Thursday, July 19, 2007
Women's troubles
. . . .Back in Shakespeare's time, men and boys played all the roles, including the female parts. These days, men mostly dress up as women for comic effect. In Hairspray, the audience are in on the joke that an actor is playing Edna but the fact that it's a man isn't alluded to at all.
Unsurprisingly, Travolta took time to accept his sex change. "It was hard for me to grasp the concept of being a leading man for 30 years, and now I'm being sought out to play a fat woman from Baltimore," he explains.
Sometimes, as the country song goes, it's hard to be a woman. Just ask Travolta, who spent four to five hours in the make-up chair at the start of his working days. He was encased from forehead-to-toe in a full 30lb body fat suit and given separate gel-filled silicone prosthetic applicances (chin and lower lip, upper lip, two cheek pieces and one wrap-around neck and cleavage piece).
People were taken in by his transformation. One audience member asked after an early screening, "who was the lovely woman who played Edna?". The producers, too, report that cinemagoers didn't know it was Travolta until they saw his name in the credits at the end.
Even the actor didn't recognise himself on viewing the screen test. "I didn't see me in it, and I tested it on other people. I said 'take a look at that. There's this broad we're looking at to see if she's going to be good for the movie'," he recalls.
"I let them watch for five minutes, and I said 'what do you think of her?'.
They said, 'she's fun, she's bubbly, she's kind of cute'. And I said, 'good, that's me'.". . .
The lesbian couple who both had babies by a gay drag queen
Last updated at 11:04am on 18th July 2007
With their baby son and daughter in their arms, Stephanie Burns and Joanne Bartle are the picture of proud motherhood.
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And it's all thanks to a gay drag queen.
Miss Burns, 23, a trainee truck driver, was desperate to have a child with her lesbian partner. They had been looking for a sperm donor when they started chatting to 21-year- old transvestite singer Ryan Egeley in a nightclub.
He revealed that he, too, wanted children and agreed to be a donor.
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Happy families: Stephanie, Ryan and Joanne, with children Martha Rae and Elijah Jo
A nurse gave Miss Burns a handful of sterilised medical syringes and she carried out a DIY insemination at their home in Bawtry, Doncaster. She became pregnant at the first attempt.
Then, while decorating the nursery, 40-year-old Miss Bartle announced she wanted to have a baby as well. So the pair approached Mr Egeley again and he donated sperm on three further occasions before she, too, became pregnant.
The couple now have a 13-month-old son, Elijah Jo, and a ten-month-old daughter, Martha Rae.
To complicate matters even further Miss Bartle also has a three-year-old son, Jonah, from a previous heterosexual relationship.
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Sperm donor: Ryan in drag
"I wanted Jonah to have a younger brother or sister to play with," she said. "Now, thanks to Stephanie and Ryan, he's got two.
"They're our little angels. We're incredibly lucky to have both conceived. Especially with such a haphazard method. I didn't know what I was doing."
Miss Burns said: "I didn't really believe it would work at all. I was gobsmacked. We both literally jumped for joy. It was the best feeling in the world. . . .
Bar vs. transgendered: AG looks into complaint
Peter Corbett
The Arizona Republic
Jul. 18, 2007 05:19 PM
But one of the banned patrons, Michele deLaFreniere, has filed a discrimination complaint against Anderson's Fifth Estate.
The Arizona Attorney General's Office is investigating and a hearing is set for Aug. 7.
"It looked like a man trying to get the ladies drink special," Anderson said of the cross-dressing patrons. . .
It did not work to have the cross-dressing patrons use the men's room, either, since some of the men chastised them and they were at risk of getting beat up, Anderson said. . . .
Who's your daddy?
jvogels@hour.ca
 |  Clever '70s marketing isn't so far from today's reality for some FTM transsexuals |
This isn't the only awkward type of scenario to arise when a female-to-male (FTM) transsexual decides to have a baby.
Imagine walking around looking like a man nine months pregnant - and it's not a beer belly. Or how the staff at the hospital is going to react when you show up at the delivery room - and you're not the one handing out the cigars.
FTM transsexuals face unique challenges when it comes to parenting, explains R, who was speaking on the topic at the Guelph Sexuality Conference this year and asked me not to identify him publicly because of his job situation.
Unlike lesbians, gay men and even male-to-female (MTF) transsexuals, who have their own boatload of troubles when it comes to becoming parents, many FTM transsexuals forgo genital reconstruction surgery (it's harder to turn an innie into an outie) and thus are left with their female reproductive anatomy intact. Which means, if they're off hormone therapy, they can get preggers and have a biological child. . . .
