Mycroft Masada is a nonbinary trans and queer Jewish leader with 30 years of experience who moved to Gaithersburg, Maryland (Montgomery County near Washington DC) from their lifelong home of Boston in 2014. A TransEpiscopal Steering Committee member and former Congregation Am Tikva board member, Mycroft is particularly called to pursue LGBTQ+ and fat justice, and is an advocate, organizer, consultant, educator, trainer, writer and artist. They are married to Julia McCrossin, the mas(s)culine fatshion blogger, and with her they co-parent a dogter. Their central online home is MasadArts.blogspot.com.


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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

MTPC's 10th anniversary - press release

http://www.masstpc.org/?p=1527 :

MTPC celebrates 10 years of serving the transgender community

September 27th, 2011

On Thursday, October 6th, 2011, the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition will celebrate its ten years of service to the transgender community with eXtatic: Growing on 10 Years, at Club Oberon in Cambridge, MA from 7 to 11 pm. Club Oberon is located at 2 Arrow Street in Harvard Square. There will be light refreshments, a short program of speaking and performance, and dancing til 11pm.


The event will feature performances by Second City trained performer and Miss Trans New England 2009 Lorelei Erisis; artistic director of the Femme Show, Maggie Cee; Johnny Blazes, named “one of Boston’s rising stars” by Stuff Magazine; and hosted by one of Boston’s Legendary Performers’ Ms. Lakia Mondale. Dancing to follow with DJ Tre’Andre.


Advance tickets are $15 to $50 and are on sale by calling 617-778-0519, at www.masstpc.org. Tickets will be available at the door the night of the event.


Attorneys Cole Thaler and Jennifer Levi founded MTPC in September of 2001. Its first meeting consisted of a small group of Boston area transgender community members committed to adding gender identity and expression to the Boston’s non-discrimination ordinances. MTPC launched its campaign to add statewide non-discrimination protections for transgender people in 2007. In 2008, founding member Gunner Scott was named executive director of the organization.


MTPC has grown steadily over the last decade, thanks in part to the partnership between chair Nancy Nangeroni and executive director Gunner Scott as well as MTPC’s effective and dedicated steering committee. The steering committee is made up of twelve committed activists, both transgender and allies, elected annually from among the MTPC membership.


“I consider myself lucky to be able to support the work of such a dedicated group of activists, who are all committed to promoting the welfare of transgender persons and community by their own hard work,” says Nancy Nangeroni.


MTPC will present the first annual Community Advocate Award and Community Innovator Award, to recognize the work of individuals or organizations that are striving to improve the lives of transgender youth, adults and families in Massachusetts.


This year MTPC is proud to present the 2011 Community Advocate Award to Lisa Mottet. Lisa currently serves as the director of the Transgender Civil Rights project at the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce at Washington D.C. She has worked tirelessly for the last decade to end trans-based discrimination on the state and federal level, has published several groundbreaking books on the subject, and was named one of the ‘Best LGBT Lawyers Under 40” by the National LGBT Bar Association. Lisa Mottet first assisted MTPC in 2002 with the non-discrimination ordinance in Boston and has continued to lend her assistance on numerous occasions including with the Transgender Rights Bill.


The 2011 Community Innovator Award will be given to Jesse Pack, who lives and works in Central Massachusetts. Jesse has worked in HIV/AIDS services for more than seven years and has been involved in community activism for more than ten years. In addition to his work with AIDS Project Worcester, he is also the Co-Chair for Worcester Pride.


In 2008, Jesse created the Transgender Emergency Fund (TEF), the first organization of its kind, to provide financial support for transgender people in need. The Transgender Emergency Fund was created by and for the Massachusetts transgender community and derives the majority of its support from GLBT community members. Since its inception, TEF has distributed more than $26,000 of financial assistance to low-income trans people throughout the state of Massachusetts. To learn more about the Transgender Emergency Fund and to donate, please visit http://www.tgemergencyfund.org.


