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Vol. 12, No. 3 |
August 2003 |
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| www.innvestments.org |
HOME PAGE - NEWSLETTERS - LINKS TO OTHERS - MEMBERS PAGE |
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Your |
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Vol. 12, No. 3 |
August 2003 |
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| www.innvestments.org |
Our Monthly Meetings are held at the Ramada Inn on Route 132
in Hyannis. A meeting room as well as a private changing area
is provided.
SEPTEMBER 8, 2003 First Monthly Meeting for the new season at 7:15 PM Our annual business meeting with election of officers. Do you have any new ideas for our group or are you able to help us in some way?
OCTOBER 2 - 5 Special Weekend in Provincetown hosted by our friends Joan and Laura. Deadline for signing up is September 1st! Contact Joan Hoff for information at 978-683-2386.
OCTOBER 6, 2003 Monthly Meeting at the Ramada Inn in Hyannis at 7:15 PM
OCTOBER 19 - 26, 2003 Join FANTASIA FAIR in Provincetown for an entire week of transgender activities and discussions.
NOVEMBER 1, 2003 Our ANNUAL HALLOWEEN PARTY! Come as ghastly as you want or as beautiful as you wish but by all means come and have a good time with us. Held at a lovely house in Barnstable. Contact us for directions.
NOVEMBER 3, 2003 Monthly Meeting at the Ramada Inn in Hyannis at 7:15 PM.
DECEMBER 6, 2003 CHRISTMAS ON CAPE COD - Join us for our Annual Christmas Party on Cape Cod. We will have entertainment, a scrumptious buffet dinner, awards, door prizes and a chance to wear that gorgeous ball gown that you have in your closet.
JANUARY 5, 2004 Monthly Meeting at the Ramada Inn in Hyannis at 7:15 PM.
FEBRUARY 2, 2004 Monthly Meeting at the Ramada Inn in Hyannis at 7:15 PM.
FEBRUARY 21, 2004 VALENTINE'S PARTY. Come to our party and be sure to enter our famous RED DRESS CONTEST and a chance to win the coveted Barbie Doll. We will have entertainment, a scrumptious buffet dinner, door prizes and lots of dancing.
MARCH 1, 2004 Monthly Meeting at the Ramada Inn in Hyannis at 7:15 PM.
APRIL 4, 2004 Sunday, Come to our ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION. This will mark our TWELFTH year as a transgender group here on Cape Cod. We plan to celebrate in the restaurant/lounge at the Ramada Inn.
MAY 3, 2004 Monthly Meeting at the Ramada Inn in Hyannis at 7:15 PM.
JUNE 7, 2004 Our Annual Dinner Meeting to take place at a restaurant of your choice in the Hyannis area. A changing area will be available at the Ramada Inn for those who need it.
Your Innvestment is a publication of Innvestments, P.O. Box 493, Monument Beach, MA.02553-0493. Innvestments is a non-sexual service organization founded to support and to provide a socially acceptable outlet for the crossdressing, transvestite, transsexual, transgendered community located primarily in Southeastern Massachusetts, Cape Cod and the Islands. All rights reserved. Permission to reprint any article appearing in Your Innvestment is hereby granted to non-profit similar organizations provided that publication and authorship credit is given. Any commercial use of Your Innvestment material is hereby prohibited. Some material may have previously appeared in print. Publication and authorship rights of material reprinted from other sources remain with its originator. The editor/s of Your Innvestment are not under any obligation to accept information and advertisements. Information and advertisements may be published in any form deemed acceptable. Any information about services, products or sympathetic locations published in Your Innvestment is not considered an endorsement of such by the staff of Your Innvestment or the Board of Directors of Innvestments.
Brenda L. (Brenda@innvestments.org).......President
Wendy B. (Wendy@innvestments.org).........Vice President
Brenda L. (Brenda@innvestments.org)........Treasurer
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Cate F.......................................Board
Rachel E................................Board
Liz W.........................................Board
PO Box 493
Monument Beach, MA 02553-0493
Web Site www.innvestments.org
Brenda L........................Editoress of Your Innvestment
Submissions of Articles are both Wanted and Needed!
COTTON BALLS! For many years I have always used toilet paper when using Nail Polish Remover. This morning I tried cotton balls instead and they worked MUCH better! They held the liquid longer and it did not dry up before I was done.
