No surprise that this week's issue of the PHX gay-lesbian rag Echo includes a news story on the feud between Tom Anderson of Anderson's Fifth Estate and local "diversity activist" Michele De Lafreniere. Nor was it a surprise that Echo essentially echoed the complaints of De Lafreniere that she and her transgendered pals are being discriminated against by the Scottsdale nightclub. De Lafreniere is the chairperson of Scottsdale's Human Relations Commission, and is looking for this incident to be a "rallying point" for the AZ tranny community. De Lafreniere claims to be a transsexual, though Anderson told The Bird this week his customers are complaining that De Lafreniere and her buds have their tallywackers intact, are peeing standing up, and are generally creeping out the chicks in the ladies' bog.
Echo maintains it tried to reach Anderson for comment, but no dice, though my alter ego, The Feathered Fiend, got hold of Anderson with ease. De Lafreniere now insists that his sausage has been sliced off, but he initially refused to answer the The Bird's queries on this point, denying the Plumed One's attempt to perform a visual inspection of her/his goods. The offer still stands by the way, Michele, if you wish to establish your bon--er fides with us.
Echo likes to spoon-feed its readers, telling them what they want to hear, playing to their obvious prejudices. But trying to make De Lafrieniere into the tranny Rosa Parks, as Anderson referred to her in The Bird, won't even wash De Lafrieniere's nuts, if she still has 'em. Are gals using the pissoir at Anderson's required to run the Dr. Frank-n-Furter wiener-gauntlet, while De Lafrieniere and the girls compare shoe sizes? Puh-lease. The Echo article pooh-poohs the possibility that some dood might dress up in drag and accost one of the squalies present. But that possibility certainly makes the biological femmes feel icky in a place where they're supposed to be afforded some privacy, so Anderson did the right thing for his patrons. Now he's being harassed by De Lafreniere telling everyone Anderson does business with that he's a bigot, when all the guy wants to do is address the needs of his customers.
Hey, I used to live in New York, and you see some pretty weird shit in Gotham bathrooms, so I could care less, on a personal level. Unisex bathrooms didn't bother me in Japan or France either, but is this really the sort of thing GLBT-ers wanna cram down people's throats? I mean, if you get the operation and are biologically a chick, fine, use the dames' shitter all you want. But if you just want to revel in, what Margaret Cho once called "the magical aroma of balls and pantyhose," um, keep it to yourself, big boy. Or go find a club where such activity is a matter of course. Cruisin' 7th, anyone?
All of this recalls the flap in New York weeks back when the New York Board of Health moved to make gender a matter of personal choice. I'm sure De Lafrieniere would love to use the Anderson's controversy as a springboard for Zona legislation along the same lines. Gotham's BOH backed off their original plan, BTW, which would've allowed transgenders to change the sex on their birth certificates without undergoing a sex-change operation. Now, if you've got proof that you've had the operation, you're allowed to make the switch from M to F, or vice versa on your birth cert. I can accept that: Either get the operation, or don't and shut up already. Whether you're in NYC or P-town, how much simpler could that be?
