Adventures In Genderland: Part Five
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 organization towards Dawn's and JoAnn's vision. While folks thought a consensus group was a good idea, most of them had no idea exactly what that was. Since most of the new folks had joined due to JoAnn's announcement, they didn't have a clue exactly why a new national group was needed and so many of them insisted that GenderPac and Riki be a part of the new group! They didn't know or care that the Transflakes had spent over six months compiling evidence of how we were sold out nationally and thus no longer had a national organization working for trans civil rights. There weren't enough Transflakes willing to correct that and so the few who tried to point that out were labeled shrill and mean-spirited. Dawn, JoAnn and several others made repeated demands that a steering committee board be seated immediately within the very first days, an agenda set and names of potential executive directors complied all while the names, everyone seemed to want in, kept pouring in. Several power plays were attempted by several people. Dawn kept insisting she had her agenda ready, then claimed we must have a board organization immediately because she had people willing to put up thousands as soon as we did. There was unrelenting pressure to form the newborn organization as a hierarchy from the very start.
In the first three days alone, there was close to a hundred emails, about 25% of them were assuming a board, chair and hierarchical organization. 60% were from one individual, Jean Marie Stine, who kept calling for "action, any action and right now!". Dawn announced the she was keeping track of the steering committee. A poll was set up to elect a steering chair or co-chair, a bylaws committee formed who were independently working feverishly on a set of bylaws. It was chaos, but slowly order was forming out of that. The shear number of emails drove many away at this point. Others bailed because they thought we should forget what Riki and GenderPac had done. Everyone seemed to be coming to the table expecting a fully formed organization, few seemed willing to actually build it. The list was choked in the first couple of weeks with hundreds of demands for this or that making it nearly impossible to simply lay the ground work. Much of that fell to a few of us working privately. Some were there with clear power trip agendas.
During this brief period of time I was once again rear ended and once again suffered a back injury that put me in physical therapy for three months, just as had happened little under a year before. I was working two jobs at the time, trying to rearrange my work schedule around my injury and participate in NTRC which officially became NTAC on the same day as my accident. Sarah Fox set up a new list with the new name and the new NTAC steering committee list was set up the next day by Monica Helms. Sue Davis, Anne Casebeer, Monica Helms, Sarah Fox and myself all tried over and over to remind people that we were in a process that required one step leading to the next in order to have a mission statement, a set of by-laws, an interim board and incorporate. In the midst of this was endless floating of ideas followed by others assuming this was now fact. Jean Stine accused Sarah and myself of being the "idiots" who insisted on a democratic beginnings and process thus causing all the chaos.
On Nov. 9'th Jean Stine accidentally posted a private message to JoAnn Roberts to the list. In it she yet again called Sarah and myself the "idiots" who insisted on a democratic group and proposed that she, JoAnn, Dawn and Phylis Fyre secretly bypass the rest of us and start the organization themselves using the brand new, just registered NTAC domain JoAnn had set up. Who knows how many other of these private attempts to take over she'd attempted, but what is sure is that Stine had absolutely flooded the list contributing to the chaos (in the first two weeks alone of a flood of emails, fully 1/2 came from Stine) and nothing much more over that continued attempts to derail every action those of us trying desperately to get the organizational skeleton in place.
Sarah and I both posted our replies, both pointing out exactly what was being attempted. I called for Stine to leave the steering committee, minimum and that she should leave the organization completely. That the means were just as important as the ends even if Dawn once again became chair, this time it would be democratic. Vanessa Foster thought I was being paranoid and shrill.
Of the twenty or so individuals who had actively asked and were put on the steering committee, only about five were writing anything and three of those five were running for the steering chair! It took a week just to get an agreement on the committee being a consensus group. At this time, despite having announce when the steering committee membership closed and the deadline past, despite have the election of the chair of the committee clearly internal to that group, the poll for it only being accessible to those members and despite a private email telling him to stop for these reasons, Alexander Goodwin, one of the three in the running, announced the voting was open to everyone. He then told everyone to sign up for the steering committee and how to get on that list! Having worked like a dog to get a steering committee up, its whole reason for being was just circumvented. I put out a strongly worded post telling him and others to "stop it" (it was not flame, it was not personal, just blunt) and let steering do the job they were supposed to. Out of 25+ messages to the group, countless private messages, the only negative thing I had posted was calling Jean Stine "a treacherous snake" for damn good reason after her attempt to derail and essentially steal the organization from out from under all the rest of us. Vanessa followed up the "stop it" post with a chronology of what led up to it that ignored the private emails and steering committee emails that clarified that the steering chair was to be voted on by the steering committee, not the general list membership (which was in constant flux and confusion) She accused me of personally driving away all the FtMs and calling me paranoid and was full of thinly veiled insults such I was a one woman approval committee who shouted down anyone who dared disagree with me. In short, an out and out flame. She also told me that I owed Alex an apology but would no doubt refuse to do so.
