Calendar Proceeds
Over the 18 months in which the calendar was sold, a HUGE total of £3500 as raised and nearly 400 calendars were sold worldwide. We were originally expecting less and had decided to split the money between Press for Change and the FTM Network - Two national organisations which are backed by volunteers and help to support the UK and worldwide Trans communities. We were delighted to find that we had so much more money to play with and decided to help other small groups, organisations and projects around the UK. Some of these have been set up with the money donated from the Transtastic Men Calendar
Below you can see some of the projects and organisations that the money went towards...
With the funds from the Transtastic Men Calendar, MORF set up a trans friendly swimming space for people to be able to swim, who may not have been for many years. After the initial year of funding from the calender, the group went on to set up a regular swim group called MARLIN.
”'The Lovers & Fighters Convention' is a twisted, irreverent film of laughs by a hi-talent, politically savvy troop of gender-benders. Yum!”
- High Praise from Author and Activist Kate Bornstein
... is a feature length documentary, perhaps even a moving image zine about a new chapter in gender and sexual politics. The Lovers and Fighters Convention is the story of one night at Transfabulous. With animated sequences by writer, performer, transgender campaigner and film-maker in his own right Jason Barker, the film is directed by Royal Television Society Award winner Mike Wyeld. The film was shot multicamera on a single day in summer 2008 at The Transfabulous Arts Festival.
Each of the performers tells their own story, or a version of it, that puts together a picture of modern Britain. With a cast of many, and musical compositions by a variety of Queer composers including Jessica Lauren and Chopin Gard, this film is a true labour of love.
The newly opened Gender Identity Centre in Wolverhampton is very grateful to T-Boys for their grant to us from the sale of their Transtastic Men calendar. The money will be used to help spread our work across the West Midlands. At the moment we have a drop-in facility at the Centre and we have Sanctuary self-help and support groups running in Wolverhampton, Stoke-on-Trent and Stafford. We are getting ready to launch a new F2M group. We are looking to open new groups soon in Walsall and Coventry and we’re now looking at the idea of groups in Coventry and Shrewsbury. The centre is raising the profile of trans issues across the West Midlands with various professional groups involved in law and order, physical and mental health, housing and employment. We are continually working on our web-site to make it useful to members of the trans community as a source of information, to their friends and families as a source of comfort and support, and a starting point for information and leads to further guidance to professional organisations who have trans people as members of staff or as service users.
This group was set up with the money received from the Transtastic Calendar Fund. Refreshments were bought for the launch of the London Transfeminist Group at the first meeting and on leaflets for the demonstration held on October 1st. below:
A demonstration happened outside the Royal Society of Medicine about the appearance of the American-Canadian psychologist called Kenneth Zucker, who was presenting the opening address to the conference, and he has achieved notoriety in the trans community for what many see as the use of aversion/reparative therapy in young children to make them conform to gender roles. Essentially, this involves punishing the children for playing "inappropriately",
We also developed a website: http://www.transfeminism.org.uk/
The last of the money is to be spent on the Julie Bindel protest- for placards, posters and leaflets. The group is going well and we have on average about 6-10 people who turn up. We're a discussion group but focus on activism.
The Changing Female-To-Male (FTM) Voice: Alexandros N. Constansis