Category: Political

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History LGBTQ Non-binary Organization Our Center Political Transgender UNR

UNR Queer Grad Collective

Credit: https://www.instagram.com/qgc_unr/

The Queer Grad Collective (QGC) is an officially-sanctioned Graduate Student Association (GSA) University of Reno (UNR) social club.  I met via Zoom this week with M (she/her/they/them) to learn more about them and the club’s origins.

M is a grad student pursuing a Masters in Fine Arts in creative writing, particularly in the genre of science fiction.  They hail from the fine state of Washington. Two years ago, M met Cas (she/her/he/him/they/them) on Lex, a text-centered social app that connects queer lovers and friends (I had to look that one up).  Cas, a Ph.D. candidate in the Environmental Science realm, had posted that there were no queer resources for graduate students at UNR. M and Cas met virtually and quickly came up with a constitution, found a network of students and faculty to support the group, and brought the school on board to found the QGC.

QGC’s mission is to make and create a safe community for queer graduates and people throughout the campus.  They have long-term plans to engage in activism, but for now, they are a social organization.

The group meets currently every other Friday from 11-noon.  They started two years ago in a virtual environment, then moved to in-person, then back on-line.  M said that they generally have about ten to fifteen people attend each meeting.

Right now, they are planning an end-of-semester afternoon picnic bash at Rancho San Rafael Regional Park in Reno sometime in the first two weeks of May. 

M said to join the mailing list or log into Discord (I haven’t figured either of these things out yet) to get the details on the event.

Being a social group, their primary objective is connecting people on campus. They have an Instagram @qgc_unr. And they maintain this elusive listserve that I have yet to find.

M said that their marketing strategy thus far has been

  • Put up flyers at UNR campus bulletin boards
  • Use the QLAB listserve
  • Bulk emails to UNR department
  • Maintain an Instagram presence
  • Set up tables at the GSA club fair and other events
  • Partner with other student organizations, both graduate and undergraduate

They have plans to connect with Our Center in the near future.

When I asked M what they are particularly proud of being involved with at QGC, they said that they are just proud that QGC still exists.  M said that it has been tough in the last two years under COVID-19 restrictions to meet people in a town new to them and get to know each other virtually.

Nonetheless, QGC has partnered with the Associated Students of the University of Nevada (ASUN), the student government of UNR, to host a Q&A for students. They’ve hosted a joint holiday party. They’ve partnered with the undergraduate Queer Student Union (QSU) on a gender-affirming closet exchange and plan to host a mentorship program with them next year. They’ve also partnered with QLAB; the local chapter of Out in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (oSTEM); and UNR Pride.

When I asked about plans for the future, M said they had no hard plans right now because of the lingering uncertainty of COVID.  M did tell me about their undergraduate queer center in Washington, which had its own dedicated space, held book clubs, support groups, and bitch and stitches. Though M didn’t specifically say that was the goal, we did discuss how it would be great to have a place where all the LGBTQ organizations could meet and hold space.

Like me, M is excited to attend their first Pride in Nevada and see how the Biggest Little City does it.  When I asked what is one of M’s favorite queer spaces or events in Reno, they told me the Holland Project. I had never heard about it before; M says it’s an all-ages venue with a really cool art space and art classes.  M looks forward to going to a show there soon.

When I asked M what they want people to know about QGC, they said they want people to know that QGC is working to foster the first explicit community on the UNR campus for queer graduate students.  QGC is achieving this through community building activities and hopes to continue in the future with social activism and engagement.

Interview with M Sawan, Co-Founder
M Sawan, Interviewee. Credit: LinkedIn
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Health History LGBTQ Non-binary Organization Political Transgender

Transgender Allies Group

Credit: TAG website

The Transgender Allies Group (TAG) is an advocacy group for transgender people in Nevada. They go to the Nevada state legislature and lobby to have bills passed and sometimes terminated.

TAG has been around since 2010. A bathroom bill brought TAG into existence. At the time, Nevada was considered one of the lowest states for LGBTQ welcomeness. As a result of massive legislation in this state over the years, Nevada, in 2020, was ranked number ONE by USA Today as the most LGBTQ-friendly state in the nation. The rankings looked at legislation, number of hate crimes, and LGBTQ population per state.

