Adventures In Genderland: Part Seven
Part 7: Mad Transie Disease?
by Cathryn Platine
The board of NTAC was very anxious to be rid of connections to an open political list so, at their request, Sarah Fox, who was still the list owner, changed the name of the NTAC list to TPolitics in November. Dawn had resigned as Chair of NTAC, Yo Lewis was the new Chair. What followed for the next several months led me to jokingly ask if the US estrogen supply had been tainted with Mad Cow Disease. (I had over a years worth already laid up)
Yosenio Lewis started off by first killing my resignation from the Board post from the NTAC-members list, then throwing me off the list completely. The NTAC list was still owed by Sarah and I was still a moderator, so my resignation post made it there, apparently Yosenio was furious it did wishing me gone without anyone noticing. It should be noted as well that Yosenio was also on the board of NGLTF and thus was serving two masters. It took two weeks of complaints that I had more than paid my membership dues and therefore leaving the NTAC-members list should be at my choice, not theirs, before I was put back on. Around this same time, Sarah agreed at the request of the NTAC board to rename the NTAC list to TPolitics, two days later she went "no mail" on the list leaving me as the list moderator. NTAC was officially out of the open list business, their members list being completely moderated and censored. Yosenio and Chris personally killed almost every post I made to the members list after that. The new TPolitics list still had all the archives from the name change from NTRC to NTAC on and now carried an advertisement at the end of each post for joining NTAC while disclaiming NTAC connections to the renamed list.
On December 7'th, Dawn officially resigned from NTAC completely (so she said) and the TPolitics postings now had a new trailing message denouncing all connections between the list and NTAC. Two days later Sarah turned over the ownership of TPolitics to me. Several people were critical of her farewell posting and I posted a reply which was the first time I was critical of the new "leadership" and direction of NTAC and it's new, overlapping board with NGLTF. Dawn immediately asked to be removed from the list. From this point on, anything I wrote critical of NTAC, Dawn took as a personal affront even when I clearly defended her personally in many of those same posts and she, herself, had declare that she had severed all ties with NTAC! Personal emails to both her and Anne Casebeer that I considered them friends were either ignored by Dawn or replied to with insults from her. From this point on, she basically declared war on me to my surprise and hurt. Despite this, I refused to say anything negative about her anywhere not wishing to burn those bridges.
That year I had met Marina Brown and Laura Potter in person during our public First Church of the Goddess celebrations at the Serpent Mound in southern Ohio. Our growing friendship changed much of the direction of my life.
For several years I had tried to limit my involvement with trans-activism to concentrate on the three, overlapping, dreams that I felt were my true vocation. The formation of transsexual reclaiming religion, writing on our historical role in the ancient world and building a prototype transsexual housing collective. I became re-involved in politics several times due to Sarah Fox's, Dawn Wilson's and Anne Casebeers' prodding, always to my dismay. The church had been formed and was growing and was now recognized by the State of Ohio, the research I had been doing for a book on true trans-history and the housing collective was still on my mind. Laura and Marina shared this vision with me. My involvement with trans-activism was now limited to running the TPolitics list and posting my thoughts on various issues occasionally. Apparently my ideas were still too damn dangerous for those who had highjacked NTAC. The sole reasons I kept the TPolitics list open was my belief that an uncensored forum for the exchange of ideas was a good thing and to preserve the archives from the birth of NTAC for historical reasons since many NTACers were already very busy indeed trying to revise that history. The censorship of the NTAC-members list was becoming increasingly heavy handed while being denied at the same time. Yosenio was determined to make NTAC a "tame" organization and purge all radical elements and may have been under heavy pressure from NGLTF to do so. What followed in the in next several months defies all reason. After they started to unfold, I wrote to an individual on the TPolitics list that ".transie leaders left and right are acting...........well, in a manner not consistent with getting a surgery letter, let's leave it at that."
