together a full AV version on our website. The problem of course is that the material is for mature and discerning audiences. While I would hope that no one would see the images as prurient in intent, some were certainly intended to shock. I haven't heard any complaints from any one about the presentation contents, so what I think I'll do is, when I get a moment's free time and synch the sound into the presentation is make a password protected file on our website. Thus anyone who wants to see would have to register and have fair warning about contents.

I'm also happy to say that overall reaction to our new location has been positive. What I do think we need to do is arrange to have some curtains that block the noise coming down from the people doing things upstairs. The stairwell seems to reflect sound right down into our meeting. Here's an opportunity for people with building or sewing or just plain purchasing skills to make a contribution.

On another topic, I've recently come across a web link from a very articulate female-to-male transsexual. Why this is of interest is the discussion of sexuality and the existence of female-to-male crossdressers who find the practice arousing. We've been told for years that this sort of thing only happens with boys, so to see this is rather liberating. The site and the particular article isn't a PG site. I don't think I'll be listing it as a resource on our website without a consensus from some other officers and members, even though I think the ideas are important. I'll be happy to pass along the site to any who request it.

My last notes are about the film "Call Me Malcolm" that showed at the Cleveland International Film Festival last month. The film, which came in second for best film, is about a Female to Male transsexual and a journey of discovery. The film had several virtues compared to many films of this genre. First of all, there are no childhood pictures of Malcolm as a girl. Second, it shows Macomb exploring other people's stories besides his own. Malcolm, his wife, Calpernia Adams ("Soldier's Girl") and the film makers were in attendence. Z and I got to meet Calpernia, and Z was quite impressed with her. Some of the scenes with Calpernia were shot in Malibu California, and it was funny to think that we were just out there a few weeks ago...we'd taken a drive up the coast and stopped in a lovely little Greek Restaurant probably not too far from those beach scenes.

What surprised me, although after all these years I guess I shouldn't be, was that except for two people, there were no other representatives of this community there. There were plenty of people from the United Church of Christ, of which Malcolm is an ordained minister, and from the leadership of the GLBT center. I guess that meant that Calpernia wasn't mobbed. I found it touching that Calpernia, as the mostly rejected offspring of a devout family found another path to faith through meeting Malcolm.

I told them all that I hope we could see in twenty years a follow up film that showed transition not as the climax of a story, but the beginning. I'd like to think that stories that showed transition in the context of a full life, rather than as a celebrated goal in itself would be helpful to people in sorting out whether this was really something they wanted to do.