Some TAG wins here in our good ‘ole Nevada:

  • One of the easiest states to get ones birth certificate changed
  • It is very easy to change ones’ gender marker
  • No longer have to publish your name in the newspaper when you do a name change
  • No longer have to prove to the DMV that a 3rd party verifies who you are
  • One of the few states that has an X gender on drivers’ licenses

When I spoke with Sherrie Scaffidi, the president of TAG (see here and here for more on Sherrie) she said one of the reasons they have been so successful is that TAG has good rapport with the Nevada State Senators.  Nevada has four open LGBTQ legislators. Sherrie said it has been easy to get them on board with getting various bills sponsored, supported, or killed.

The TAG board is currently comprised of two transgender women, two transgender men, and one cis gay man.  These folks are the president, secretary, treasurer, and two directors.

The meetings are held via Zoom on the fourth Thursday of every month in conjunction with Northern Nevada’s Carson City chapter of PFLAG, for which Sherrie is also the president. For anyone who is not familiar with PFLAG, they are the first and largest organization for LGBTQ people, their parents and families, and allies.

TAG has about 12 active members, but Sherrie knows that they touch the lives of many, many more in Nevada. It’s unknown exactly how many people, though, because TAG does not maintain a listserve in order to preserve anonymity of those seeking assistance.  TAG often deals with people who are not ready to come out.  Sherrie estimates they affect 50 to 100 people personally and one-on-one per year in helping with transitioning legal tasks like name changes.  

When a bill gets passed specific to the transgender community, TAG doesn’t know how exactly many people they are going to touch. Nevada is estimated to have approximately 12,600 transgender people in 2022.

They have a great name-change roadmap and forms on their website and a ton of resources, but the website is definitely out of date, so I know some of it is not useful any more.

They need to update their woefully out-of-date website and develop a business presence on LinkedIn. They do have a twitter @TAGNevada which is very active, and I applaud that.

TAG needs to work on their marketing and outreach. Because they don’t collect listserves, they don’t have much of an outreach strategy. Mostly, it’s just Sherrie putting her personal contact information out everywhere she can. They get some contacts through PFLAG.

Although not a social group, TAG hosts a Transgender Day of Remembrance vigil at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Church in Reno every November.

TAG’s most current issue is advocating for the LGBTQ community in the Nevada prison system.  Transgender inmates are being put in the wrong gender population.  A transgender woman’s legal documents may confirm that she is female, but because she has male genitalia, she is often placed with the men’s population.  These inmates are often denied their hormones.  TAG is bringing new legislation in the latest session to address these injustices.

Sherrie wants you to know that TAG can help with anything having to do with gender transitioning.  And if you show them something they have never seen before and don’t have an answer to, they want to help you figure it out.

Sherrie helped me in 2021 to develop a powerpoint presentation for my organization on terminology and etiquette related to transitioning and transgender employees.

Follow them on twitter. Follow me on twitter.

Credit: TAG Website. Signing of Senate Bill 201, protecting LGBTQ youth from dangerous “conversion therapy.” From left to right: Eliza Cafferata (Nevada Advocates for Planned Parenthood), Sherrie Scaffidi (TAG), Tick Segerblom (Senator), Governor Brian Sandoval, Holly Welborn (ACLU-NV), Tyrone Thompson (Assemblyman), David Parks (Senator, Sponsor), Brooke Maylath (TAG), Stacey Shinn (PLAN), Brad Combs (Intern), Ashley Clift-Jennings (TAG).
Categories
Health LGBTQ Organization Personal History Political Transgender UNR

I Needed to Highlight Sherrie Scaffidi for Two Days

This is the second installment of my interview with Ms. Sherrie Scafidi, the president of the Transgender Allies Group, or TAG. TAG is mostly a lobbying organization for transgender rights, but they provide extensive resources for those who are seeking legal gender identity changes, including a flow chart on how to do it.

Please go back and read the short article from yesterday to learn about her story coming out as a transgender woman.

She also helps those not in the community by educating, speaking, and acting as a “standardized patient,” which is someone who plays the part of the patient at a medical school and guides the med student or nurse practitioner in the proper language and treatment of a transgender person. There is a great article from my very own UNR where Sherrie is quoted and photographed.

Credit: Nevada Today, UNR publication

What are some of the things that you have done with TAG that you are particularly proud of?

2 biggest

  1. A transgender person no longer has to publish their name change in the newspaper. When she changed her name in January 2017, it had to be listed in the newspaper. The law which changed that was passed in the 2017 legislative session one month later, in February.
  2. A transgender person no longer has to prove by a third party to the DMV that they are who they say they are. She said that when she changed her driver’s license, she had to get a third-party doctor to verify who she was. Now, Nevada is one of the few states that has an X gender and no verification now needed.