Up to this time, all these lists were a part of Onelist. Yahoo was gobbling up every one of these listserves in sight and Onelist was about to merge with Yahoo. Around this same time, in an attempt to disrupt TPolitics, Vanessa Foster flooded the list with more than forty "jokes" in rapid sequence. Rather than remove her from the list, I changed her setting to no-post. As you might have noticed from earlier in this account, Vanessa was the source of many of the original "flames" at the formation of NTAC, not myself. She had just claimed that I wasn't present at the Bethesda roundtable that led to the formation of the Transflakes and then NTAC. She was also the now the co-Chair of NTAC! Almost every other list I'd ever been on would have banned her instantly for what she had just done, I didn't want to cut her off, just stop the disruptive behaviour and intended to re-instate her ability to post after she cooled off some. Instead she reacted with a massive attack of personal emails. She then followed this up with setting up a new list, NTAC, on yahoo upon the merger to which she subscribed most of the TPolitics members without asking. I received numerous private inquires about whether or not TPolitics had been renamed NTAC again, which is how I learned of the new list. What still puzzles me to this day is why, when NTAC was so desperate to be shut of an open list and had been for more than six months, was she allowed to do this by the rest of the board? Part of the answer might be that Yosenio posted the very first message to that list and the "radical" elements from TPolitics were the only ones not included in the takeover. My complaints to the NTAC board members went unanswered. My copy of my complaint to the NTAC-members list was censored. My complaint to the moderator of record for the new supposedly uncensored (lightly moderated was the term given), list, Lori Stone, resulting in an accusation of threatening her. I later learned that someone (Vanessa? She was acting totally irrational at this point) had privately written her and implied to her I was attempting to get her address to come and "get" her! This was totally untrue.
"Lightly moderated" turned out to mean that when I was finally allowed to join, I was the only member whose posts were on moderation! None of my complaints about this new list and the wholesale poaching of my own list were to be allowed to see the light of day on that list. As list moderator, Lori Stone had been made so afraid of me by the lies of others that she would not allow me to privately email her without cc'ing every word to most of the NTAC board! What was it that made me so dangerous? My complaints about NTAC abandoning it's mission as a grassroots organization. For this, NTAC had declared war on me, not the other way around. None of the board members ever responded to my complaints about Vanessa, who continued to bombard me with personal, nasty, private emails. The new "official" line was that I had been the one who started the "flame wars" at NTACs birth and had continued to "flame" everyone in sight throughout my membership. Only the archives of TPolitics which were available to anyone who cared to join the list to show otherwise.
Dawn stepped up her public shots at me, personally. I continued to write Anne Casebeer privately asking "why?" and not responding in kind publicly. Several folks started a campaign, out of a sense of fairness, to have me re-instated to the NTAC board since I had been removed illegally in hopes of, in that manner, reclaiming some of the original goals of NTAC. I, reluctantly, agreed. To no one's surprise, when it was put to a board vote, I was declared out for good.
The censorship of NTAC-members list and now NTAC (the highjacked list) was extending to beyond just me. Marina, Chelsea Goodwin and Laura Potter all found themselves occasionally censored as well. Chelsea was even a board member! They began a campaign to reform NTAC's policies to allow free speech on their lists, TPolitics being the only uncensored forum now and folks forced to post there to answer NTAC and NTAC-members posts by those who espoused the "party line". I tried to stay out of it as much as possible, but I was still the principle target of much of the ire of the NTAC elite, the others viewed as my minions. Dawn Wilson, Vanessa, and now new board member, Roslyn Manley continued to attack me frequently. The new moderation policy was hammered out and put in place awaiting confirmation at the next Board meeting only to be totally ignored on the NTAC-members list, which was set to full moderation, leading Laura Potter to resign as moderator of that list in protest initially. I occasionally answered these charges with general purpose posts, such as my Defense of Anger, that post led to Dawn starting a phone and email campaign labeling me her enemy. Then she attempted suicide. All this happened at the same time that the NTAC Board voted me out, only three folks voted for me. I resigned all membership in NTAC and took myself off the NTAC-members list. Diana Dale, JoAnn Robert's crossdresser partner in the TG Fund, now also joined in the personal attacks on me, but only on the NTAC-members list so I would not see them.
