It has been a wild month. My wife and I took a vacation trip to London and I was able to go out to the WayOut Club twice. This long-running London institution is one of my favorite transgender venues in the world. On the second Saturday I even entered the "Miss Alternative London" competition, along with 32 others. While I did not win, I had a great time and made new friends.
Then we returned to the United States and to the round of events surrounding Halloween in the Bay Area. Transgender San Francisco held a great party over at Diva's, and the the Rainbow Gender Association had a pleasant get-together at Carla's. Finally on Halloween night I went to TrannyShack, which is the only regular transgender dance club in San Francisco.
San Francisco is gearing up for our 18th Annual Cotillion on February 3, 2001. I won't be a contestant this time, rather I am the show producer. Dear Diva will direct again, much to my delight. This year we are planning an entire long-weekend of activities and are encouraging out-of-town visitors to join us. Please visit the Transgender San Francisco website for details: http://www.tgsf.org/.
Nerdiness
Some people have asked me why do I call myself "The Queen of the Nerds"? Most people think that the word "nerd" is pejorative, and wonder why someone would call themselves that. The answer is pretty simple: just like gay and lesbian people have adopted the Nazi pink triangle symbol as their own and proudly call themselves queers, many technologically sophisticated people now describe themselves as nerds or geeks. It's a case of turning your oppressor's rhetoric against them.
My identity as a nerd is pretty secure -- I've been running the projector at school since third-grade.
MEOW
After returning from Southern Comfort, we held a meeting in the Meow chat room to talk about its future. Over 50 people participated, and I was given many good suggestions. So far I have been able to fix several annoying bugs in Meow and I added a feature that makes it easy for users to upload photographs. There was some concern that we might someday restrict participation in Meow to only TGForum subscribers. I want to reassure everyone of our intention to keep Meow open to all.
We have also had a great response to the call for room monitors. I will be contacting everyone soon after I finish a little programming to make their job possible. Room monitors will be able to eject obnoxious visitors and delete orphaned sessions.
As always, we welcome your suggestions and participation.
Our Political Future
I spent the election-night evening with my sisters in Meow. As the returns came in, our mood oscillated up-and-down, depending on who pulled into the lead. As I write this a day later, we still do not know who the next president will be -- although I suspect George W. Bush will prevail.
The bright side to this is that Congress is so evenly divided that it is unlikely that the Republicans can do much damage. In two years there will be another election, and if conservatives try to advance the Religious Right's moral agenda, they risk being tossed out in droves.
There is no need to wait for such a power shift before we can advance our cause. By choosing to be active, each one of us can have the power of several ordinary people. Just voting doubles your impact; writing to your representative quadruples it. Choosing to be an activist multiplies it by 20, and volunteering to serve as a commissioner in your local government multiplies it by 50. You'll find that even your opponents will respect you.