Arts & Entertainment

Our lives, our books

Lesbian veteran shares ordeal; researchers interview hundreds for landmark trans study

Published

15 years ago

February 2, 2012

‘Out of Step’
By J. Lee Watton
A&M Books
Released Sept. 20
$17 retail; $9.99 e-book edition
At Kindle, Barnes & Noble, Nook and via aandmbooks.com

‘The Lives of Transgender People’
By Genny Beemyn and Sue Rankin
Columbia University Press
Released Nov. 20
Print only
Available through Amazon or through cup.columbia.edu

There are so many LGBT-themed books released all the time, it’s impossible to read them all. Here are two from last fall that deserve attention.

“Out of Step” by J. Lee Watton is a memoir that tells of the author’s years in the mid-1960s as a member of the Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), a division of the Navy that started in World War II for women that continued until 1972 when the office was disestablished in favor of women being integrated into the main force. Watton, a lesbian, shares her story of being one of five WAVES who were tried and discharged in 1965 at the U.S. Naval Training Center in Bainbridge, Md., for being gay.

Watton shares how the incident led to years of humiliation, decades in the closet and overall distress. A retired journalist who now lives in Delaware with her partner, a retired Army captain, she was eventually inspired to come out when she read “Serving in Silence,” a landmark book by former colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer that was eventually made into a 1995 TV movie with Glenn Close. Watton says Cammermeyer’s story inspired her to give up 25 years of “living solely as a heterosexual.” She dabbled in writing starting in 2000 but committed to it fully in 2008.

Rehoboth Beach, Del.,-based publisher Fay Jacobs, a lesbian, says she was drawn to Watton’s story and says it’s an important one to share. It was released last fall about the time “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed, timing Jacobs calls “an amazing coincidence.”

“I read it in manuscript form and I said immediately, ‘Wow, this needs to be published,’” Jacobs, owner of A&M says. “It’s so important to understand the kind of discrimination that gay people faced in the military for many years and it’s not just an incident that happens when you’re 19, 20 or 21.”

Sue Rankin, who identifies as queer, teaches education policy studies at Penn State University. She did what she calls a “climate study” on trans issues in 2003 but Genny Beemyn, director of the Stonewall Center at the University of Massachusetts, told her she hadn’t asked “the right questions,” as Rankin puts it. The two embarked on another study in which they collected data throughout 2006, which they’ve compiled in a book.

“The Lives of Transgender People” encompasses the findings of hundreds of interviews they conducted through participants they found mainly through online listservs and conferences. About 3,500 answered a survey. Rankin and Beemyn, who doesn’t identify as either male or female, followed up with the interviews with about 400 of the respondents.

“We had such an enormous response, we thought it was book worthy,” Rankin says. “We knew we needed to hear what their experiences were in their own voices.”

She says to her knowledge, nothing of this scope has been attempted before.

Penn State's Sue Rankin (Photo courtesy Rankin)

“I know one came out from the National Center for Transgender Equality a year after ours, but ours was more interested in knowing more about this umbrella term of transgender, what it is and where do people see themselves in their own experiences.”

Those who participated ranged from teens to one person who was over 70. Rankin says much of the previous academic work on trans issues was conducted “from the psychological viewpoint that there was something wrong.” She and Beemyn purposefully avoided that approach and say the findings were hugely surprising.

“I think everything about it surprised me because there was a learning curve with it for me,” Rankin says. “First by the huge response we got, then that the community was so willing to share … I was floored by that. It told me that we really need to look beyond our gender binary selves at the fluidity of gender. … Lots of people identify themselves in lots of different ways.

Rankin says she and Beemyn, who volunteered their time but were approached by three publishers once the work was finished, purposefully crafted the book so that it would stand up under “rigorous academic standards” but would also be readable and engaging to non-academics.

Related Topics:A&M Books Fay Jacobs Genny Beemyn J. Lee Watton Out of Step Sue Rankin The Lives of Trangender People

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Celebrity News

Madonna headlines World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam

Kylie Minogue made surprise appearance alongside gay icon

Published

2 minutes ago

August 2, 2026

Michael K. Lavers

Kylie Minogue with Madonna at the World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam on Aug. 2, 2026. (Photo courtesy of Cejlon Studio)

AMSTERDAM — Madonna on Sunday headlined the final night of the World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam.

The gay icon took the stage shortly before 2:30 a.m. local time (8:30 p.m. ET on Saturday) during Club Confessions, a set that MISTR, a telehealth platform that offers free access to PrEP, Doxy PEP, STI testing, and long-term HIV care, organized.

“Mother is here and this is gay heaven,” said Madonna when she took the stage inside Amsterdam’s AFAS Live concert hall that can hold up to 6,000 people.

Stuart Price, who produced Madonna’s 2005 “Confessions on a Dance Floor” album and “Confessions II,” which debuted on July 2, DJed the set.

Kylie Minogue made a surprise appearance. She and Madonna performed a new remix of “Love Sensation” from “Confessions II.”