I contributed only general opinions and responses to other's posts on TPolitics for the next month and a half and almost nothing at all on the new NTAC list other than a request to leave Sarah Fox alone when her name was mentioned, at her request. The general insanity on that list continued. Ros Manley apparently tried to drive out several other board members, including Monica Roberts. Then on the 4'th of April Sarah and I got a strange email from Dawn Wilson that made zero sense to either of us about folks we didn't know. General mass madness was about to erupt within days. Vanessa apparently started flaming Chelsea, who then filed a complaint under the moderation guidelines so hard won. Vanessa immediately claimed to have gotten a virus (she has a real pattern of "computer problems" just when she's about to melt down, you figure it out)
I got yet another strange email from Dawn to which I politely wrote back that I was out of politics and not interested. Ros Manley then filed a motion to have Marina removed as list moderator and Chelsea removed from the board because they dared disagree with her and others on issues! The "Executive" board announced they were suspending the upcoming board elections. Chelsea then forwarded me a JoAnn Roberts post from NTAC-members once again threatening NTAC, just as she had done immediately preceding my removal from the board. Just a month and a half before Roberts was refusing to turn over the ownership of the NTAC domain to NTAC webmaster Jerry McCracken as she had agreed to do so when she first registered it! Faced with a copy of that original post I forwarded to Jerry, she relented. Feeling that Chelsea and Marina were basically being attacked for having defended me and appalled at the latest antics of NTAC I wrote two responses to the madness on TPolitics. The first about Robert's history with NTAC, the second on NTAC in general. In the second I used the phrase "classist bastards" referring to the current leadership. Someone forwarded that one to Dawn with the title, "This means you". Now only a total idiot would have read that posting as referring to Dawn, especially given that she supposedly wasn't even a member of NTAC, nor had been for many months!
The next day Chelsea Goodwin and I received an email from Dawn's brother. It was insulting, it was nasty and it contained what I, and others, felt were death threats. I asked for an immediate apology and instead got further insults directly from Dawn. This was the last straw, for almost six months I had not only turned the other cheek at Dawn's attacks, but had actually defended her. I wrote Anne and told her to pass on to Dawn that if she was NTAC, a state of war now existed between NTAC and myself and that in the future I would no longer refrain from answering further personal attacks on myself. Around this same time Dawn sent a letter to Marina Brown's employer outing her and threatening a lawsuit naming NTAC as a wronged party as well as herself. Once again, the cowardly board of NTAC action was a shutting down of all internal communications! Anne then posted a list of "rules" for posting on NTAC-members that forbade the use of the words "democracy", "elitism", "free speech", and "censorship" at pain of instant removal from NTAC membership. Chris Stenson told a young trans-activist I knew personally that if she didn't like censorship, don't join NTAC. That young activist's partner was about to donate $1000.00 to NTAC.
Both Chelsea and myself took the death threats very seriously. I took steps to gather all the information on the insanity of various NTACers and Wilson in particular and place them where they would come to light if I had an "accident". I made news of this action public. I had several reasons for taking the death threat seriously. Dawn Wilson had once pulled a loaded gun on another trans-activist living under the same roof and, on another occasion, assaulted someone else with a bowie knife. Both of these accounts I had learned of first hand from the victims. Wallace Wilson, her brother, had been discharged from the service for, among other things, "marked psychiatric impairment" and had a work history of violent "outbursts" at his bosses. This is verified by public records. The Wallace Wilson threatening message came from Anne Casebeer's computer as verified by the headers and later confirmed by Anne herself. Once again I tried to withdraw from activism as much as possible only to have Wilson attack over and over. Wilson is like a pitbull and having made someone an enemy, never lets up. Her bullying tactics and violent outbursts are legendary in the gender community and especially with the board of "Southern Comfort", again confirmed by direct communication with the source. She told several of my friends at the time (during a NTAC board meeting at a convention) that she was going to sue me and take my pathetic trailer and leave me homeless. This is the sort of person the "transgender" community gives a Trinity Award to!
I made a trip out to New York to visit Marina and Laura and look for a possible site for a transie trailer park, the third part of my dream. I continued my work researching historical roots of the transsexual priestess of the ancient world. I devoted more time to my church. On June 19'th, despite the fact that I had been set to no mail on the NTAC list, I was banned from that list. I finally decided to expel the NTAC board members from the now renamed TSPolitics list which had a set of guidelines for membership. They had been using my list as a springboard for further attacks on myself and enough was enough. Around this same time I started getting "magazine bombed", that is someone was subscribing me to magazine after magazine as a form of harassment. When I requested the original cards (it had all been done with "blowin" cards), I found they all were postmarked from Louisville, Ky. and the handwriting was, to my eyes, identical to the handwriting on the letter and envelope from Dawn Wilson sent to Marina's employer. This magazine bombing never let up and continues to this day and the recent group of "blowin" cards returned to me all also have Louisville, Kentucky postmarks and are in the same handwriting.
