Kappa Beta Serving the transgendered community since 1988

Hello to all, I just wanted to wish every one of our members "a very Merry KB Christmas!"

Also, I would like to thank all those who attended the KB Christmas Party this year. Our Christmas party is the highlight of the year here at KB and I hope that everyone enjoyed the party as I know I did!

Hello to all. Another month here, another year here - and gone as well.

Last month's meeting was very exciting and successful as we had around twenty in attendance. Some familiar faces, some who haven't been in a while, as well as some new applicants were in attendance.

As your Chairperson, I would like to say that we as a group have grown for the better this past year. I hope that KB continues to grow this new year as well as each and every year after. KB board members have been busy strengthening our beloved group, however we need and count on KB's member support. This group can not continue to grow without our members' help and support.

Attendance has been up this year and it shows in our bank account. This is a support group as well as it is a social one. At times I think we all lose sight of that fact.

What’s in a word? Words can be powerful, beautiful, or simply descriptive. All successful movements started with a word; a word that defines the movement. Civil, Black, Gay, Lesbian were words used as adjectives followed by the noun that defined the objective. That noun? "Rights." We, as transgender folk, also talk about wanting the same Rights as the mainstream community. When we tell our friends, our family, our Senators, our Congressional Representatives what we desire, we do a pretty good job of defining those desires. What we fail to do is tell them who we are. We are ‘T’. However, since we – as members of the "T’ community – cannot even agree upon what "T" means (or even the spelling of the word), how can we ever hope to gain respect and acceptance without this ability to define ourselves? Please note that none of the above mentioned movements tried to further define themselves to mainstream America by all the variations that could exist within the movement. We didn’t see, for instance, the "Butch Lesbian Rights Movement", "The Lipstick Lesbian Movement", or "The Lesbian with Bi-Sexual Leanings Movement." We saw a single word: Lesbian. It only serves to confuse and dilute a move toward acceptance when the movement is broken down into sub-groups. A single, unified group has hope; a fractured movement does not. Additionally, once Rights are established, the word Pride can be substituted in the movement’s name.

One of my earliest memories as a young lad of eight was of a picture of a southern belle woman dressed in a beautiful Civil War era gown. That image stayed with me until this summer when I finally emailed a seamstress in NY about making a dress for me. She was delighted to do so and did a wonderful job for me. The next step was to find a place to wear this dress.

We will soon be in a new year and I hope all our members will be proactive in the recruiting effort for Kappa Beta. Business cards are available at every meeting for anyone that wishes them. You may pass them out to prospective members or to post at TG friendly places you may visit.

We are growing slowly but like any organization, we can do better.