Saturday, January 28, 2006

Woburn Crowne Plaza Hosts Trans Convention

The latest trend in the queer activist world is all things "trans". As we've all noticed, transgenders and transsexuals are more and more "out". Recently, the Tiffany Club of New England held its annual convention at the Woburn Crowne Plaza hotel. Seminars included "Transyouth" and "Transitioning at Work."

The Tiffany Club home page proclaims:
THE TRINITY OF BEING: OF BEING MASCULINE, OF BEING FEMININE, OF BEING ONE, WITH YOURSELF AND NATURE!

Here's a little snippet from the Bay Windows coverage:

And beyond the resources, another goal of the conference was for attendees to kick back and have fun. On Jan. 20 Richard Novic, a psychiatrist from Los Angeles, gave a reading of his cross dressing memoir, Alice in Genderland, to a small but enthusiastic audience. Novic, who was dressed in his “Alice” persona during the reading and said he is equally comfortable with either name and with male or female pronouns, may have made L.A. his home, but he also has deep roots in the Boston area, having received his undergraduate degree at Harvard and having gone to medical school locally. He thrilled the audience by describing his experience dressing as a woman in public for the first time at a Tiffany Club meeting in 1991 and flirting with the drag performers at Jacques and Playland.

Novic, who is married with two kids, who know about his weekly excursions to the clubs as Alice, said that he reconnected with the Tiffany Club for the first time in about 15 years when he signed his book at this past summer’s Pride festival. Of course, there was a complication; he was also in town for his Harvard class reunion.

“I snuck away from the festivities, threw a dress on, and went and sat at the Tiffany Club tent that Saturday afternoon at the Boston Pride festival,” he explained. After the festival, he ditched his female garb, got back into his male attire, and rejoined the reunion festivities.