Hello everyone,

You may notice that announcements made since September are missing from the site, and the reason for this is that our hosting service started sending us very cryptic messages in November telling us that our site was going to be moved to a faster server, but that “something was wrong” with the move and we needed to fix it.

We spent literally person-days on the phone with very clueless tech support persons in December who basically repeated, to sum up hours of conversation, “something is wrong migrating your database…we don’t know what it is, but you need to figure it out.” They could not even tell us if it was a software issue, file locations/paths, database issue, etc. They could tell us absolutely nothing. Even the “Level 2” tech people could not tell us, and just made guesses that we had “too many files” (not true) or that our site was hacked (not true) or it was “something we would just have to figure out.”

Well, since the site was working perfectly for us and everyone out there, how can we fix a problem when we don’t see it? It’s like telling you “something on your car is about to break…what it is, we cannot say. Where it is located, you must never know. How bad the failure will be, only fate shall determine such.” We may as well have asked a psychic numerologist for $3.99 an hour.

Well the holidays came, and just like how a cat will inevitably knock down even the best-supported Christmas tree, every single one of our 5 sites went dead. A fun-filled week of mad scrambling to fix everything ensued – while both admins had to work their usual 60-70 hour a week day jobs, and we fixed it. Unfortunately, thanks to Godaddy, we lost 4 months of posts and changes, and NO despite us having set up things to automatically do weekly backups, apparently they lost those as well.

So the bad news is, 4 months of posts/updates were lost, but we can recover most of them by some painstaking hard work which to be honest isn’t really worth it since much of the posts were advertising local events now past or Trans Talk episodes now past. The good news is that no new historical archive material was added in the last 6 months due to a broken scanner and no computer to run a new scanner, so the historical archives are safe. There were changes to two pages remaining which we are fixing today, we are manually doing weekly backups of the entire site from now on and storing them in a cloud space, and we are seeking a new host who will guarantee daily backups and monitoring.

So we apologize for the outage and lost content, but the lost content was fairly ephemeral at least. Since we have managed to kill of some side work, and I am getting a new scanner and computer to run it and a new workspace, the updates will soon continue and the thousands of pages of irreplaceable trans, intersex, and non-binary history will soon be growing – as always, in maximum resolution without watermarks or phoney copyright restrictions. Remember, this site is an educational site for the preservation of OUR history, and we do NOT charge any fee, we have NO advertisements and never will, and are a completely non-profit historical academic site.

Nightshade
Site Administrator

Photo by Jorik Kleen on Unsplash

Hello everyone! Welcome to March’s edition of Trans Talk!  We’re kicking off the show with the transgender news of the month as usual, and then we are going to be talking with three special guests by phone – first we will talk with Jules Brackins and Ari Copeland about Transgender Day of Visibility, and then Rachael Cady will be joining us, a freelance lighting and projection designer working in the Kansas City entertainment industry, designing for shows at many theatres.  We will be talking to her about her life and her art and the impact of the Coronavirus emergency

We do hope you will be able to join us this Saturday, March 28th at 1:00 pm on 90.1 KKFI, Kansas City Community Radio! You can also stream the program live on kkfi.org, or via various apps on your phone.

Monthly Community Calendar – by Fiona

Hello I’m Fiona Nowling with the Kansas City community calendar. As usual, all the calendar can be found on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/TenthVoice/

Top of the list today is something with a short deadline – Whim Productions is soliciting scripts for short plays (1 – 5 minutes in length) for a project titled “Queering COVID”.  These will either be performed in person after the crisis, or online via a streaming platform.  The deadline is 3/31/2020 or whenever they reach 200 plays!  For more details, please go to https://www.facebook.com/WhimProductions

March 31^st is the Transgender Day of Visibility as we’ve been discussing already on the show.  Due to the Coronavirus emergency, the face to face Mid-America LGBT Chamber of Commerce event is tentatively rescheduled for June 24th.  But they are having an online resource fair all day on March 31^st.  There will be skill building workshops, panel discussions and more!  You can get more information and register at the Facebook event https://www.facebook.com/events/167524900934851/ or direct at https://business.midamericalgbt.org/events/details/virtual-transgender-day-of-visibility-4367?calendarMonth=2020-03-01  & https://maglcc.chambermaster.com/eventregistration/register/4367