In July of 2001 I once again suffered a major back injury, this time on the job. This time I was unable to bounce back and am now permanently disabled. Deciding to make lemonade, I once again took a trip to New York to visit Laura and Marina and look for a place to start a transsexual housing co-operative. This time we found a delightful old Inn that had been vacant for some time. We contacted the realtor and began negotiations to purchase. In January of 2002, I moved to New York and we began Gallae Central House, named after the transsexual priestess of Cybele. Never again shall I involve myself in trans-politics other than an occasional opinion piece. The NTACers never let up, now calling me an elitist, transsexual separatist bitch and in the spring of 2002, Wilson and a couple of others filed a false Terms of Service complaint that killed all my email forwarding, the personal webpages I'd had on Geocities since 96, and all the yahoo groups, including TSPolitics with all the public archives from the early days of NTAC on that I had owned. Dawn has openly bragged about her involvement in this. At this same time, the magazine bombing stepped up to a level almost beyond comprehension. I recently learned that Sue Davis was also magazine bombed up until she moved from Ohio and her address is now only available to her friends. NTAC has just, once more, had a mass set of resignations from their board. Some things will never change.
Throughout most of my political experiences my basic message never changed. The truth of my experiences with the level of insanity, self-hatred and pure stupidity of the average trans-activist has been reconfirmed as standard operating procedure with each time I see some poor transsexual woman try to interact with this crowd. In the name of "transgender inclusion" they ruthlessly attack and drive out any transsexual woman foolish enough to point out transsexual needs are different. When I started this journey many years ago, I discovered that non-transsexual transgenders only gave lipservice to the womanhood of transsexual women, now even this lipservice has changed to out and out denial of it by many non-transsexual transgenders who openly attack transsexual women for their identity in their weird and warped notion of "unity".
Finally, I am devoting my life to where I can make a real difference. Our home is a spiritual retreat, a home for many more transsexuals than those who actually live here. The three dreams of my past are now interwoven. To those transsexual women tempted from a sense of rightness and fair play to get involved with the "transgender" civil rights movement I offer this advice, fight the temptation, they are crazy and have no sense of right or wrong. They do not know how to play nicely with others. I sincerely doubt they ever will. They will deny you three times before the cock crows.
This series has been somewhat
difficult for me to write since I had to delve deeply into these
personally painful events of my past in order to write fairly about
what happened. More than just a record, however, it is a
releasing of the hold of these events on me so I can get on with my
life and now continue to do the work that will make a difference.
Today I am a Battakes, a spiritual leader, to a growing number of
women, both transsexual and non-transsexual, reclaiming our heritage
as the daughters of Cybele. We have come to renew the Light.
In Defense of Anger
posted 2/10/2001 by Cathy Platine
There have been lots of noise about too much anger in the
transgendered
community and the need for NTAC to distance
itself from that anger.
Lets take a quick look at the facts:
This list and the internet gender community in general is composed
largely of middle and upper middle class transpeople, the
majority of
whom are not "out". The actual out
and active transsexuals are the
minority but are almost always
the most active in lobbying, vocal in
expressing opinions and
the nuts and bolts actions of organizing, yet
they are
frequently the first shoved to the back of the bus when the
groups
and movements they start become more "mainstream".
This is not
just a pattern of the gender or greater queer
community but of any
reform/revolutionary movement.
The breakneck speed with which NTAC attempted (and is still
attempting)
to distance itself from the "BigPayback"
report that gave it birth is an
excellent example of this.
Another excellent example is the choice NTAC
leadership and
membership made to pursue the Peter Oiler action and
largely
ignore the Amanda Milan protests. Peter Oiler is a crossdresser
who was fired when it was discovered he was a crossdresser.
