Tower Envy

In my previous post, Ann Onymous left the following comment:

Here's my two part question, Stana. 

1. Do you think that had you from the get-go in life been allowed to live as a girl/woman you would have developed an interest in HAM radio? 

2. Had you been born with an XY [sic] chromosome body do you think you'd have developed that interest? 

I'm not trying to be provocative, I've always been curious about traditionally male/female activities and how those intersect with gender identity.

My interest in radio was sparked by two things.

👧   My childhood home was located in the shadow of the towers of AM radio station WATR. The towers were an imposing presence in my early life; so much so that I wanted my own radio tower.

👧   My parents gifted me a Remco AM radio kit for Christmas when I was about 10-years-old. Living so close to WATR, its signal swamped my Remco radio and it was the only station I could hear. However, I discovered that WATR went off the air early Sunday mornings for maintenance and I could hear other stations on my Remco. Thus began my interest in receiving distant radio stations (DX).

If I lived as a girl or had been born a girl, I guess that instead of a radio kit, my parents would have given me a makeup kit, as well as dolls, toy kitchen appliances, etc., that is, gifts like my sister received. (For what it's worth, I played with my sister's "girls'" toys almost as often as I played with my own toys.)

My sister, my only sibling who was 18 months my junior, was not fascinated by the imposing radio towers located on the next block. If I lived as a girl or had been born a girl, would I be disinterested in those towers, too?

Was my interest in those towers a "guy thing"?

Or since I was so naturally feminine, was it penis envy?

(Some food for thought, but I don't think I answered Ann's questions!)

Wearing Leal Daccarett (Source: Moda Operandi)

Members of the Oslo gay mens chorus (Oslo fagottkor) femulating for a Mad Men parody.

Lady Di

Saturday, as I headed out to buy groceries, I hit the button preset for WLNG on 92.1 MHz on the AM-FM radio and drove down the north side of my 1,000-foot mountain, which is not favorable to WLNG, 50 miles to my south-southeast. Yet, WLNG hung in there as I descended the mountain and continued my drive through the relatively flat river valley below.

I was paying more attention to the traffic than the radio, but sitting at a red traffic light about 2 minutes after my descent, it occurred to me that the female announcer now on the radio was not a voice I had ever heard on WLNG. In passing, the announcer mentioned the station's call sign: WOMR, which is on the tip of Cape Cod, about 145 miles to my east-northeast.

After the light turned green and I continued on my journey, WOMR hung in there for about a half mile, then gave up the frequency to WLNG.

As a radio ham, something like this gets my attention because it indicates unusual radio conditions and affords me the opportunity to hear other stations that I would not usually hear under normal radio conditions.

As a trans woman, I mention this because WOMR is a beacon whenever I drive to Fantasia Fair in Provincetown. When I get east of Providence and approach Cape Cod, I tune the radio to 92.1 and wait for WOMR to get louder and stronger as I get closer to Provincetown. 

WOMR is a very eclectic radio station like many other public broadcasting community radio stations. And while I am in and around town, I listen to WOMR whenever I listen to the radio.

Googling WOMR, I discovered another interesting aspect of the radio station: WOMR’s radio personality named Lady Di, who by day is the town's board of selectmen secretary, Vernon Porter! 

You can read all about Lady Di here and here and you can listen to her radio shows "Leggs Up and Dancing with Lady Di" on Fridays from 5-7 PM and "Chattin Up with Lady Di" on every other Thursday 8 PM. If you are out of the radio range of WOMR (like most of us), you can listen to her shows via the Internet at womr.org.

Wearing Venus.

Tim Jo on the 2012 Halloween episode of television's The Neighbors.

On the Radio

My friend and Fantasia Fair sister, Melissa Loucks, inaugurates her new transgender news radio show, Out & About, on the air this Friday afternoon at 1:50 PM EDST on WNHH. In the local New Haven area, you can hear the station on 103.5 FM.

It's also online at www.newhavenindependent.org. You can also listen to it on demand by clicking on this link.

