Pioneer Awards Banquet
Honoring Those People Who Changed The World
Every year, Real Life Experiences (Fantasia Fair's parent organization), honors transgender leaders - those who have sacrificed their careers,
their families, their fortunes to change the world so transgendered people could begin to come together in safety and comfort. Without them,
we would not be here; we would be at home, hiding in our closets.
We meet to honor their work and thank them for all they have done for us and to give them back a little in return for their decades of work on
our behalf.
Stephen Whittle, 2007
Dr Stephen Whittle OBE, Ph.D is an active member of the United Kingdom TransActivist organization
Press for Change. He is Professor of Equalities Law in the School of Law at Manchester Metropolitan
University, co-ordinator of the United Kingdom's FTM Network, and vice-president of Press for Change.
Stephen has actively worked towards changing
the laws and social attitudes surrounding transgender and transsexual lives. His activism led to the important XYZ case before the European Court of
Human Rights in 1996. In 2002 he was awarded the Human Rights Award by the Civil Rights group Liberty, for his commitment and dedication to
ensuring the advancement of rights for transsexual people through judicial means in the UK, Europe, and around the world and Stephen was made
an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to gender issues. Mr. Whittle has written extensively on the law surrounding
transsexual and transgender people, as well as several academic articles on the history and theory of transgender. His writings have included,
among other things, an article on the ground-breaking transsexual employment discrimination case decided on by the European Court of Justice.
Holly Boswell, 2006
Holly Boswell is one of those special individuals who have helped launch and define the Transgender Movement.
In 1990, Holly wrote the groundbreaking and influential essay titled "The Transgender Alternative." By many accounts, this essay planted the
seeds of the transgender revolution that today bears fruit. In fact, Holly's work was one of the references used to define the term
"transgender" by the Oxford English dictionary.
Holly's contributions were not limited to her writings. Twenty years ago, she co-founded the
Phoenix Transgender Support Group in Asheville, NC,
which is now the oldest open group in the South-East and is currently helping people in five states. In 1991, Holly's efforts helped create the
Southern Comfort conference and she has been the chief architect of the conference's program ever since. By 1993, Holly founded the alternative
Trans-Spiritual community known as Kindred Spirits, which produces her Traveling Medicine Shows. At the turn of the millennium, Holly opened the
"Bodhi Tree House," a mountainside retreat for the transgender near the Black Mountains of North Carolina.
Holly has become a very popular speaker and seminar presenter with various Transgender conferences, including such events such as
California Dreaming, IFGE, Southern Comfort, and of course Fantasia Fair, where she usually focuses on gender expression
beyond the binary, the spiritual aspect of our gender journeys, and the beauty of "humanness" regardless of gender.
Holly Boswell's efforts have earned her two service awards from the Asheville LGBT Community, as well as the 1998 Trinity Award and the 2003
Virginia Prince Award - both presented by the
International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE).
You can read more about Holly's contributions in the October 16, 2006 edition of Fantasia Fair's
Gazette.
Joanne Law, 2005
Joanne Penny Law describes herself as "a transgender activist" with more than two decades worth of experience assisting individuals,
corporations, unions, and policing organizations in the most effective manner to address transgender and gay/lesbian issues. Joanne has fought
tirelessly for the acceptance of all individuals, independent of their orientation and gender identity/expression.
She is a long-time member of Gender Mosaic, a transgender social support group in Ottawa. Joanne has been a member of the Ottawa Police Service
Liaison Committee, President of the Association of Lesbian, Transgender, Gay and Bisexuals of Ottawa, and a member of the Ottawa Carleton Hate
Crime Task Force. Her opinions and insight have been found on the Internet, large national conferences, Canadian national radio, and on
television.
Joanne also maintains a popular
Internet site,
where yoou can find Joanne's 2005 Fantasia Fair
keynote address along with other of her writings.
Nancy Nangeroni, 2005
Nancy Nangeroni is a widely respected transgender activist, author, lecturer, musician, and media producer on issues of gender.
After transitioning from living as a man in early 1993, she became a leading voice in the emerging transgender movement,. She established a long
history in community support efforts and collaborative activism. Nancy has served as Executive Director for the International Foundation for
Gender Education. She founded the Boston chapter of The Transsexual Menace and authored the transgender amendment to the Cambridge Human Rights
Ordinance. Nancy is a regular presenter to classes at local high schools and colleges, as well as for professional and GLBT organizations and
transgender gatherings across the US. She has appeared on local and national commercial prime-time radio and television broadcasts to discuss
issues of gender and transsexualism. Along with her partner, Gordene Mackenzie, she produces and hosts the leading radio talk show about gender
and transgender issues, GenderTalk, which airs weekly on WMBR-FM in Cambridge, MA, and worldwide via the Web at
www.gendertalk.com.
