Happy Trans National Holiday 2014!

In the trans* community, Halloween is sometimes known by us by another name.

It's called the Trans National Holiday.

We call it that because Halloween, like Mardi Gras and Carnival in Brazil is one of the few periods on the calendar in which you can engage in cross gender dressing and not get judged for it.

It's the other days on the calendar that are problematic.

My first Halloween en femme was spent in 1980 at the old Studio 13 on Westheimer Rd.  I thought it highly humorous at the time that one of the major streets that transited the Montrose gayborhood had the same name as the famed sexologist Dr. Ruth Westheimer.  In my case, I was taking another step toward the giant leap of me becoming Moni.

Since I'm now 20 years into transition, Halloween doesn't have that same excitement for me that it once did, but for those peeps who are on the CD end of the community, this is a big night for them until they can get to their next CD conference or group meeting or those questioning whether they should start a gender transition.

It's also a big night for the folks who provide the transformation services that help them look their gender best, too.

I do the hard solid thinking about the Trans National Holiday pondering the historical aspects of it in terms of the elaborate Harlem Renaissance drag balls of the 20's and 30's and their ballroom community successors.  

Chicago's Finnie's Ball  and similar ones that took place in New York City and elsewhere around the country drew large crowds and people competing for cash prizes that sought to flawlessly look like for that evening the man or woman they in some cases secretly wanted to be full time.

Those drag balls are a piece of our trans history we should never forget.   We should also never forget the CD peeps are also part of our community.  As the joke with a grain of truth goes that we tell in gender groups and at conferences like SCC, today's crossdresser is tomorrow's trans woman booking a flight to Bangkok for GRS.

So Happy Trans National Holiday!   If your plans are to dress in femme attire, be a drag king or your favorite person of whatever gender, hope you have a wonderful evening doing so.  

And I also hope that tonight serves as the opening steps to your arriving at your own gender epiphany, and your future happiness flows from it..