(Note that WNHH is a low power, 100 watt, FM station and unless you are in the New Haven area, you probably won't hear it, so use the Internet option. FWIW, I am 12 miles from the transmitter and all I hear on 103.5 is an FM station in Long Island.)

Opportunities

I went to Dress Barn in drag to check out their 50% clearance sale. The Dress Barn staff knows me en femme and en homme and greeted me like an old friend.

Sadly, the pickings were slim and I did nor find anything of interest in my size. There were some new fall items on display that caught my eye, but I was looking for summer wear because I have some summertime opportunities to go out en femme coming up.

Next week, I am taking a mini-vacation and on whatever day I am free of family obligations, I will go out en femme. Not sure what I am going to do, but whatever it is, it will be as a lady.

The following week, I will be doing outreach for a Human Sexuality class at Southern Connecticut State University. This is the same outreach gig that I have been doing for years, however, this is the first time I've done it during the summer; all the previous gigs were during the fall and spring semesters.

Next month, I may attend another ham radio convention en femme. Unlike the Dayton Ohio Hamvention I attended in May, which is an international event attracting 20 to 30,000 attendees, next month’s event is a regional convention, the biennial New England ham radio convention in Boxboro, Mass, which attracts about 1,000 attendees. I have made no definite plans yet, but it is on my radar.

this week

On Wednesday, I begin my journey to Dayton, Ohio, where I will attend the annual Dayton Hamvention and the 2009 ARRL National Convention on Friday and Saturday.

I am an amateur radio/ham radio operator and a well-known writer in the ham radio print and electronic media. I make the trek to Dayton every year or two to renew old acquaintances, make new acquaintances, see what is new in ham radio, attend forums on topics of interest, check out the flea market, socialize with my ham radio friends, and have a good time.

However, by Saturday evening of Hamvention weekend, I am usually burnt out from all the ham activities, so I do something completely different. When I get back to my hotel room, I kick off my sneakers, slip into my heels, and go out en femme.

Every year, I do something different en femme in Dayton and this year, I plan to go downtown and visit Therapy Cafe. It has a reputation as LGBT-friendly, so it should be a cool place to spend a few hours and wind down from Hamvention.

By the way, my attendance at Hamvention will likely result in fewer postings here than usual, but I will try and check in whenever I can so that you will know that I am alive and well. And, of course, I will have a full report (with photos) of my Saturday night out en femme.

The Radicalguy

Recently, Ethan St. Pierre interviewed my friend Jamie Dailey on his TransFM Internet "radio" program. As you may recall, Jamie is the femulator I outreached with last week.

I missed the live Internet broadcast, but I downloaded its podcast to my iPod and listened to the interview during my daily commute.

The interview was wonderful. It was my first encounter with Ethan St. Pierre, "The Radicalguy," and I was very impressed. He is a superb interviewer with a great sense of humor. He seemed very familiar with Jamie and their interview was more like a conversation between old friends.

I wanted to hear more, so I commanded iTunes on my MacBook Pro to download a directory of all the Radicalguy interviews that were available. I selected a couple of interviews from the directory (the Jennifer Finney Boylan interview and the Helen Boyd and Betty Crow interview) to download to my iPod and I have been listening to those podcasts the past few days.

I have not been disappointed. Those interviews are as good as Jamie's interview and I will likely download all of Ethan's podcasts to my iPod.

By the way, Ethan is a female-to-male trans and his spouse if male-to-female, so he is very familiar with our area of endeavor. Visit his Web site for more information.

on the radio

With my new car came a free three-month subscription to Sirius satellite radio.

Looking at the Sirius literature that came in the mail a few days ago, I noticed that channel 109 is Sirius OutQ Radio, which provides "news, interviews and music on America's only 24/7 radio station from and for the GLBT community."

So, I dialed up channel 109 to check it out and see how much of the T part of that GLBT community gets airplay. The jury is still out, but I have heard some T-related items during the short time I have been monitoring channel 109. I will keep on listening and report back here after I have a larger sample.