Sister Mary Elizabeth, 2004
During a trip to rural Missouri in 1990, Sister Mary Elizabeth met a number of people living with AIDS who were unable to obtain the latest news and
information about the disease for fear of losing their privacy. "I realized that electronic bulletin boards were the answer," the 57-year-old Episcopalian
nun says. "Users would have up-to-date information and could retain their anonymity." That same year, Sister Mary Elizabeth followed her inspiration and
founded the AIDS Education Global Information System (AEGIS), which became the world's largest database for AIDS and HIV information. AEGIS, which Sister
Mary Elizabeth runs from her mobile home in the old California mission town of San Juan Capistrano, is the hub for hundreds of thousands of electronic
files that include all the AIDS-related contents of the National Library of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although AEGIS
is free to users, the $20,000 annual cost of maintaining the service is acquired through contributions and Sister Mary Elizabeth's part-time work as
a computer consultant.
Judy Osborne, 2004
Judy Osborne, a transsexual woman, began her involvement with the community in 1977 when she joined a Tri-Ess affiliate in Portland. She joined
the Emerald City when it was formed in 1983 and its board in 1985, serving on the board a total of twelve years, four of them as the
club's President. She was a member the Seattle Police LBGTQ Advisory Council and taught classes at the Seattle/King County Police Academy before
it merged with the State Academy. Judy has written extensively for Tapestry and Transgender Forum and prepared and distributed a series of
twenty-four monthly letters on transgender topics for psychologists. She has done considerable political work for the LGBTQ community in and
around Seattle.
She’s a board member of Seattle’s Ingersoll Gender Center, where she chairs the Outreach and Communications Committee and writes a monthly
letter to psychologists about transgender topics. She especially likes working with queer youth, speaking with various youth groups and classes
and serving on a unique American Friends Service Committee GLBTQ youth program committee. Judy is a member of the Seattle Police Chief’s Sexual
Minorities Advisory Council and teaches classes of cadets at the Police Academy about transgender topics. Judy’s work for Soulforce has taken
her into a remarkable variety of places, situations and occasionally jails. She serves on the Soulforce national advisory board.
Phyllis Randolph Frye, 2003
Phyllis Randolph Frye is an OUT transgender attorney from Houston. In her earlier life she was an Eagle Boy Scout, her high school's ROTC
commander, a member of the Texas A&M University Corps of Cadets, a military officer, a civil engineer and a father. Ms. Frye has been involved,
consistently on the front lines of the LGBT freedom movement, for 25 consecutive years. In 1980, she changed the Houston law against
crossdressing. She founded the Transgender Law Conference in 1991. She was the pioneer in the national movement for transgender legal and
political action. In 1995, Ms. Frye received the "Creator of Change" Award from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. In 1999, she received
the Virginia Prince Lifetime Contribution Award from the International Foundation for Gender Education. During this year, she and attorney
Alyson Meiselman of Maryland, took the Christie Lee Littleton case (
http://christielee.net) which declared that genitals were not dispositive in
the legal definition of sex so that a transgendered woman, vaginaed for over twenty years, was declared to be legally male. She has also taught
as an adjunct professor of law and she was elected or served four times as a Delegate to the Convention of the Democratic Party of the State
of Texas.
You can keep up with Ms. Frye's latest happenings on her
website.
Ariadne Kane, 2003
Dr. J. Ariadne Kane is a gender specialist and director of Theseus Counselling Services. She is currently doing Consulting work on a variety of
subjects including gerontology and the needs of GLBT folks approaching the 6th decade. She is also marketing GARP and other workshops about
gender diversity.
Ariadne has a host of major accomplishments and awards including being the Founder of Fantasia Fair, Creator of the New
Women's Conference, the original Provincetown symposia on CD/TS concerns (l976-80), founder and long time Executive Director of OIGS, and
promotion of the androgyne lifestyle as a model of gender balance in the face of societal changes and is the co-author of "Crossing Sexual
Boundaries."
Merissa Sherrill Lynn, 2002
Merissa Sherrill Lynn was founding director of the
International
Foundation for Gender Education, an early transgender activist and community leader.
In the early 1970s, Ms. Lynn was a part of the Cherrystone Club, whose members envisioned Fantasia Fair. By 1997, the
Cherrystone Club split into two groups, one of which became The Tiffany Club. As the
Tiffany Club of New England, this organization continues to thrive and provide a safe, secure, non-sexual,
friendly place to meet and dress.
In the late 1980s, working with the
Chicago Gender Society,
Ms. Lynn helped organize the first
International Foundation
for Gender Education (IFGE) convention in Chicago, Illinois. Today, this conference is considered one of the most influential
and prominent annual transgender events.
Virginia Prince, 2002
Virginia Prince is the founder of the first cross dressing society in North America, Tri-Ess, and a well known pioneer in our community. She was
the publisher of Transvestia, and an active and ardent spokesperson, author and researcher for the CD community for over 50 years.
A staunch promoter of heterosexual transvestism since the late 1950s, Virginia Prince has had a powerful impact on the transgender community.
She was the first person to establish a systematic organizational structure that provided a safe setting for transvestites and transsexuals to
“come out,” and her advocacy of a “transgenderist” position since the late 1960s constituted a major conceptual and identity innovation. These
articles focus on issues of sex, sexuality, and gender and serve as a foundation for what later became “transgender studies” in the 1990s.
The individuals that we honor each year recognize the importance of supporting the community and we know that you recognize this too. Please add
your support with your generous donation to
The Transgender Pioneer Award Fund.
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