Arts & Entertainment
Our lives, our books
Lesbian veteran shares ordeal; researchers interview hundreds for landmark trans study
‘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 It was released last fall about the time “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed, timing Jacobs calls “an amazing coincidence.”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.
Blog #1: I was excited about my trip even though Gate 1 Travel notified me there was a change in the itinerary. France decided to close the Burgundy canal for long overdue repairs, so we would be traveling on the C. du Rhone au Rhin. I boarded my Air France flight arriving in Paris on time. Contrary to what I was told to expect, customs went really smoothly.
Day 1: Because customs went quickly, I waited 45 minutes for my pre-arranged driver, to take me to the Gare de Lyon, where I boarded my fast-train to Lyon. A two-hour trip. In Lyon it was a long walk to the hotel, The Radisson Blu, but only because I exited the station on the wrong side. Finally got there, checked into a room on the 36th floor with a spectacular view of Lyon. Then took a stroll around the area, a short nap, and finally it was time for dinner and to meet the rest of the traveling party. There would only be 13 of us in the group. Five of us from D.C./Rehoboth, and eight others. I met our guide Patricia, who is from Portugal, and spoke fluent French and English. She is charming, and clearly very knowledgeable. She worked with Gate 1 for many years. We stayed at the hotel for our welcome dinner. It was a great meal, and over drinks, each of us was asked to introduce ourselves to the group. Aside from the five of us, there were three women traveling alone, one gentleman alone, and two couples. They were from New Jersey, New York, Florida, Houston, and Nebraska. I was sitting across from the woman from Nebraska. Conversation at dinner was pleasant but I quickly realized one person was apparently a MAGA. Wonder if you can guess where she was from, lol. But we also found if we didn’t talk politics, which we agreed not to do, things were fine. After dinner we all headed to our rooms for a good night’s sleep.
DAY 2: We woke to beautiful weather. I headed to the included breakfast at the hotel, which was really very good. After breakfast we boarded a bus for a tour of Lyon. We had a full-size bus for just the 13 of us. Our guide for the half day tour, was Vincent, and he is charming and young, and told us his fiancé lives in Lyon. He was incredibly knowledgeable. We began at the Basilica, which is being repaired on the outside, but the inside is, wow! Incredible stained glass, and there was a service going on in one of the smaller side chapels which I l listened to for a bit. The Basilica is high on the hill and the views of Lyon are spectacular from there. Then we headed to the old city and walked around for an hour, ending up at the smaller cathedral. Directly in front of it they had set up a great market, mostly food, which would be there for a week. Lyon is a foodie paradise, with, we were told, a restaurant, or at least coffee shop, for every 250 people. We then had a choice of staying in town, or going back to the hotel on the bus, which I did. The afternoon and evening were free time to do as we pleased. I headed to the Les Halles du Lyon Paul Bocuse, named after the famous chef, to take a look around. It is a large market with small restaurants connected to most of the stalls. It was charming. I then headed to the huge three-story mall across from our hotel and walked around for an hour. Then caught up on some emails, and writing, and met my friends, Paul and Martin, John and Dan, for dinner at 6. We went to a really nice Bistro, which John had found, two tram stops away from the hotel, and enjoyed some drinks and a relaxed dinner. The owner of the place found us a waitress who spoke great English, which made ordering really easy. After a two-hour great meal, we headed back to the hotel. Riding a tram in Lyon is easy, you just need to use your credit card. It is an honor system. Back at the hotel I headed to my room and packed, our luggage had to be outside the door by 8:00 am the next morning. I set my alarm for 6:30 so I had time to eat at the buffet breakfast. Then it was on the bus to head to our barge.
Baltimore
This John Waters interview has been edited for readability — but perhaps not human decency
Pope of Trash dishes on Trump, plane etiquette, last meal, and more
By WESLEY CASE | At 80 years old, John Waters is still the ideal dinner guest — incisively sharp, quick-witted and funny as hell.
The chic Baltimore native proved it again and again in a recent Zoom interview, calling from his summer home in Provincetown, Mass.
The occasion was the Blu-ray releases of two of his movies — the 1977 dark comedy “Desperate Living” and his enduring 1988 musical “Hairspray” — on June 23 by the Criterion Collection, which publishes restorations of films it deems culturally important. The Criterion stamp of approval has become the gold standard among cinephiles.
“It’s like getting an award,” said Waters, who wrote and directed both films.
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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(Washington Blade photos by Landon Shackelford)
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