Four times, I have attended One Big Event, an annual formal dinner-dance. It is a fundraiser for a local gay and lesbian organization (Hartford Gay & Lesbian Health Collective) and affords an opportunity for everyone to dress to the nines… guys in tuxedos and gals in gowns (or vice versa) dining on rubber chicken and dancing to loud music.
First two times I attended, the event was held in a hotel and the ticket cost $100.
The third time I attended, they moved to a bigger venue, a convention center and the ticket price was bumped up to $125. The ticket still cost $125 last year, but this year, they bumped the price up to $150!
It is bad enough that they bumped up the price for no apparent reason, but I never felt very welcome by the folks running the event. The absence of a T in the name of the organization should have been a red flag.
Two years ago, the organization attempted to segregate the attending transgender women to a separate bathroom! Can you believe it? I found it unconscionable that a gay and lesbian organization would be so insensitive to transgender folks.
And each year, the organization’s photographer makes the rounds and takes photos of all the attendees including the transgender folks. And each year, the group manages to exclude photos of transgender folks from the photo slideshow of the event that appears on their website.
Just a coincidence, maybe, but the local newspaper that covers the event every year always includes photos of transgender folks in their report (my photo has appeared twice!).
I guess the newspaper is more open-minded than the gay and lesbian organization, which just takes our money and runs. Maybe I will take my money and run somewhere else.
Street style during Paris Fashion Week Spring 2015.
Actor Ned Birkin femulating in the 1993 British film The Cement Garden. When a male visitor asks why the young boy is dressing like a girl, his sister responds, “Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots, because it's OK to be a boy, but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, because you think that being a girl is degrading. But secretly you'd love to know what it's like, wouldn't you? What it feels like for a girl?”