Amanda
Milan a transwoman who stood up to those who would
degrade her and was
brutally murdered in front of laughing
witness. Gee, no brainer there.
Let's put the majority of
our energy with the worthy middle-class
crossdresser.
This illustrates the current problem with NTAC as clearly as
anything
can. Most lower class transsexuals experience
job discrimination and
are often fired from jobs or denied even
minimum wage work because they
are transsexual. No one
ever organizes national protests on their
behalf. I've
been fired twice myself when it was discovered I was
transsexual
and turned down for jobs that were so desperate for workers
that
they were offering thousands in sign on bonuses for warm bodies!
I've personally been banned from three difference nursing homes
when
co-workers discovered I was a transsexual woman. In
all three cases I
had gotten written confirmation of the
excellent quality of my work just
prior to the discovery and
banning. In one case, even told to my face
it was just
because a couple of my co-workers objected to working with a
"freak". The plight of the young inner city
transies is much much
worse. At least I have my paperwork
in order. The fact of the matter
is that middle-class
transies concerned with on the job transitions have
no clue
about what is faced by the majority of transies who aren't as
privileged. Those same middle class transies will trade
away their
dignity and allow themselves to be degraded into
using rest rooms 1/4
mile away from their work stations and
call that a compromise while a
street girl stands up for
herself and gets her throat cut.
The majority of transpeople are poor and un or underemployed.
They are
not working for national companies or have insurance
or even able to get
"legal" hormones. Many of
them are sex workers. These are our
kids.....*OUR* kids
because we all know how families can throw away
transies.
The issues of burning importance to these kids are ones like
the
fact that they are routinely turned away from shelters that have no
idea how to deal with a transperson. They are turned away
from rape
crisis centers when they are raped because "they
aren't really women".
They are often even turned away from
drug and substance abuse programs
because "their gender
issues detract from the others". I've never even
seen
any of this addressed by NTAC. I doubt I ever will for these
are
lower class transie issues.
NTAC forgot those street kids if it ever had them in mind to begin
with. NTAC forgot it's principles and censored it's own
membership
rather than listen to honest dissent and yet still
calls itself
grassroots. NTAC doesn't hold it's
leadership accountable for totally
inappropriate actions and
yet bows to outside pressure to purge itself
of the more
radical voices in it's midst.
I have been the center of a lot of controversy in NTAC. The
simple fact
most manage to avoid seeing is that while I do
write with a lot of
emotional loading, I strive to avoid ever
attacking an individual. I am
passionate debating
positions and actions but in the end responses to me
inevitably
boils down to a character assassination because they cannot
refute
my positions. This has been my experience with the community
for
years now and frankly, I no longer have the stomach for
it. I've tried
in person to make jokes about this and
sometimes even introduce myself
as the "evilest transie in
Ohio". Recently several have tried to extent
this to
a national title. Considering the price I've paid over the
years in being cut off from community, outed on my jobs by
supposed
sisters and having even my sanity debated, I am no
longer willing to put
up with this. The fact that rarely
have I been proven wrong in my
positions in hindsight never
made any difference and I have no reason to
believe that will
change now either.
Those of you who wanted me silenced here in NTAC win. The
fact is, I no
longer believe there is anything left of
principles and values in NTAC
worth debating anymore. I
consider all the work and energy devoted here
a massive waste,
my only remaining hopes that some in NTAC will rise
above what
it's become and will graduate to become real radicals instead
of
begging alliances of those who don't want them and never did.
I still have to fight for my own basic civil and employment rights
on an
ongoing almost daily basis, judging from what I've seen
here recently I
always will. I am not willing to expend
any more of my precious time or
energy to those not willing to
do the same. I know who my sisters and
brothers are.
They are the Amanda Milans out there.
This transie trailer trash and professional butt wiper bids you
ado,
wish I could say it's been fun, but you all have left me
in tears too
many times to ever claim that.
Robert's post to NTAC-members 4-8-01
NTAC has the worst reputation of any tg organization extant
and it is
because of the flame wars that go public on this
list. The leadership of
the other tg organizations think we're
a bunch of nuts and loose cannons.
It does not take a rocket
scientist to understand why NTAC does not have
broad-based
support in the community.