“MTPC has worked hard and grown tremendously over the past 10 years. From helping to pass the Boston City Ordinance in 2002 to filing state-wide legislation in 2007 to launching an innovative public education campaign, MTPC has been at the forefront of the trans rights movement — not just locally, but nationally,” says Theadora Fisher, steering committee member. “This event is a celebration of MTPC’s stellar achievements and a call to action for the next 10 years because we know the work isn’t done yet.”


Eastern Bank, the largest independent and mutually owned bank in New England, is the lead sponsor of eXtatic. Eastern Bank offers banking, investments and insurance all under one roof, and prides itself on working harder to understand its customers’ needs so it can deliver these services in a committed and personal way. Other sponsors include Marcia Garber, A.M. Clark, Dignity Boston, Joan M. Fund, Esq., Kathleen Henry, Ellen Rottersman, Tom Lang, Michelle Tannen, Googleplex Technologies, Deborah and Ron Peeples, Rep. Carl Sciortino, State Street Corporation, The Network La Red, Mad Femme Pride, American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, the History Project, the Boston LGBT Film Festival, Queer Asian Pacific-Islander Alliance, MassEquality, and TransCEND of AIDS Action Committee.


A special exhibit of MTPC history and memorabilia, sponsored by the History Project, will be on display throughout the night.


For more information about MTPC, to buy tickets or become a sponsor of this event, visit www.masstpc.org, email info@masstpc.org, or call 617-778-0519.

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Friday, September 23, 2011

THIS SUNDAY - Squawk & Gobble : A Rad Fatty Fun(d)raiser - Oakland, CA


THIS SUNDAY is Squawk & Gobble : A Rad Fatty Fun(d)raiser in Oakland, CA! Hosted by the flabulous Marilyn Wann (http://fatso.com/), who will be doing a webcast or otherwise sharing video, for posterity and those of us who alas can't attend unless they invent a rad fatty teleporter.

Facebook event:

And here's that text:

Squawk & Gobble - a rad fatty fun(d)raiser

Sunday, September 25 · 6:00pm - 10:00pm
390 - 27th St. (between Telegraph & Broadway)
Oakland, CA

*LIVE MUSIC*
karaoke
BAND: Nothin' But Fun
Special Guest: Joe Libin on drums

Spaghetti Dinner!
(gluten-free options)

Belly bumps!

Dorky dancing & music video videotaping!
Rewriting song lyrics for body-poz content!

Live *WEBCAST* for fatties of all sizes everywhere to enjoy!
~ ~ ~
Your host, Marilyn Wann, will officially announce plans for...

- the 2012 Rad Fatty Dayplanner!
And...
- the Weight Diversity Action Lounge
(W.D.A.L. -or- waddle!)
~ ~ ~
$10 suggested donation.
Accessible facility: Entrance from 28th St.
Please don't wear scents.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

"Queering Fat Embodiment" (tentative title) - anthology - call for papers

Call for Papers
Tentative title: Queering Fat Embodiment

Type: Edited book
Submission deadline: January 15th, 2012

Contacts and editors:
Samantha Murray Samantha.murray@mq.edu.au (Main contact)
Cat Pausé c.pause@massey.ac.nz
Jackie Wykes wykesj@unimelb.edu.au

Scope:
Against the backdrop of the ever-growing medicalisation and pathologisation of fatness, the field of Fat Studies has emerged in recent years to offer an interdisciplinary critical interrogation of the dominant medical models of health, to give voice to the lived experience of fat bodies, and to offer critical insights into, and investigations of, the ethico-political implications of the cultural meanings that have come to be attached to fat bodies. This focus on the regulation, discipline and representation of fat bodies make it critically invaluable to the advancement of scholarship on embodiment.