Monica Helms had resigned the day before after an admittedly somewhat inappropriate general comment to a newbe about ignoring some of the macho attitudes of some of the women on this list. This led to a massive misunderstanding by Monica Roberts who thought it was directed at her. Dawn then called this evidence of Monica Helms' agenda and starting a flame war on purpose. In fairness to Monica Helms, she restrained from engaging anyone in this "flame war" and her comment wasn't aimed at anyone in particular. Almost no one publicly said anything about Stine, but Stine did leave after a new series of insults aimed at further disruption. Vanessa's insulting email followed a day of my testifying before an Ohio legislative hearing on hate crimes with Sarah. Once again it was just Sarah and myself who showed up for that, the "active" voices on It's Time Ohio's list, just that, voices and never seen when it came time to actually do something. I came home that night to find Vanessa's insults, several personal attacks on myself and Sarah by Davidson on the It's Time Ohio list, confusion reigning supreme throughout the general NTAC list, no progress on the steering committee list, no support for Sarah and myself objecting to Stine's takeover bid and a single positive email from Dawn Wilson praising me for having kept a level head throughout the past several weeks and calmly trying to keep NTACs birth on target. Monica's leaving left the steering list crippled since she was the list owner. That was enough. I signed off the steering list and posted that I was only going to lurk after this. I had viewed Vanessa as a friend, one I valued and her nasty comments hurt me more than I wanted to admit, especially since they were not justified. Included in my "signoff" post was an apology to Alex for the "tone" of my "hold it" post, which I had made strong, but not insulting because list noise made it important that everyone got that message at that time.
Vaughn signed off NTAC right after me, citing private email "yelling". He and I had a minor disagreement the day before in private email and I had apologized to him in private email almost the same time he signed off. We then shared a series of positive emails to each other for the next 24 hours. Five days later Vanessa "accidentally" posted to the list a private reply to his post about resigning calling me every name in the book. I had been silent for all five of those days and was hit out of the blue with yet another flaming personal attack from someone I had respected and liked.
My reply is below:
"No flames, just bitter disappointment that someone I thought of as a friend chooses to stab me repeatedly in the back. Sorry, I don't need this, I'll bow out completely since I'm such a disruptive influence. My intentions were simply to keep the group democratic. Needless to say I withdraw my support and vote for you for chair of steering. Do me a favour and at least go back and READ what I wrote, Ok? I feel you owe me that much after toasting me several times to this entire organization without response in kind from me."
Vanessa then posted yet another "shot" a couple of days later, that said she regretted what she said was harsh, but it still reflected her feelings about me. A further kick in the teeth to someone who had not said a negative word about her or her posts. Other than a sympathetic response at the same time to a Dawn Wilson post that same day, three emails about the mission statement and votes, that was my involvement onlist for the next several months. I continued in contact with Dawn, Anne and Sarah behind the scenes. NTAC plodded on, eventually got a logo, mission statement and a month late, by laws for the group to vote on. I was the fifth signature on the by-laws which never got voted on and accepted until a couple of months later.
The NTAC press release written by Vanessa on Feb 13, 2000 regarding the "National Transgender Agenda forum" was the first time anyone heard that Dawn Wilson was in fact interim chair. Not a word I can find in any of the email archives (and I have a complete set up to that time) refers to her in that role before that date. Dawn's involvement had been minimal, claiming she was much too busy with all her Kentucky activism to be active on the NTAC list many times, however she did seem to issue "pronouncements" occasionally prior to that date. Basically, she appointed herself, in fairness, probably from the need to designate a chair for the incorporation papers. At the forum, the HRC rep complained about the "Big Payback" report and that buried in all the pages was one reference to Lizzy Birch as a nazi.
I posted a passionate reply to the suggestion that we cozy up to HRC and remove the report, several of the other Transflakes still around agreed with the exception of Vanessa. The upshot was the report was eventually removed from the NTAC page and Sarah, believing as I did, that it was important that we never forget what was done, placed in on a separate page. Sarah and I, both pretty disillusioned with national politics at this time, both declined nomination for the new board even though it was assumed by most we would run and be placed on it and we were both nominated. NTAC was still somewhat democratic, but far from the consensus model we had both hoped it would become. I continued to limit my involvement with the list to announcements from First Church of the Goddess, forwards of news items of general trans-interest and reposts of letters to the editor I'd written about various articles appearing in the press.
Michael Grey had been the first to suggest removing the "Big Payback" report from our website, citing its "violent" nature. Michael at been at the '99 Lobby Days event, declined joining us for dinner that night and got involved in NTAC somewhat late in the game. From the very beginnings, Dr. Sarah Fox had been the chair of the research committee, that being completely natural since she is a scientist and skilled in writing surveys and interpreting data. She was conducting independent research adding transsexuals to the "finger length" study regarding exposure of testosterone in the womb. She had done independent research and reported on the incidence of gender based discrimination among gays and lesbians. When she declined to run for a board seat, it was understood that she planned to continue as "research chair" and was encouraged by all in this. At the general meeting where the board was finally voted on and Dawn officially became the NTAC chair, someone told Michael that he could take over the chair of the research committee without consulting anyone else. Sarah was never informed. Apparently, there was a small provision in the new by-laws that stated that committee chairs had to be board members. Michael basically started a war to take over the position on this basis. Michael expanded his campaign against Sarah to various other forums causing problems with them as well. Sarah effectively removed herself from involvement with NTAC because of this.
In July of 2000, Michelle Stiener posted a draft letter from a group of post-ops trying to gain access to the Michigan Women's Music Festival by denouncing pre-op transsexuals for attempting to impose "dangerous penises" on the women there. I took exception to this and became active on the list debating this with her. It was a debate of ideas and ideology until Michelle started flaming with comments like "bigot" etc. I had known Michelle several years online, in fact it was her question on Compuserve's Genderline that had provoked my own GID crisis. Prior to this we had debated things many times in many different venues with mutual respect. Dawn Wilson sent me private emails at this time thanking me for not returning the flames and encouraging me in my position. She and Anne Casebeer began trying to convince me to reconsider and join the board, encouraged by my renewed posting on the list. I had been true to my word and withdrawn from almost all contact with other transies on and off line other than Sarah Fox and my own work with First Church of the Goddess up to this point. Something happened a month later that changed that.
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