Things Fall Apart

[Jaye]

This is a little long, so I apologize in advance if that puts anyone off.

I've been coming to this forum for a couple of years now. It was my first real contact with the TG community as such, and it has helped a lot with my growth as a person, and helping to feel better about dressing and other topics. This spring, I decided to take things into the physical realm, and made first contact with the Charlotte-area TG suppport group, Kappa Beta.

That was six months ago. I didn't have much in the way of specific needs when I came to them, and I've found that my needs as a crossdresser have changed a lot since then. My activities with the group have become a foundation for all of the things I've done on my own. I might've gotten out to do these things on my own (shopping, dinner, etc), but my contact with KB helped to hasten things along. Now, I'm not sure if I need them at all.

KB has been around a long time, since the early 80s or before that, and has seen a lot of change in the intervening years. In the beginning, they were a strict-interpretationalist chapter of Tri-Ess (i.e., they were only interested in helping heterosexual crossdressers). Since then, their view has gotten a little wider. There aren't a lot of support groups for trans people, period, so excluding people became counterproductive. The current membership includes one girl who's post-op and a few others in various stages of transition.

That said, membership and attendance are at an all-time low. My first meeting in March had about 15 attendees, including me, and I was told that was a small gathering. Since then, every meeting I've attended has had about that many, and some less. In that time, only two other "new" people have attended our meetings, and I am the only one who came back or was voted into the group.

The group has a "Board of Directors" made up of our treasurer, secretary, newsletter editor, and two "at-large" positions. The elections for those positions were held between the August and September meetings, and the results were announced at the meeting last weekend. The candidates for the three designated positions ran unopposed, so only the at-large positions were contested. There were three candidates for two seats.

After the "winners" were announced, the Secretary and the candidate who wasn't chosen both announced that they were leaving the group. The second person was also the group's IT guru, and she announced that she would be pulling the plug on our two Yahoo groups (one public, one for members) and our website. I won't go into all the gory details, but the stated reasons for their departures were a supposed change in the focus of the group, and a few proposed changes to the group's bylaws.

In the week since that meeting, the internet has been alive with talk about the split. Because our old Yahoo groups were being closed, two new ones have been created. A faction of the disaffected members have formed their own group. I've been invited to join all of the above. Meanwhile, the email groups have been active with messages from both sides pointing fingers and calling names and making threats. I'm tempted to give them all the finger and tell them to piss off.

[Virginia]

HI Hon,
Well guess we all have egos - huh!!?? You should know more about these folks than others here, but my interpretation is any of several.
1. Some few did not like the direction the group was going and not getting their way, decided to defect!
2. The number of participants is due to the fact that Charlotte in much more accepting of "us," and as you are aware those of our sisters who do go out in public have a certain attitude that does not lend itself to the need for support to "find themselves!"
3. The old adage, "Power corrupts and absolute Power corrupts absolutely!"
4. It could just be a cycle. I know in our now hybernating group here, you can not predict how many may show up at a meeting until they actually walk in. Any number of reasons for that.
What I would recommend is finding or starting a club at some local establishment where "we" would be accepted. A safe place just to gather at a set time, date that offers, food, music, activities, dancing. We have that at a Club in Richmond and there is also a club in Charlottesville. Someone should approach the owner for some ideas about a place to gather, no pressure, no formal meetings, just a safe, accepting location that offers things we all enjoy. The club in Richmond has three pool tables, some viedo games, a bar, some of the girls bring in snacks, dart boards, dancing, nice bathroom facitlities. A very comfortable atmosphere where you can sit and talk in a normal voice without having to scream over the music. I would think that Charlotte would have something like that or that there are some places that would be willing to consider it!
Of course another option would be for Jaye to jump into their faces and try and set things straight, kind of a Big Summit meeting. There may not be enough girls to support both groups so finding common ground and reuniting would be the best route.
Thanks for sharing and keep us posted. My SO and I would love to come visit you folks sometime, Roanoke is not that far away!
Love,
Virginia

[DonnaT]

Jaye, when the members of KB got together, did they get out and about and go places ?

[Jaye]

Jaye, when the members of KB got together, did they get out and about and go places ?

