Arts & Entertainment

Our lives, our books

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

Published

12 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 It was released last fall about the time “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed, timing Jacobs calls “an amazing coincidence.”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.

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FUND LGBTQ JOURNALISM

Nightlife

Ed Bailey brings Secret Garden to Project GLOW festival

An LGBTQ-inclusive dance space at RFK this weekend

Published

2 hours ago

April 26, 2024

Evan Caplan

Ed Bailey's set at last year's Project Glow. (Photo courtesy Bailey)

When does a garden GLOW? When it’s run by famed local gay DJ Ed Bailey.

This weekend, music festival Project GLOW at RFK Festival Grounds will feature Bailey’s brainchild the Secret Garden, a unique space just for the LGBTQ community that he launched in 2023.

While Project GLOW, running April 27-28, is a stage for massive electronic DJ sets in a large outdoor space, Secret Garden is more intimate, though no less adrenaline-forward. He’s bringing the nightclub to the festival. The garden is a dance area that complements the larger stages, but also stands on its own as a draw for festival-goers. Its focus is on DJs that have a presence and following in the LGBTQ audience world.

“The Secret Garden is a showcase for what LGBTQ nightlife, and nightclubs in general, are all about,” he says. “True club DJs playing club music for people that want to dance in a fun environment that is high energy and low stress. It’s the cool party inside the bigger party.”

Project GLOW launched in 2022. Bailey connected with the operators after the first event, and they discussed Bailey curating his own space for 2023. “They were very clear that they wanted me to lean into the vibrant LGBTQ nightlife of D.C. and allow that community to be very visibly a part of this area.”

Last year, club icon Kevin Aviance headlined the Secret Garden. The GLOW festival organizers loved the its energy from last year, and so asked Bailey to bring it back again, with an entire year to plan.

This year, Bailey says, he is “bringing in more D.C. nightlife legends.” Among those are DJ Sedrick, “a DJ and entertainer legend. He was a pivotal part of Tracks nightclub and is such a dynamic force of entertainment,” says Bailey. “I am excited for a whole new audience to be able to experience his very special brand of DJing!”

Also, this year brings in Illustrious Blacks, a worldwide DJ duo with roots in D.C.; and “house music legends” DJs Derrick Carter and DJ Spen.

Bailey is focusing on D.C.’s local talent, with a lineup including Diyanna Monet, Strikestone!, Dvonne, Baronhawk Poitier, THABLACKGOD, Get Face, Franxx, Baby Weight, and Flower Factory DJs KS, Joann Fabrixx, and PWRPUFF.

Secret Garden also brings in performers who meld music with dance, theater, and audience interactions for a multi-sensory experience.

Bailey is an owner of Trade and Number Nine, and was previously an owner of Town Danceboutique. Over the last 35 years, Bailey owned and operated more than 10 bars and clubs in D.C. He has an impressive resume, too. Since starting in 1987, he’s DJ’d across the world for parties and nightclubs large and intimate. He says that he opened “in concert for Kylie Minogue, DJed with Junior Vasquez, played giant 10,000-person events, and small underground parties.” He’s also held residencies at clubs in Atlanta, Miami, and here in D.C. at Tracks, Nation, and Town.

With Secret Garden, Bailey and GLOW aim to bring queer performers into the space not just for LGBTQ audiences, but for the entire music community to meet, learn about, and enjoy. While they might enjoy fandom among queer nightlife, this Garden is a platform for them to meet the entirety of GLOW festival goers.

Weekend-long Project GLOW brings in headliners and artists from EDM and electronic music, with big names like ILLENIUM, Zedd, and Rezz. In all, more than 50 artists will take the three stages at the third edition of Project GLOW, presented by Insomniac (Electric Daisy Carnival) and Club Glow (Echostage, Soundcheck).

Out & About

Washington Improv Theatre hosts ‘The Queeries’

Event to celebrate queer DMV talent and pop culture camp

Published

3 hours ago

April 26, 2024

Tinashe Chingarande

The Washington Improv Theatre, along with the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs and the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington DC, will team up to host “The Queeries!” on Friday, April 26 at 9:30 p.m. at Studio Theatre.

The event will celebrate Queer DMV talent and pop culture camp. With a mixture of audience-submitted nominations and blatantly undemocratically declared winners, “The Queeries!” mimics LGBTQ life itself: unfair, but far more fun than the alternative.

The event will be co-hosted by Birdie and Butchie, who have invited some of their favorite bent winos, D.C. “D-listers,” former Senate staffers, and other stars to sashay down the lavender carpet for the selfie-strewn party of the year.

Tickets are just $15 and can be purchased on WITV’s website.