COUNSELING SERVICES I was recently informed that there are as many as FIVE psychologists/psychiatrists on Cape Cod that now perform counseling services for transgender issues, including SRS and hormone therapy. Contact Brenda for more info.
WE ARE NOT ALONE ON CAPE COD! There are now TWO other
transgender groups on Cape Cod that deal primarily with transsexual issues.
1. The first is part of the Unitarian Universalist
Church in Brewster and meets at the church at 2:00 PM on the second Sunday of
each month
2. The other group meets on the first Tuesday of each
month at 7:00 PM at the Gay & Straight Alliance Center on the corner of Elm
Street and Barnstable Road in Hyannis (next to the bus station).
LEGS IN SUMMER - This is the second summer that I have continued to shave my legs and I have yet to be picked on or harassed in any way. I guess the general public has more to worry about than how pretty my legs are.
GOOD BYE TO NOELLE - Innvestments lost a former leader this spring when Noelle Rose passed away unexpectedly. She was the President of Innvestments for two years. I remember her for her ability to change her look so dramatically and have so much fun doing it. One month she would be a blond, then a redhead and the next month a brunette. At the time of her death she was well on her way to transition and living with her love, Lindsey, in Boston. We will miss her! Here is a link to my favorite of the articles that Noelle contributed to our newsletter over the years.
Are we, as crossdressers and transsexuals, becoming more accepted by the general public? Or do we just not care as much as we used to?
Consider our groups dinner outing in June. Innvestments has a tradition of taking the group out to dinner for our final meeting of the season in June. In past years our group has made a point of making sure that these dinners would be extra safe. For a few years we even hired a small restaurant in Hyannis just for our group alone.
As I prepared for this years dinner I could not help but approach it in a different way than in the past. When I called to make the reservation at Alberto's, one of the finer restaurants in Hyannis, I gave them the name of our group and an estimate of how many would be coming. That was it. I did not feel it was necessary to explain what our groups activities entailed or what we would be wearing when we arrived. I just assumed we would be treated the same as anyone else would.
When the night came and our group arrived at Alberto's there was no fuss about us at all. We were seated at a nice table, were served graciously and enjoyed a fantastic meal. Not one of us were refused service because we did not look right. Maybe no one at the restaurant realized we were not real ladies, you ask? But there were NINE of us. At least one of us must have done something wrong. Also WE tend to get noticed more in a large group.
So what has changed so much in the last five or ten years? Has the public become more accepting of us? Maybe. Or maybe the public is just so complacent and so wrapped up in their own problems that they don't really care about us anymore. There is no need for them to confront us. We are not infringing on their rights or making them irritated or uncomfortable in any way. That is unless some of the men would like to join us. It would seem the restaurant was glad to see us. Nine of us came on a slow Monday evening and spent over $300. We were not loud or boisterous and did not cause a scene. We did not notice any other customers leaving because of us.
Or maybe it is us that have changed over the years. We no longer feel that we need the security blanket of a nice "safe" place to have a dinner. The more experienced a crossdresser gets the more they tell me that they just assume that many people "read" them all the time when they are out. It just does not bother us anymore. We are too busy having fun to worry what other people think of us.
Especially shunned, especially vulnerable
Fighting HIV by reaching out to transgender prostitutes
By Adrianne Appel, Globe Correspondent, 10/15/2002
Editors Note - This article was submitted by Julie W.
I hope with all my heart that no one in our Innvestments group is in this
situation!
Tatiana, Alexis and Tinoyia got dolled up one evening last week and headed to Jacques, the racy transgender bar in Bay Village. But instead of selling sex, they handed out condoms and advice, hoping to prevent yet another case of HIV in transgender prostitutes, their straight male clients, and the men's wives and girlfriends.
''We want to tell people, `Just have safe sex,''' said Tatiana, who is a male-to-female transgender and former prostitute who does street outreach through Gender Identity Support Services for Transgenders, or GISST, one of the only programs in Boston assisting transgender sex workers. Transgenders exist at the far margins of society, hidden to most people except for those who seek them out. Largely shunned, many live in extreme poverty. Many abuse drugs and work as prostitutes, performing acts that other sex workers avoid. And many inevitably contract and spread HIV. ''Quite often, the transgender woman doesn't think of using condoms. They live for the moment,'' Tatiana said.