This edited collection seeks to publish recent scholarship that embraces ‘queering’ as a mode of critical engagement in examining fat embodiment. Queer is a heterogeneous and multidisciplinary practice aimed at ‘bringing forth’ and thus denaturalising the taken for granted, the invisible, the normalized. This collection seeks to challenge and destabilise existing ideas of fat and fat embodiment both outside of and within the emerging field of Fat Studies. This volume will bring together scholarship from various disciplines in order to examine the ways in which fat embodiment is lived, experienced, regulated and (re)produced across a range of cultural sites and contexts. In queering established ideas about fat bodies, and presenting challenging inquiries/inqueeries into these notions, this collection will represent an innovative and critically invaluable contribution to the advancement of scholarship on fatness, and indeed on embodiment more generally.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• fat activism and embodiment
• fat mental and physical health
• queer(y)ing ‘hard data’ on fatness/obesity science
• queer(y)ing health policies related to fat
• cross-cultural or global constructions of fat bodies
• cultural, historical, or philosophical meanings of fat and fat bodies
• fat embodiment in literature, film, music, nonfiction, and the visual arts
• fat as queering sex, beauty, gender, and other embodied performances
• fat sexuality
• fat materialities
• fat and space
• fat and biopolitics
• fat and citizenship
• fat and neoliberalism
• fatness and consumption

Please note that we are already in the process of completing a proposal to submit to publishers, which we will complete based on the submissions we receive. We have had some preliminary interest from publishers, but as yet, we have not secured a contract.

Full paper submissions are due January 15, 2012. Articles should range between 15 and 20 double-spaced pages. Please send submissions, along with an abstract of your paper and a brief biographical sketch, directly to Samantha.murray@mq.edu.au.

Popular & American Culture Associations conference (2012) - Fat Studies area - call for papers

My partner Julia McCrossin co-chairs the Fat Studies area of the Popular & American Culture Associations with Lesleigh Owen. Here's their CFP (call for papers) for next year's national conference (April 2012, Boston -- Julia should be living here with me by then, and I plan to attend the con for the first time; I'm also hoping to present).

PCA/ACA Fat Studies 2012 Call for Papers

Fat Studies is becoming an interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary field of study that confronts and critiques cultural constraints against notions of “fatness” and “the fat body”; explores fat bodies as they live in, are shaped by, and remake the world; and creates paradigms for the development of fat acceptance or celebration within mass culture. Fat Studies uses body size as the starting part for a wide-ranging theorization and explication of how societies and cultures, past and present, have conceptualized all bodies and the political/cultural meanings ascribed to every body. Fat Studies reminds us that all bodies are inscribed with the fears and hopes of the particular culture they reside in, and these emotions often are mislabeled as objective “facts” of health and biology. More importantly, perhaps, Fat Studies insists on the recognition that fat identity can be as fundamental and world-shaping as other identity constructs analyzed within the academy and represented in media.

Proposals in the area of Fat Studies are being accepted for the 2012 PCA /ACA (Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association) National Conference in Boston, MA (April 11-14, 2011, meeting after, not before, Easter Sunday), at the Marriott Boston Copley Place. We welcome papers and performances from academics, researchers, intellectuals, activists, artists, and others, in any field of study, and at any stage in their career. We also welcome panels and roundtables on a variety of topics under the heading “Fat Studies.”

Topics may include but are not limited to:

- representations of fat people in literature, film, music, nonfiction, and the visual arts
- cross-cultural or global constructions of fatness and fat bodies
- cultural, historical, inter/intrapersonal, or philosophical meanings of fat and fat bodies
- the geography and lived experience of fatness and fat bodies
- portrayals of fat individuals and groups in news, media, magazines
- fatness as a social or political identity
- fat acceptance, activism, and/or pride movements and tactics
- approaches to fat and body image in philosophy, psychology, religion, sociology
- fat children in literature, media, and/or pedagogy
- fat as it intersects with race, ethnicity, class, religion, ability, gender, and/or sexuality
- history and/or critique of diet books and scams
- functions of fatphobia or fat oppression in economic and political systems

By December 15, 2011, please send an abstract of 100 - 250 words or a completed
paper to Fat Studies Area Co-Chairs Julia McCrossin (jmccross@gwmail.gwu.edu)
and Lesleigh Owen (goddess_les@yahoo.com).

Please include your complete contact information and a CV and/or 50 word bio, along with anticipated A/V needs. All submissions are welcome, but please use the information above to ensure your paper fits within the academic and political scopes of Fat Studies. Please also be mindful that Fat Studies is a political project and not merely an umbrella term for all discussions of larger bodies. Also, we encourage submitters to rethink using words like “obesity” and “overweight” in their presentations unless they are used ironically, within quotes, or accompanied by a political analysis.