Every month, I lead the Kansas City SOFFA group for Significant Others, Friends, Family, and Allies of Transgender and nonbinary persons.  Due to the Coronavirus emergency we are looking into ways to have virtual meetings. For more information, you can visit transascity.org/SOFFA or always reach me by email at soffakc@yahoo.com

Every third Thursday, the Equal Trans Support Group meets at 5:00 PM.  They are having virtual meetings during the Coronavirus emergency, so please join their Facebook group to get more details if you are interested.  https://www.facebook.com/groups/EQUALTransSupport/ There is also a second group for friends of EQUAL at https://www.facebook.com/Friends-and-Allies-of-the-EQUAL-Trans-Support-Group-2043657289193085/

JoCo Q-Space is a youth group for LGBTQ youth. They are doing some online activities during this, so for more information, go to https://www.facebook.com/jocoqspace/

Gender Spectrum is also doing online groups for teens and pre-teens – you can find more information on them at https://www.genderspectrum.org/groups/

Passages, the LGBTQIA youth group in Kansas City, Missiouri, has suspended their meetings but they can still be reached for resources via their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/kcpassages/

There is an MTF support group at the Kansas City Center for Inclusion on the first and third Tuesday of the month at 6pm – they are suspended but the center is looking into online options during the emergency. There is an FTM support group elsewhere, both for adults and for youth, so if you are interested & want to find out options during the coronavirus emergency, please text or call Gus at 816-785-8686.

The Kansas City PFLAG chapter, which is Parents, Families, Friends, and Allies of LGBT people has a Facebook page where you can get more details on current activities – https://www.facebook.com/PFLAGKC

I’m Fiona Nowling and that’s the community calendar for the upcoming month.

If you have any events that you think should be added to the calendar, please message us on the Tenth Voice Facebook page, which is where this calendar will be magically appearing at 2pm!

Hello I’m Fiona Nowling with the Kansas City community calendar. As usual, all the calendar can be found on the Tenth Voice Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/TenthVoice/

The first event on the calendar is the regular episode of Trans Talk, an episode of the Tenth Voice, on 90.1fm KKFI, streaming online at kkfi.org and via various apps on your phones!  Today, June 22nd, from 1-2 pm central time, we’ll be talking to Faith about the upcoming Trans Pride March, to Una about her experiences in an Asia this month, and we’ll have our usual news rant (hi Una!) and finish up with the community calendar (which is right here in a sneak preview!).

On June 22, as you just heard from Faith, there will be the first ever Kansas City Trans Pride March. This is a family-friendly and accessible event that will begin by gathering at Valentine Rd and Broadway in KCMO between 3:30 to 4:30, and you should park in the north west corner parking lot. The meet up will commence at Hamburger Mary’s Patio, and the march will begin at 4:30. The organizers are looking for volunteers and helping hands, and you can find out more about the Trans Pride March and volunteer should you choose to, by going to kctranspridemarch on Facebook, or by searching for kc trans pride march on transascity.org.

There will also be another new pride this year.  Northland Pride will take place on June 30^th 3-6pm in Linden Square.  You can find more information at https://northlandpridekc.weebly.com or their facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/northlandpridekc/   They are currently accepting applications for vendors, sponsors, artists and other resources, so if you want to get involved, you can message them on their facebook page or email them at northlandpridekc@gmail.com

That same day, there will be the Johnson County Pride Picnic, at Sar Ko Par Trails Park from 11am to 2pm.  This is hosted by five local organizations, including Equality Kansas of Metro Kansas City, and JoCo QSpace.  Details about it can be found by going to https://www.facebook.com/pg/EQKSKC/ and their events page, or direct to  https://www.facebook.com/events/516020002267007/   We do have a few things to celebrate in Johnson County for Pride this year, and some glaring omissions from some of the larger cities, such as Olathe and Overland Park.

