Kappa Beta Serving the transgendered community since 1988

I was talking with my neighbor, Gloria, the other night. I've only recently met her, so she is still a little [sic] confused when it comes to crossdressers and transsexuals. Terminology is not her strong suit.

She mentioned that she had seen me as both “Nancy” and “John” (not my real former male name, but it will do for this discussion). Now it is true that she has seen me outside without hair and makeup on. Being called by my male name is somewhat upsetting for me, so I didn't like it, but bit my tongue.

Hello to all. I hope everyone had a great Father's Day yesterday! The board has been working hard to get ready for this month's meeting! Our meeting this month was delayed by a week, as you all should have known, because of Father's Day last weekend. But this weekend's meeting promises to be special in that we will be having our first, "KB roast" of a member! Please bring enough BBQ sauce! (Ha! Ha!) If things go well, we would like to make this an annual event!

The BOD will be discussing, with all our members, the election committee, as this will be a first here at KB. The election is just around the corner, with nominations taking place in July, the election in August, and the seating of the board in September.

This month I wanted to talk about our policy on new members. The group is always looking to add new members. If we want to grow as a group, we need new members! New members are our lifeline!

I was giving some thought this week to the many issues we face while co-existing on the planet with non-transgendered folk. While we aren’t perfect in how we deal with these issues, it always seems to come back to the issue of “tolerance”. What an incredible country we live in, where we so often hear about diversity and tolerance, but find that those traits are so often not available to us.

It almost seems that our conservative pilgrim heritage never grew up, and became hardened over the decades by a combination of religious hardheadedness and rugged frontier justice. Thinking about tolerance and intolerance led me (as it so often does!) to the internet, where I found the following quotes about Tolerance. Some of them are really fantastic, but I think that all of them foster thinking and discussion. I hope you enjoy...