It's On, Jim Fouratt

"Mr. Jim Fouratt, whom I once called friend and comrade in the Early Years of the Gay Movement. . . has shown his true colors. A once oppressed white gay male, now free and liberated, has become the enemy and the oppressor of the Transgender Community around the World. 

You have been writing such trash: that we must be saved from being brainwashed by our doctors, that they are mutilating our bodies and our minds. 

You (HOP and Fouratt) and others must realize that as many of you were born gay males we are born Trans. Stop speaking for me and my sisters and brothers of the Trans Community. We can speak for ourselves. Neither you nor anyone else can know our lives and our feelings. We have liberated your world. Why must we still sit on the back of the bus?"   Sylvia Rivera,  June 6, 2000 


And who is Jim Fouratt?     He's the transphobic Stonewall vet who is responsible for kicking Sylvia Rivera and other transpeople out of the Gay Activist Alliance.    He has been trying with the help of a 2009 appearances on the Colbert Report and sympathetic writers to whitewash his negative legacy.

He can spin all he wants, the paper trail and witnesses to your deeds don't lie and have spoken volumes about your penchant for sowing discord in the New York LGBT community and your virulent transphobia.
We crossed swords over my 'Why The Transgender Community Hates HRC' post that went viral during the period when the community was still majorly pissed about getting cut out of ENDA by Rep. Barney Frank and HRC in the fall of 2007.

He tried to post a comment here at TransGriot a few years ago assuming that because I was a teenager when he did his NYC dirt that I wouldn't know the backstory.

When he stepped to me, he didn't know that I'd already had a long conversation at Transy House with Sylvia Rivera during a May 2000 visit to New York in which she told me chapter and verse about the GLF/GAA drama and his BS once we agreed to disagree about our divergent views about the late President Lyndon B. Johnson.

When the San Francisco Sentinel posted my essay detailing the turbulent history between HRC and the trans community,  he shifted to his old tried and true tactics and attempted to call me a liar in the comment threads.   

Um Jim, newsflash for you.   That didn't work either.   Unlike you, I have a reputation in the community for integrity, honesty and tellin' it like it T-I-S is I'm quite proud of.

Besides, I'll believe Sylvia Rivera's account about what happened over yours any day.

And I hit Google on a regular basis, too.  And unlike back in the day when people like you and your radical lesbian feminist counterparts trashed transpeople secure in the knowledge they could do so with impunity, it's a new decade with new rules, homes.


We transpeeps in the 2k10 have the ability to punch back, and I damned sure will since you used my name in vain.  Nothing is more delicious to me than using your own words to blow up whatever contrived image you're trying to cultivate for a new generation of TBLG kids who don't know your divisive, jacked up history.  


Let's start with this blast from his trans hatin' past.  Fouratt wrote a May 27, 2000 e-mail commenting on the New York Times story about the Winchell case.  that described how gay peeps co-opted the situation and misgendered Calpernia Addams in order to turn it into a gay issue.

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Forwarded Message:
Subj: ALERT: New York Times promotes sexual reasigment (sic) as a solution to gender varinace (sic)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000528mag-calpernia.html

Date: Saturday, May 27, 2000 2:58:21 PM
From: JimFour@aol.com
I am shocked to hear a member of the Imperial Court endorsing this blatantly homophobic article written by a gayman. Yes, this is a tragic story. Murdered because he was perceived to be gay, Barry Winchell deserves all our grief and anger. As do his loved ones including a gender variant gayman self named Calpernia Sarah Addams, a professional gender illusionist.

All around us we see these attacks on gaymen who do not conform to some kind of Tom of Finland or Andrew Sullivan image, What is new is we now see gay academics and pop journalists embracing this new push to make gaymen and lesbians straight by leading them to endure painful physical body manipulation and dangerous hormonal injects to take on the topography of the conventional definition of what is male and what is female. Modern medicine is once again trying to cure us of our desire for same sex love.

Our gender variant gay and lesbian population is under intense pressure to deny their homosexuality and to take all physical, hormonal and emotional steps in order to be accepted into heterosexual society.

First we had Boys Don't Cry which told the horrific story of a 19 year old baby butch lesbian who was first raped and than murdered because she had the audacity to role play and act on her desire to love and have sex with women. In death Brandon Teen became the poster girl of the reparative therapy movement (aka transgendered) for adult gender variant gaymen and women and in this guise was deemed acceptable frirst to Hollywood and than to a larger straight audience. 

We are familuar with the smarmy tabloid journalism of gaywriter David France. Who could forget his bizarre book on Andrew Crispo? But does the New York Times need to sink to the level of the National Inquirer doing a Talk-ish sex/celebrity/death feature? I would hope not.

The Barry Winchell story needs to be told. How homophobia both external and more importantly internally puts at risk most homosexuals and lesbains and all gender variant individuals, How the rush to gender reassign through the wonders of modern medicine has ultimately failed ... where in the sensational picture of a professional skin strutter was there any reference to the 30 year John Hopkins study of sexual reassignment and how ultimately it did not improve the self image or well being of the subjects in their program. The results of this study caused John Hopkins to cease sexual reassignment as a solution to gender dysfunction. Or where is the information on how most transsexuals who are not closeted have very few job options other than in the adult entertainment and/or sex industry...Wendy Carlos and Dr. Renee Richard's are the exceptions.

The Imperial Court can be a powerful voice in confronting the solutions that are now being promoted by mainstream publications like the New Times and by the toxic, anti-gay/lesbian "queer" academics. Neither group is a friend of the Cherry Grove and/or Court community, Why can't Calpernia Sarah Addams dress, act and be himself as a gaymen, The Court sets a powerful role model of how to be who ever you want to be and to be true to your gay male identity. After all, this construction of 'women" is totally informed by gaymale sensibility and has little in reality to do with the essence of being female.

Speak up. Help those gender variant gaymen and women who are under siege to save their pennies to mutilate their bodies to gain acceptance into the heterosexual society.
Would be most interesting in hearing each of your response to this increasingly serious attack on who we are and how we live.
Jim Fouratt

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The caca storm he started with that e-mail was compounded by him being named as the speaker for a June 18, 2000 New York Heritage of Pride event over the objections of the trans community and our allies with several pulling out of the event because of the kerfluffle.   My fellow NTACers and Sylvia Rivera vehemently protested the choice of a transphobe as a keynote speaker while he went into spinmeister mode worthy of the best inside I-495 politician

He claimed the e-mail that's in this post was tampered with.  That was blown up and debunked by one of the trans speakers at the rally, Dr Sarah Fox.    She stated at the time: "I would be very interested in hearing your perspectives about how your letter might have been stolen, doctored, and redistributed, and I would particularly be interested in viewing the undoctored original."
     

This is not the first time Fouratt has caused outrage in our TBLG community. Arthur Evans, a seminal figure in gay activism and founder of Gay Activist Alliance wrote a letter to Heritage of Pride about Fouratt's selection as a speaker in which he stated, "Concerning Jim Fouratt: I've known him for 30 years. During that period, I have personally and repeatedly witnessed him undermine, demoralize, and incapacitate groups working on behalf of our community."

But Sylvia called it in 2000.  "You are afraid of your true self. Find yourself and leave us alone. We know who we are and are very happy, not like yourself."


Well Jim, you did say that Sylvia Rivera's instincts were always correct, and I have no reason to doubt that now.