Yes, Donna. Our meetings are always on the third Saturday after the first Friday of the month (don't ask why). One or two members come to our host hotel around noon or 1pm. For the next couple of hours, the members would gather in a suite rented for the occasion, getting dressed, chatting, etc. Around 3 or 4, the meeting is called to order, and business is taken care of. At about 5pm, the meeting is broken up and we go on to Hartigan's, and Irish pub/restaurant that caters to the LGBT (mostly lesbian, but that's not a big deal) community. After hanging out there for a couple of hours, we go back to the hotel. Some members take this opportunity to change clothes, and then some members would go out to a bar, Liaisons, for drinks and socializing.

That's all the group does, ever. That's one of the reasons I've been going out on my own. The places that the group goes are cool, but I keep asking, is this all there is? Maybe it's the age difference. At 34, I'm ten to fifteen years (or more) younger than most of the membership. When I first started dressing, way back in 1993, I was pretty active on the "club scene". After I got married, I wasn't allowed to go out at all. Now that I'm back out on my own, I face no such restrictions. My biggest complaint on that side is that we don't ever go anywhere with a dance floor. Hartigan's has a dance club in its basement, that's open Friday and Saturday nights. I posted a little message about that a couple months back. I've asked a couple of times if anyone was interested in going there with me, and I've had no takers. There's another club in Charlotte, called Scorpio, that used to have a pretty mixed clientele, with drag shows 2 nights a week. KB members used to go there, but I'm told that it's "not their scene" anymore.

I'd have thought that a place nicknamed the "Queen City" would have more to offer, but I keep forgetting that I'm deep in the Bible Belt. Charlotte has a pretty large LGBT community, but I keep feeling that the "T" segment was tacked on there as an afterthought.

[Virginia]

Thanks, Jaye, for clarifying that aspect of what has been the social aspect. I guess then, it kind of falls on you to make a decision as to whether or not you want to jump into the political aspect of it all. I guess you have to ask yourself can you actually help any of your, "new" sisters who are looking for an outlet and are struggling to cope with this aspect of there lives. Are you willing to "suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune!" in the political arena - because that is what it sounds like is tearing the group apart.
Just one girls input.
Love ya,
Virginia

[Jaye]

I just wanted to post a quick update. The fighting seems to have subsided for now, and business is proceeding more or less as usual on the new Yahoo group. There's still some bickering about the future of the group's website. Come to find out, much of the venom spewed about a couple of weeks back stemmed from one member's threat of litigation over the ownership of our domain name. It seems our erstwhile "webmistress" was more concerned about being outed as a crossdresser (a violation of group rules) than she was about being sued. Maybe it's different for me because I don't have so much at stake as a person, but I think her priorities need reordering. People are finding out about me on an almost daily basis, and I feel better about it all the time. Being outed would cost me so little I hardly worry about it anymore. I'm trying to take the whole "fun, fearless female" idea to heart.

[Jaye]

I kind of let this one go for a couple of weeks, while things sorted themselves out. They did, and with minimal fuss.

Some members of Kappa Beta have chosen to disassociate themselves from the group, and then decided to form their own group. I've decided to stick by KB, and I attended our monthly meeting Saturday. It started out as a small gathering, with eight of us (including one SO), but four more people joined us late, and we ended up with a good-sized crowd.

People joked before the meeting that we should wear costumes because of Halloween, but it was about a week to early for me. That said, I decided I did want to dress to impress, and that meant wearing a dress for once. I wore this hot little number:



with these shoes:



When I got to the hotel, a few of the girls were blown away, as this was my first time there in a dress. I wore a skirt to my second meeting, but all of the events and outings since I've worn either jeans or slacks. The outfit was kind of fun, but the shoes were killing me after about eight hours. What made it worse was having to split off after dinner and come home to prepate for work. I've always been able to get off for meeting dates, but my relief guy decided to quit, and Friday was his last night.

[SilverLady(SO)]

Jaye -

That's a beautiful outfit! And wearing heels for 8 hours (especially if you're doing a lot of standing/walking) can be painful for us GG's, too!

Glad to know you had a great time!



- SL