Presenters must become members of the Popular Culture Association. Find more information on the conference and organization at

Friday, September 16, 2011

The 5th annual Transgender Religious Leaders Summit is November 3rd through 5th, in Berkeley California!

The 5th annual Transgender Religious Leaders Summit is November 3rd through 5th, in Berkeley California!

UPCOMING EVENT

Fifth Annual Transgender Religious Leaders Summit 2011

Hosted by CLGS, The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry

Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94709

November 3rd to November 5th, 2011

The 2011 Transgender Religious Leaders Summit is an ecumenical meeting of faith leaders who identify as transgender, gender-queer and inter-sexed, and their allies. It is an opportunity to connect with leaders of all faith communities and, through sharing, to celebrate our common heritage while learning to appreciate and respect our differences. This year’s Summit is a retreat-style meeting of transgender faith leaders from across the United States and Canada.
For Information and to Register with EventBrite, log onto the www.CLGS.org Site:
Complete Information at CLGS:
The 2010 Summit was an very fulfilling and enlightening time. This year should be even better yet! If you missed last year, don't miss this year's event!
Hope to see you there!

Randall Klein Bernie Schlager
Light in the Closet Ministry CLGS
FOR INFORMATION CALL: 925-586-4651
Light in the Closet Ministry, PO BOX 1208, Oakley CA 94561

Friday, September 9, 2011

MTPC - 10th anniversary event - October 6th

MTPC's 10th anniversary event "eXtatic (Growing On 10 Years)" is Thursday, October 6th!

Website page:
http://www.masstpc.org/events/10year/

Facebook event:

Today's e-newsletter:

Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition

Did you know...

MTPC is turning 10 year's old and we are having a partyto celebrate!

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Join us on

Thursday, October 6, 2011

7-11 pm at Club Oberon 2 Arrow St, Cambridge (Harvard Sq)

Refreshments will be served; Cash bar


Featuring performances from:

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Lorelei Erisis - is not just Miss Trans New England 2009 but is a Professional TransWoman, Second City Trained Improviser, Performer and Filmmaker.

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Maggie Cee - is the artistic director of the Femme Show and is an artist, activist, and teacher committed to community, social change, and sequins.


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Johnny Blazes - was named “one of Boston’s rising stars” by Stuff Magazine, Johnny Blazes is known for hir genre-bending, gender-blending, tongue-in-cheek performances. Ze regularly performs at TraniWreck.

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Lakia Mondale - is one of Boston's Legendary Performers, she is the 2010 Boston Pride Queen, regularly performs at Jaques Caberat and for many community events and fundraisers.

There will also be a special showing of I AM: Trans People Speak videos and dancing to follow with DJ Tre'Andre of Two Trans Guys and an iPod!


Ticket Pricing:
$15 Student/Activist
$35 Individual
$50 Pair


Buy your tickets in advance at www.masstpc.org/10. Tickets will also be available at the door. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Thank you to our sponsors:

Angel:

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Patron:

Marcia Garber

Promoter:

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Joan M. Fund, Esq.

Kathleen Henry

If you are interested in becoming an event sponsor, please contact theadora@masstpc.org or visit our webpage.

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Our Mission

MTPC is dedicated to ending discrimination on the basis gender identity and gender expression

We envision a world where persons of all genders are treated with respect and fully participate in all areas of society, free from fear of prohibition, harassment or violence based on their gender identity and/or expression.

To that end we educate the public, advocate with state, local, and federal government, engage in political activism, and encourage empowerment of community members through collective action.

LEARN MORE »

Come Join Us

Become A Donor

Be a part of MTPC and our work in making Massachusetts a state that has equal rights for all transgender youth and adults.

Join us today by donating what you can to keep us going in fighting for your friends, your family, your neighbors, and for yourself. You can make a one-time donation, become a monthly donor, or join our new Movement Builder Circle. Which every way you give, you will be helping us to change how transgender youth, adults, and their families are treated in Massachusetts.

LEARN MORE »

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MTPC | PO Box 301897, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 | (617) 778-0519 info@masstpc.org