Alexis, a member of the GISST team, had a good job with the state Department of Mental Health until she realized she wanted to be a woman full time. She didn't feel comfortable dressing as a woman at work, so she quit her job and soon became homeless. ''At least at the shelter I was able to be me,'' she said. Portia, another team member, found work at peep stores in Chinatown. ''They put a coin in and I shimmied,'' she said. All three want to bring more dignity to their lives, and GISST is helping them.
Anecdotal reports and a handful of recent studies indicate that transgender prostitutes have very high rates of HIV and AIDS. ''Those of us seeing transgenders know it is a significant problem,'' said Dr. Gregory Fenton, medical director of the Sidney Borum Jr. Community Health Center of Boston, a clinic for disenfranchised youths, including gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders.
Fenton said that HIV has existed within the transgender community for years, but unlike other populations with high HIV rates, there has been little outreach to them and little recognition of their dire need for health services. He has between 20 and 30 transgender patients, he said. One reason there are few services and funds available is the lack of data describing exactly how big the transgender HIV problem is, said Martin Risteen, program manager of GISST. Risteen's group keeps its own numbers, based on its outreach. Risteen estimates there are 50 to 100 transgender prostitutes working in Boston and at local escort services. According to Risteen and his team members, the vast majority of the sex workers' clients are ''straight'' men, many married or with girlfriends.
The state Department of Public Health has disbursed funds to groups assisting transgenders for about eight years. Last year, Boston identified HIV in transgenders as a public-health issue in need of more attention. But given current budget constraints, more funds, especially for data collection, are not likely to come from the state, said Jean McGuire, assistant commissioner at the Department of Public Health and director of the HIV and AIDS Bureau. ''In a time of very limited resources, it's a big deal that we say this is a commitment of ours,'' McGuire said.
Fenton estimated that 30 percent of the transgender prostitutes he treats are HIV-positive, with the rate higher among adolescents. Two studies in San Francisco have placed the HIV rate of transgender sex workers at 19 percent and 35 percent, respectively. This can be compared with the federal Centers for Disease Control estimates of the rate of HIV among men who identify themselves as having sex with other men, which is also high and which may include gay and bisexual men, as well as transgenders. The rate of infection among these men ranges from 3 percent for white men to 14 percent for African-American men.
Why transgenders engage in risky sex in the first place, despite decades-old messages about its relationship to HIV, is due to complex psychosocial and economic factors that cannot be remedied easily, said Belser Louie, a psychologist, founder of the GISST program, and executive director of the Beacon Hill Multicultural Psychological Association. ''Many are coming from such dysfunctional places, much of their behavior and attitudes are unhealthy,'' said Louie, who has counseled Boston's transgenders for decades.
''Many [transgender] people seek validation from a sex partner. If he's the only one saying, `I see you as you are; you are a girl, you are a woman,' that is intensely important,'' said Grace Sterling Stowell, a transgender who is the executive director of the Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Youth. Tinoyia agreed: ''They made us feel whole like we wanted to feel.''
But money also plays a big role. Many transgender sex workers are homeless, or using narcotics or sex-changing hormones. The temptation to do what is necessary for more money is strong. ''Time after time they've told us they get paid more for doing something unsafe,'' Stowell said. ''It's hard to turn down when it is a freezing cold night in winter and you don't have a place to stay.''
Physicians who treat transgender sex workers say that, because of the often horrifying circumstances of their lives, their overall physical and mental health is poor and their rate of drug abuse, HIV, hepatitis C and tuberculosis is high. Getting them the services they need, however, is not a simple matter of taking them to the doctor, Louie said. ''That's been an uphill battle.'' Louie said transgenders have faced discrimination at local clinics, including being harassed in the waiting room and bullied into declaring themselves either a male or a female. Currently, just a handful of clinics are openly accepting of transgenders, Louie said.
Fenton said that some transgenders avoid doctors out of fear that they will be forced to stop taking hormones. Fenton treats transgenders, but even from his empathetic perspective, it isn't easy. It is difficult to treat an HIV-positive person who is taking hormone supplements because adding HIV drugs to the mix can cause liver damage. ''How do you balance the treatment for transgenders' anatomical changes with their need to live?'' Fenton said.
In the meantime, the GISST team will continue to try to build a community of transgenders who together can advocate for their needs. ''We're trying to bring them to a place,'' Tatiana said, ''where they no longer have to live in the underworld.''
This story ran on page C1 of the Boston Globe on 10/15/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.