Sherrie also works full-time currently and is the president of PFLAG, the first and largest organization for LGBTQ+ people, their parents and families, and allies. She also has her own consulting business where she gets paid to educate and speak. She works with local security firms to educate their guards on the laws surrounding gender and bathroom use in Nevada.

In what little free time I can’t imagine she has much of, she loves to cook. She said that she spends all her money on shoes, cooking stuff, and model railroading. She also still has all the equipment from when she had worked as a gunsmith.

Sherrie identifies as a lesbian.  She laments that the local lesbian community is not as welcoming to her as a transgender woman as she wishes they were. As a member of that community, I was saddened by that statement but I also recognize that, though a generalization, my experience is similar. I believe it may be due to a lack of understanding (and maybe even empathy?).

Sherrie wants people to know that if they are transgender, they can help out the community by being open and visible if they are brave enough.  She would love to start back up her half-hour radio show about LGBTQ individuals that was cut short by COVID-19. She sees the value in growing a national audience for something like that.

Please check out the TAG website and read more about Sherrie’s work with the UNR med school.

2017 signing of Nevada Senate Bill 201 protecting LGBTQ youth from “conversion therapy”. Sherrie is second to left. Credit: http://www.transgenderalliesgroup.org/
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Coming Out Story LGBTQ Organization Political Transgender

Sherrie Scaffidi, President of the Transgender Allies Group (TAG)

Credit: Ballotpedia.org

When I logged into Zoom yesterday, I was faced with a woman with perfectly coiffed hair, nails with no chips in them and all done up in makeup. I was wearing pants and a bra and I felt like I was winning.

This was the second time I had the opportunity to talk to Ms. Sherrie Scaffidi, the president of the Transgender Allies Group, or TAG. TAG is mostly a lobbying organization for transgender rights, but they provide extensive resources for those who are seeking legal gender identity changes, including a flow chart on how to do it.

She’s not only a customer, but she’s one of their biggest clients. Not really—that’s just a goofy old saying from a commercial in the 80’s.

But she has had to walk through many of the scary legal transitioning experiences and now helps transgender Nevadans gain easier access. She said that she tried to sell her house in Fernley after transitioning, which was the impetus for developing a form to help others to sell their houses after their names are legally changed.

As someone who was assigned male at birth, she play-acted her life as a man for decades, through a 43-year marriage that ended when her wife passed away in 2012 from cancer. She still keeps close with her three kids who are all adults themselves now. She said her kids still call her Dad and Pop.

Sherrie explained that her sister asked her how she learned to walk after transitioning with such a feminine sway, Sherrie explained that she actually had to learn how to walk like a man throughout her life. She said she’s felt different since she was 8 years old.

Sherrie is also a military Veteran and an advocate for LGBTQ Veterans in Nevada. She’s worked with the local VA, and she estimates that there are 2,000 transgender Vets living in Nevada today.

In 2013, when she started transitioning, she had a lot of fear about coming out as a woman. Now, she hands out her personal information to anyone who will take it so that she can make connections and help others in the transgender community.

Please check back in tomorrow, where I will talk some more about Sherrie and her great work in Northern Nevada.

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Art Debbie Event History LGBTQ Our Center Political

Bull (Dyke) In a China Shop

On Friday, Debbie took me to see Bull in a China Shop at Reno Little Theater. I. Loved. It.

Evonne Kezios as lead character, Mary Woolley
Credit: Reno Little Theater facebook

I don’t know if it was because it was my first time back in live theater since the pandemic (I’m sure that helped), but this play gave me sooooooo many feels.

They still have a few shows left next weekend: March 24, 25, 26 at 7:30pm and March 27 at 2pm with a post-show talk-back. I plan to attend that the 27th matinee to experience all of the feels again. I look forward to hearing from the cast and crew.

You can read about the show on the theater website, but the gist is a historical story of two women, a professor and her student, who become the president of Mount Holyoke and a teacher there at the turn into the 20th century. But the real twist is they are lesbian lovers and, gasp!, feminists. The president, Mary Woolley, is a butch and assumingly unique in style and approach for her day, while her partner, Jeanette Marks is a more femme character.

They have an age difference, according to Wikipedia, of 12 years. So as whiny and immature as the Marks character is written and regardless that neither Debbie nor I are neither academics, the story very much reminds me of us.

I immediately connected to the demographics of the characters. I also realized quite early that I have never seen a butch lesbian character portrayed in live theater.