An early heads up for an event for August too – on August 21^st, from 2pm to 7pm, the Kansas City Center for Inclusion is hosting an LGBTQ Job Fair at the University of Kansas Medical Center at 3901 Rainbow Boulevard, Kansas City, Kansas.  Details can be found by going to their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/InclusiveKC/ and then to their events page, or directly at https://www.facebook.com/events/441570989730438/ It’s worth visiting their events page anyway, they have all sorts of events going on every month.

Every month, I lead the Kansas City SOFFA group for Significant Others, Friends, Family, and Allies of Transgender and nonbinary persons. We meet on the first and third Wednesday of the month. In July, we’re only meeting once, on the 17^th, because the library is shutting early on the 3^rd.  That’s just the 17^th, in Study Room 116 at Leawood Pioneer Library, 6.30 – 8pm. For driving directions and other SOFFA information, you can visit transascity.org/SOFFA or email soffakc@yahoo.com

Every third Thursday, the Equal Trans Support Group meets at 5:00 PM. They also have a friends plus allies meeting on the second Monday of the month, at 6pm, and both are at the Kansas City Center for Inclusion, a couple of doors down from our studio at 3909 Main Street, Kansas City Missouri.  The Center has lots of other events too, which can be found on their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/InclusiveKC/

JoCo Q-Space is a youth group for LGBTQ youth. They meet every Thursday from 5:30pm to 8:30pm at Saint Andrew Christian Church 13890 W 127th St, Olathe, KS 66062. For more information, go to https://www.facebook.com/jocoqspace/.

They are the Kansas equivalent of Passages, Kansas City Missouri’s long-running LGBTQ youth group, which meets at the Kansas City Anti-Violence Project’s Q-mmunity Space, 4050 Pennsylvania Ave, Suite 135, Kansas City, MO, 64111, every Wednesday at 5.30pm – 9pm.

There is an MTF support group at the Kansas City Center for Inclusion on the first and third Tuesday of the month at 6pm. There is an FTM support group elsewhere, both for adults and for youth, so if you are interested, please text or call Gus at 816-785-8686.

On the third Saturday of the month, Authentically Me meets from 1-3pm at The Kansas City Center for Inclusion. This is a social group for gender diverse children in KC and their families, aimed at children 12 and under.

The Kansas City PFLAG chapter, which is Parents, Families, Friends, and Allies of LGBT people will meet on the 2nd Sunday of the month at 3pm, at the Village Presbyterian Church in Prairie Village, and the 4th Sunday of the month at 3pm, at the Kansas City Center for Inclusion.

I’m Fiona Nowling and that’s the community calendar for the upcoming month.

If you have any events that you think should be added to the calendar, please message us on the Tenth Voice Facebook page, or email us through TransasCity!

Our first topic is the anti-transgender action perpetrated on April 11 at UMKC by a transphobic guest speaker, and the reaction by the UMKC and KCMO police. We will speak to Faith, an eyewitness to the event who will give us an account of what really went down. Then we will talk to Michael Patch, the Artistic Director of Choral Spectrum, Kansas City’s LGBT+ chorus that works to create bridges between different parts of the Queer Community. Last but not least, we will speak with Ian Staten and Lucy Kullowner from the Redux Society, an organization working to bring back art, fashion, and dance from the past with a modern twist, holding monthly queer dances and working to make their lessons inclusive of queer and gender variant folk.

I do hope you will be able to join us this Saturday, April 27 at 1:00 pm on 90.1 KKFI, Kansas City Community Radio! You can also stream the program live on kkfi.org, or via various apps on your phone.

This month on Trans Talk we’re going to feature the return of former Trans Talk hostess Nichole Reighlie! We’re going to talk about her life and times, especially becoming the first transgender woman to hold a royalty position in the Missouri Gay Rodeo Association. We’ll also hear about her bid to become the first transgender woman to run for Ms. IGRA (International Gay Rodeo Association)!

We will have a take on the transgender news of the month, and trans and non-binary book review by Anthony, and then finish up the show with the community calendar update from Fiona.  I do hope you will be able to join us this Saturday, March 23 at 1:00 pm on 90.1 KKFI, Kansas City Community Radio! You can also stream the program live on kkfi.org, or via various apps on your phone.

As I’ve been updating the site with more of my archival materials (I still have less than a third posted so far), I’ve had to also make some necessary changes in the site.

