For the Record

  Part One: The Mirror Cracked by Cathy Platine Once upon a time................. Ok, a few years ago, a gender dysphoric named Cathy (for yes, I already was calling myself that) screwed up her courage enough to call the local transgendered support group. This started my strange adventures with the gender "community". I had gotten the number from a phone call to IFGE whose number in turn I'd gotten from a TV talk show. That first contact took every single ounce of courage in me. I admitted to someone besides my spouse for the first time in my life that I was transgendered. After several calls I got my courage up to the point of asking about attending a meeting and was told I would have to be "screened" first. Screen consisted of my going to a local restaurant, alone, and meeting some of the member of the club while dressed as female. Now understand, never in my life had I gone anywhere dressed female that anyone could see me. I had v...

  Part Two: Not in Kansas anymore! by Cathy Platine January of 1997 found me awaiting "official" election as president of the Crystal Club and scheduled to do several talks on the subject of transsexuality.  Suddenly I wasn't just an individual anymore but a representative of the entire community.   That month I received a panicky phone call from Luanne.  It seems our former president was being investigated for mail fraud and that fraud involved the use of the club's post office box!   The FBI and treasury agents were demanding a list of the members of the club and the nature of the organization.  Without going into details, this was a nightmare of the first order for an organization made up of highly closeted individuals with very legitimate concerns about privacy. "MaryAnn" Horton,  a crossdresser founder of the club,  contacted the agents on behalf of the club and myself and carefully explained the nature of the org...

  Part Three: Off With Her Head! by Cathy Platine Spring of 1997 saw many many changes in my life.  Sarah Fox and I had started to become real players in the politics of gender thanks in part to our new exposure as out officers of the Crystal Club.  We both decided to go to Washington DC that year for GenderPAC's Lobby days.   This was something we both had hoped to interest others in the club in to no avail.   Because of the messages of the fear of our activism,  I started making sure that every issue, starting in March and continuing through most of the rest of the year, had a statement that the Crystal Club would remain a safe place where no one had to be more out or active than their own comfort level dictated.  This was a part of almost every single "Cathy's Corner" from that time on and in fact I had made the statement for the first time in the newsletter back in December of 1996!  Ironically, ever since then to th...

  The Transflakes and birth of NTAC by Cathryn Platine The Transflake list started life as a simple CC list.  The problem with lists like this is that everyone has to have the same list on their own mailer or some folks get cut out of part of the conversation.  From the beginning the main thrust of the communication was aimed at forming an independent lobbying effort from GenderPac and making sure HRC was unaware of the effort to stop them from pre-lobbying as they had done to every effort after the first Lobby Days organized by ICTLEP. (the transgender legal and employment project)  I proposed a strategy of a small, tight knit group doing the first lobby effort followed by a phony organization whose dummy communications kept Riki and other suspects in the loop.  That organization would never show up after provoking a pre-lobby effort by HRC.  This would be followed by another shell organization doing the same thing.  Then we would do t...

  Part five: NTAC, the Messy Birth of a Organization by Cathryn Platine Life is a learning experience and I've learned much since the events that birthed NTAC.  As the defacto facilitator of the new NTRC group I made a lot of mistakes that led to NTAC being formed the way it was.  We had it within our grasp to make the first grassroots national consensus group but my failure to correct the position I was handed undermined that.  Dawn Wilson and JoAnn Roberts had been determined to form a hierarchical group and so declared a "steering committee", the first step to forming a board.  If I had known then what I know now , I would have scraped that whole idea entirely, announced the consensus the Transflakes had already reached and proceeded to build consensus from that point forward. What happened was this, voice after voice chimed in that a consensus group was a good idea, but by asking who wanted to join the steering committee, I directed the org...

  Part Six: The Board Wars by Cathryn Platine So why did I re-involve myself in NTAC?  Two words, Aurora Lipscomb.  I was still reading many of the political email lists, although not participating and was no longer active in the Ohio political arena as well.  "Mary Ann" Horton posted about a case where supportive parents of a gender variant child were just ordered to turn the child over to Franklin County (Ohio) Children's Services and had arranged to do so at a local television station.  "Mary Ann" was trying to organize a demonstration at the station protesting while the event was taking place.  I decided to go and find out what exactly was going on. When I arrived, I found very few "protesters" and in fact was told that the idea had been scrapped at the last minute.  I saw a terrified young girl being manhandled by burly males from Children's services, lots of confusion, a distraught mother, indignant father and a transsexual a...