Woolley is an aggressive, ambitious, visionary and unique woman and feminist, to which I also could relate. One important line I will never forget was when Marks was berating Woolley for not carrying forth her vision of revolution, and Woolley replies, “I am the revolution.” I immediately thought of all the women like Debbie who have moved through the world as themselves, forwarding the LGBTQ+ change we see today just by being themselves.

There is also an understory of impatience of youth versus the calculating risks and rewards in the battles of revolution. This includes the antagonism of selling ones values out for money that allows them to live their dreams and the dreams of their partner. This is the perpetual question for anyone working toward social justice.

The lead characters, Evonne Kezios as Woolley supported by Tara Rispin as Marks, are fantastic. It took me a minute to fall in love with them, but I did. Hard.

Terri Gray was perfect as proper and equivocal Welsh, who I wanted to punch by the end of the play. Sydney Tello as Pearl and Claire Hachenberger as Felicity were absolutely adorable. Felicity made me laugh the hardest because she was such a chill goofball.

Claire Hachenberger, Sydney Tello, Tara Rispin
Credit: Reno Little Theater on facebook

Kudos to the Director, who I hope to hear from at the talk-back. The lighting designer, Chad Sweet, did a great job creating a lot of different environments and turning the stage into a wash of different colors and lighting over something like 26 scenes in 90 minutes.

Let’s talk about these friends, though: Intimacy Director Adriano Cabral and Assistant Intimacy Director Thomas Rao. These friends, working with the main characters, created some bedroom and night time scenes unlike anything I’ve ever seen before in live theater. I actually found the intimacy choreography on Thomas’ website and I’m a little disappointed that I don’t think I got to see all the goods they had choreographed.

Tara Rispin, Evonne Kezios
Credit: Reno Little Theater on facebook

The intimacy scenes were really very family-friendly, but, like I said, unlike anything I’d ever seen in live theater before. They seemed very genuine and I felt the intimacy. Maybe I’m just thirsty for content like this.

My favorite scene was Woolley, on a river in China surrounded by unseen diplomats, reflecting in monologue on her love for and return to see Marks again after 6 months traveling. Her musings were so lovely. All the feels.

If you saw or see the play, please drop me a note to tell me what you thought of it. And if you happen to catch your name on an alert in this blog as having contributed to the play, please repost and Thank you.

Credit: RLT
Categories
Coming Out LGBTQ Political Transgender

Lt. Governor Candidate Familiar with Transition

Please meet Ms. Kimi Cole, running for Lieutenant Governor of Nevada. If you read her “About” page on her website, you will read about their childhood in rural Nevada racing motorcycles and developing a relationship with the land and environment and then becoming a construction project manager where they learned, absorbed and lived the importance of housing in Nevada.

Picture of Kimi Cole in front of sagebrush background
from http://www.KimiCole.com
Credit: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kimi-cole

While discussing her history on that page, she cryptically mentions her transition. But take note: her gender pronouns change after this nod to transition.

While interviewing her on February 19, she explained that she transitioned into her female identity in 2009 at 55 years old. As she started living her best life, she was an innovator in the transition culture, since information on gender identity and gender dysphoria were very limited back then.

She talked about how the greatest obstacle to moving forward is to not feel misplaced in the world and to be able to accept ourselves.  She said that it’s easy to feel alone when it seems like the world is staring at you.  But it’s important to acknowledge that it’s not just your transition; everybody else is transitioning, too.  She talks about this in her 2016 TEDx talk, Walking in Another’s Shoes.

When I asked about any issues she intends to breach on LGBTQ+ issues, she said that Nevada has legislation that is favorable to the LGBTQ+ community. She talked about issues she’s advocated for or fought before, like the 2015 transgender bathroom bill.

I’ve heard it said that Nevada is the most favorable state to those in the transgender community. But she said that this is most true in the more urban centers, like Las Vegas, Reno, Sparks, and Carson City. She said that there are estimated as many as 12,600 who identify on the LGBTQ+ spectrum in rural Nevada, and it is still more difficult for the youth in the more rural areas.

As a lifelong resident, she believes she is an advocate for all in Nevada, but she also feels like if she can change a mind and save a kid’s life, she will take the time to invest.

Her website provides her current status as Chair of the Rural Democratic Caucus and her main political foci, which are the economy, infrastructure, the climate crisis, and affordable housing. The primary is June 14th and the general election is November 8th. Take a look at Kimi’s website, educate yourself on the other candidates, and BE SURE TO GET OUT THERE AND VOTE.