The future of NTAC lies in its ability to raise money to do the
lobbying
work needed to help our community. The source of that
money has got to be
the larger community and not simply one or
two people with deep pockets.
NTAC will never attract the money
it needs if we continue to scare off the
rest of the community.
There is an adage in marketing. If someone says something nice
about you,
they'll tell four other people. If they say
something bad, they'll tell
ten. Everytime we take our
squabbles public, we alienate ten more people.
The BS on this
list has done more damage to NTAC's reputation than you can
possibly
imagine.
My patience has worn thin and I am tired of making excuses for
NTAC to my
peers. The next outburst of BS on this list will
cause me to withdraw my
support which means you will have to
find another host for the NTAC web
site and you can expect any
monies from the TGFund to dry up.
It is never a good idea to piss off a person who has an open purse
or one
who owns a printing press. It's a fucking disaster to
piss of someone who
has both. Get my drift?
"Queen" Roberts, a History Lesson
Thus spake Roberts:
>It is never a good idea to
piss off a person who has an open purse or one
>who owns a
printing press. It's a fucking disaster to piss of someone who
>has
both. Get my drift?
In the early days of the formation of NTAC, JoAnn Roberts
attempted to
"appoint" the future leadership of the
organization. Several of the
original Transflakes (that
group that did the actual nuts and bolts work
that led to NTAC)
spoke up and demanded that the newbee organization not
be the
same old tired "leaders" but a true grassroots
organization.
Since that time several (most) of us have been
targeted and "encouraged"
to leave, myself included.
Robert's role in that has been, while
largely behind the
scenes, very real none the less. Robert's demand to
"clean
up the debates or lose funding already promised" back in October
of last year was instrumental in my removal from the board and
the
immediate institution of totalitarian censorship of all
NTAC
communications. Now there has been debate on the
members list and a new
and much more open threat from
Roberts..........all sweetness and light
or no web site hosting
and no monies from TGfund (yet again!)
Roberts giveth, Robert's taketh away..........If you idiots at
NTAC have
any brains or integrity left you'll tell Robert's to
take a
hike........I'm not holding my breath. Remember
when your NTAC list
with it's hard won rules of engagement is
either dumped totally or
subject to total censorship to appease
Roberts and company (the real
NTAC in deed apparently) that
this list remains open and uncensored and
not only not
connected to NTAC, but even owned by a non-member (although
original
founder and persona non grata)
--
Cathy Platine
@)-'--.--'
"Leading transies is like trying to herd cats. You
get nowhere and just
annoy the cats."
The new and improved? NTAC
Well, several NTACers are showing their colours. I was
shocked to learn
that the "grassroots" organization I
helped found has a new requirement
of a minimum contribution in
order to be a board member above and beyond
simple membership
in good standing as was envisioned. Tell me again
NTAC
wasn't taken over by a bunch of classist bastards!
Roz, a board member, files formal complaints and demands ousting
of
members for the crime of posting their own opinions!
(horrors!) and not
being able to show sufficient backing first
(informal individual polls
of membership are now required prior
to having and expressing an opinion
on the lists?)
Grassroots my ass!
The latest from the elitist "Pam" deGroff who once told
me there are no
transie street people in her state,
>
I am not a board member, but I'm totally in agreement that only board
> members should have posting rights.
and this further gem:
> Perhaps when a subject arises that is
important for the entire membership
> to be aware of, the
board can decide whether or not to open it up for list
>
discussion, give it 48 hours or so, and then close the topic.
Finally, I learn today that the board voted to change the
elections........basically leave their sorry asses in place
without the
elections REQUIRED BY THE CHARTER.
Hey folks, the board isn't supposed to be able to just change the
damn
charter........that's actually illegal under the rules
NTAC was
organized under, but this board never paid much mind
to laws and rules
and right or wrong. While we are on the
subject, how come Roz isn't out
on her freakin' ass from the
board?.........she did resign and you ruled
that is a go in my
case.
And you'all will explain to me again exactly why you want civil
rights
when freedom is so distasteful to you?
--
Cathy Platine
@)-'--.--'
"Leading transies is like trying to herd cats.
You get nowhere and just
annoy the cats."
Comments
Post a Comment