When the site first started in 2012, there was a dearth of transgender information available locally to our community on how to transition legally in Kansas and Missouri. To help folks out with the legal aspects of transition, I consulted a local attorney and received information from transgender persons who had gone through the transition process, including my own experiences in Kansas, and I created the Kansas and Missouri transition pages. Which helped numerous people over the years.

Unfortunately, time passed and the information on the site became stale. I sought out legal help again from 3 different attorneys who frequently work with transgender persons in the KCMO area, and all three refused to help me in any way. Even when I asked for just general guidelines and how-to’s, they either said they didn’t want to get involved, or in one case said “why should I post information on your site that will make me lose business, Una?” I guess I have to credit her mercenary honesty.

I made a second effort this last fall to get updated information, but was unable to find a single attorney or paralegal willing to donate even a couple of hours of time to help me. While several persons who had gone through the process recently were kind enough to offer their help, what I needed was a more authoritative legal guideline that was more generic.

Thus, in the interest of only providing accurate information, I have been forced to remove the pages.

There will be continued reorganization and updating of the site in the coming months, which will move the focus more towards community history, science, social, and ethnic resources for us. The site receives between 300-800 hits every day from humans (meaning, non-bots or web crawlers), and can top 10,000 in a day when a newsworthy article is posted. Clearly the information here is valued by some, and I’m going to continue to focus on my strengths.

Please note too that if you have an idea for something to host on the site, please contact me at transascity@gmail.com. Also, if you have any sort of trans-focused event you want publicized, send that to us and not only can we post about it here, but we can tell folks about it on the radio for free.

Hello, and welcome to the June 2017 Trans Talk Edition of The Tenth Voice! We will have Debi Jackson and her family with us on this month’s show. Debi is the proud mom of a transgender daughter, Avery, and an activist. Avery featured on the cover of a recent National Geographic issue, “The Gender Revolution“. They join us this month to talk about the impact that activism has had on their lives.

We will also have our regular news round up of issues affecting Transgender and Non-Binary people, and finish off with our regular community calendar spot. We do hope you will be able to join us this Saturday, June 24 at 1:00 pm on 90.1 FM KKFI, Kansas City Community Radio! You can also stream the program live on kkfi.org.

Hello, and welcome to the May 2017 Trans Talk Edition of The Tenth Voice! We have two guests with us in the studio today. Registered nurse Kim Tilson is here to tell us all about the 2nd Annual Trans Health Inclusion conference which is coming soon, and to talk a bit about the past and present state of transgender health care. After a musical break we will be joined by Ari Copeland, a senior water scientist and transgender advocate who is going to discuss in depth some of the transgender news of the month and related issues with myself and Fiona in a roundtable – sort of a break from my usual news update, which many of my listeners refer to as “Una’s News Rant.” I guess we can call this the gender rainbow McLaughlin Group or something.

As usual, we will share with you the transgender news and the community calendar update. We do hope you will be able to join us this Saturday, May 27 at 1:00 pm on 90.1 FM KKFI, Kansas City Community Radio! You can also stream the program live on kkfi.org.

Summary: a surprisingly touching, respectful, and accurate fictional portrayal of the coming out of a transgender woman in England in the early 1970’s. This film avoids nearly all of the “transploitation” themes of most works up to the 2000’s and is a “must see” for anyone interested in a transgender “coming out” historical fiction from 45 years ago. Even though the lead is played by a cisgender woman, this film gives us a hint of how we could have started out on a more positive media footing barely 2 years after Stonewall. There is a complete review of the film at the link below, along with four clips from the film.

Movie Review: I Want What I Want (1972)

Christine Jorgensen’s story was introduced to most of the world via an autobiography which was published in the American Weekly magazine shortly after news broke of her sex reassignment surgery. We have purchased an original archival photograph of Jorgensen reading her own article in the Weekly, which has this caption on the reverse: “Preparing for a new life, in which publication of her color photographs will be the first task, Christine (nee George) Jorgensen reviews story[sic] of her life in American Weekly.” The date on the photograph is March 3, 1953, but there is reason to suspect it’s from later in the month. You can view and download a high-resolution scan of this photograph at this link here.