(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)

“Throughout my career, I’ve always supported efforts to fight HIV and AIDS, and that fight begins with education and access,” said Madonna in a MISTR press release. “With MISTR, (CEO) Tristan (Schukraft) is expanding access to HIV prevention and sexual healthcare for everyone. Through this work, he’s helping preserve and strengthen LGBTQ+ spaces while investing in the communities and culture that have long sustained us.”

Minogue in an Instagram post thanked Madonna, Price, Schukraft, and MISTR.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kylie Minogue (@kylieminogue)

Madonna appeared at The Abbey in West Hollywood, Calif., in April. Madonna in June celebrated Pride month with a pop-up performance in New York’s Times Square.

Jake Resnicow and Insomniac produced the World Pride Music Festival that also featured Bebe Rexha and Paris Hilton, among others.

“Pride has always been about bringing our community together,” said Resnicow. “At a moment when too many people are being told to hide or make themselves smaller, gathering openly, joyfully, and without apology matters more than ever. I couldn’t be prouder of what this festival brought to life in Amsterdam — one dance floor, completely free.”

Theater

Reggie White relishing first season as artistic director of Woolly Mammoth

First five shows a reminder that ‘pressure is a privilege’

Published

9 hours ago

August 2, 2026

Patrick Folliard

Reggie D. White (Photo by Ambe J. Williams)

Madly talented and preternaturally energetic, Reggie D. White, 38, is about to launch his first season as artistic director of D.C.’s boundary-pushing Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.

White brings a lot to the job. As actor, playwright, and director, his varied resume includes a 2019 Broadway acting debut in Matthew López’s Tony Award–winning play “The Inheritance,” his semi-autobiographic play “Fremont Ave.” that opened to acclaim last season at Arena Stage, and a number of exciting regional directing credits.

A longtime admirer of Woolly, the out theater-maker was selected from a pool of candidates before receiving the offer last November and starting work in January. His season of five world premieres kicks off with gay playwright Steve Yockey’s “Venus” (Sept. 9-Oct. 4), a darkly funny study of modern relationships told through two lesbians looking back on their first encounter.

White was introduced to Woolly Mammoth as a pre-law student at Cal State Hayward in the San Francisco Bay Area, long before he foresaw a life in the arts. “As part of a random theater history course, I was assigned to write a paper on a counterculture company called Woolly Mammoth,” he recalls “Strange name. I was like what the hell is that?”

Nineteen-year-old White was intrigued. Research acquainted him with Howard Shalwitz who co-founded Woolly in 1980, and the company’s commitment to living playwrights and new work. He also learned how theater could be used as a tool for difficult conversations and shape the way people thought about social issues by employing imagination and rigor.

“Never in a million years did young me envision that one day I’d be Woolly’s third artistic director in its 46-year history,” says White. “It’s kind of serendipitously insane.”

WASHINGTON BLADE: Was there a moment when the enormity of the job hit you?

REGGIE D. WHITE: After I’d signed my contract and finished all the paperwork, I got my keys and sat in the theater by myself in the dark and thought about what an incredible honor it is to be trusted with what happens in this beautiful space [in D.C.’s Penn Quarter]. I might have cried. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to remember it’s real.

BLADE: Are you curating the upcoming 2026–2027 season?

WHITE: Yes, I am. It’s very rare that an incoming artistic director gets to program their first season, but I was lucky in terms of time. After being hired late last year, I asked Woolly’s managing director Kimberly E. Douglas, if she thought it would be crazy if I programmed the season. She warned me it would be hard.

I invoked tennis legend Billie Jean King’s maxim “pressure is a privilege” and got to work.

These plays [dubbed White’s “first five”] represent both the kind of theater that Woolly can do really well and speak directly to my voice as curator and how I want to contribute to the larger theatrical conversation in the DMV.

Getting here has meant a lot of late nights. But I knew the juice would be worth the squeeze.

BLADE: As a queer artistic director, what makes you unique?

WHITE: When I was playing in “Inheritance” on Broadway, after a performance, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sotomayer came backstage to meet the cast. She spoke about how her lens on the world as a Puerto Rican woman shapes her decisions. Similarly, because I’m a queer Black man I see through a lens that shapes my work.

I know I’m not the only queer artistic director in town. For me, it influences how I make editorial decisions. Out of this season’s five plays there are explicitly queer characters in four [“Venus,” “Chanukkah Spectacular,” “Ten Grand,” and “Love I Awethu Further”] and I’m directing two [“Venus,” “Ten Grand”].

BLADE: Will we see familiar faces?

WHITE: Every show this season will feature a Woolly Mammoth company member in its cast. Our company also includes designers and directors who we’ll include. I’m invested in continuing to provide a showcase for their work.

BLADE: How do you think queer audiences will receive the season?

WHITE: Very well, I think. For queer people who’ve had to navigate the world subversively and solve problems in unique ways, I think it will be especially interesting. I find theater a potent place for questions.

Like all artistic directors. I’ll show up for the job in my own way. I’m just excited that I’ve been invited to bring the fullness of myself to the role.