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Raven Kaldera (photo: SensuousSadie.com). Note she has taken hormones to grow a full beard. |
Kaldera has written a book on ritual pagan bodily mutilations, and another on trans BDSM porn. About her book, Dark Moon Rising: Pagan BDSM & the Ordeal Path:
…many practitioners of secular BDSM [bondage, sadomasochism, torture] are finding themselves having spiritual experiences in the middle of their most secular scenes. This book explores the crossover points between both these communities and practices, a cross-section which is growing steadily, baring controversial articles on topics as diverse as sacred pain, bondage, hook suspension, cathartic Pagan ritual, the spirituality of dominance and submission, and being the slave of the Gods… an awe-inspiring gateway into the Realm of the Underworld... and back again. [emphasis added]
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Left: One of Kaldera's books, this one on pagan bondage/sadomachochism (torture). Her other books, sold on Amazon.com, include “Pagan Polyamory: Becoming a Tribe of Hearts” and “Hermaphrodeities: The Transgender Spirituality Workbook.” |
Kaldera was keynote speaker at the Transcending Boundaries transgender conference in 2002, and also gave this workshop there:
Transgender Erotica
What would it be like if we transgendered people had erotica that really represented us, and was made by and for us? Raven Kaldera will read sizzling and heart-wrenching trans-positive smut from the anthology "Best Trangender Erotica", and then we'll discuss what we all want to see, hear, and read in really good tranny porn, and how we can go about making it happen."
And an excerpt from Kaldera’s keynote speech at that 2002 event:
… We're the binary-destroyers. Instead of saying either-or, we say yes, both. We know the real meaning of the wisdom "When They Force You To Choose, Always Choose Both". We are the crossers of boundaries, the fence-sitters, the switch-hitters, the ones who know that two opposite forces or cultures or mental programs can exist in one person without tearing them apart...with a little help and work and patience. We take those boundaries and lines and move them all around, maybe even erase them completely….
Eventually, of course, the very word "bisexual", the word we're trying to hang a banner on, is going to have to go by the wayside. Why? Because "bi" means two, and implies that there are only two sexes or genders for one to fall in love or lust with. And we know that's not true. I know that's not true, from my own personal experience. There are plenty of sexes and genders. I know. I've personally done it with all of them. If you find someone who has a sex or gender you think I've missed, you send them my way, OK? It's why I don't call myself bisexual any more, except to people who don't understand terms like pansexual or tranny-chaser or big ol' pervert or ethical slut. Of course, for us transpeople, the biggest issues aren't around whether or not we get laid tonight. They're about whether we can get hired at a job or keep our housing or get any medical care at all. They're about whether or not we are battered to death in the streets...”
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Raven Kaldera. |
Here is the complete article on Kaldera by Anderson-Minshall (referenced above):
By Jacob Anderson-Minshall (11-16-06; appeared in Boston’s Bay Windows)
Raven Kaldera speaks for the dead. Specifically, the FTM, transgender, intersexual spiritual leader says he communicates with those memorialized November 20 on the Transgender Day of Remembrance. “Our dead are angry,” Kaldera says. “And they want this to stop. Being as I talk to them, I can guarantee you this: there are too many of them.”
For the last decade Kaldera has lived with his queer family on a small working farm and retreat center, Cauldron Farm, in rural New England, where he founded the neo pagan First Church of Aspedel. “Neo pagans are more tolerant than many other religious groups, trans people, [but]…when you invite some of your friends along and all of a sudden there’s a whole bunch of [unusual trans people] there, they become uncomfortable.” Aspedel welcomes those with multiple identities that may disturb others—including those who are queer, trans, polyamorous, disabled, mentally ill or have “anything that makes you embarrassingly different.” When some locals took to calling Aspedel the “Church of Freaks and Monsters,” Kaldera embraced the term and now gives workshops called “Lessons from the Kingdom of Freaks and Monsters: Integrating Unusual People into Your Group.”
In addition to his duties with Aspedel, Kaldera says he’s an “official” speaker for the trans dead. “What that means,” he explains, “is all those people on Remember Our Dead lists, it’s my job to speak for them, and to say, ‘Look, our people are dying.’ Matthew Shepard was [just] one guy—we’ve got one or two a month in this country. People really need to understand that…as long as we are alone and cast out, we are at risk. We need protection in numbers.”...
The polyamorous Kaldera shares his home and life with a wife and a boyfriend—both of whom are also transgender. He and his boyfriend were filmed having sex for Luke Woodward’s trans docu-porn Enough Man—something Kaldera supported because it provided “positive context for transgender sex.”
“There needs to be more images of us having sex and looking good, or at least looking sexual, and not creepy.” A prolific writer, Kaldera (www.cauldronfarm.com/books.html) edited Best Transgender Erotica, wrote Hermaphrodeities: The Transgender Spirituality Workbook, recently wrapped the fist installment of a Northern Tradition shamanism series, and published Dark Moon Rising: Pagan BDSM [on bondage/discipline/sado-masochism]. Kaldera says both pagan and BDSM publishers passed on Dark Moon because of its complex topic. “I talk about gods and prayers and serious religion and how to incorporate BDSM into a religion. BDSM presses wouldn’t take it, oddly enough, because it had too much religion in it. They skipped on that—you can talk about nipple clamps, but not religion, it’s just too controversial.”
Background on colulmnist Anderson-Minshall: The syndicated columns (including the above),“TransAmerica” by Jacob Anderson-Minshall, describes trans behaviors beyond the imaginations of most Americans -- but they are par for the course in the trans world. Herself a “female-to-male transman,” Anderson-Minshall describes the thrill she gets when wearing her artificial penis in public, and the excitement generated by her girlfriend’s double-D breasts. of a pagan trans porn/BDSM writer.
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Transgender columnist Jacob Anderson-Minshall, left, (a "transman" -- woman dressing a man) and her lesbian “wife”, on right. (Photo: New York Times). |
Trans Profile 2: Grace Sterling Stowell
Male-to-female Director of BAGLY and Co-Chairman, Massachusetts Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth
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Grace Sterling Stowell |
Gender Identity – "transgender woman" (male dressing as female)
Partner preference – "mostly gay or bisexual men"
[Source: His statements at 2005 GLSEN-Boston conference.]
Grace Sterling Stowell is a male-to-female transsexual. He is the executive director of the group BAGLY (Boston Alliance of Gay and Lesbian Youth, for ages “22 and under” ), to which children are directed by all the high school gay clubs, GLSEN, PFLAG. Stowell is also Co-Chairman of the Massachusetts Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth. He is seen everywhere around Boston, in the State House, at the Commission meetings, in photos from GLBT activist events, at Youth Pride, and receives awards from the other GLBT organizations.
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Stowell (far left) appears in the masthead photo on the web site of the Mass. Lesbian & Gay Bar Association, though he is not an attorney. MLGBA opened a free legal clinic for transgenders in January 2008. |
In 2005, Stowell led a workshop discussion on transgenderism with teens at the 2005 GLSEN-Boston Conference (the same conference where the pornographic Little Black Book was handed out) at Brookline High School. Here’s an excerpt from Stowell’s discussion (from the MassResistance report, May 2005):
Discussion with session attendees then began with panelists' stories. This was sad and depressing. The discussion included these exchanges:
- What if a son says, "Mom, Dad, I'm bringing home a man." vs. "Mom, Dad, I'm bringing home a trans man."?
- Our language breaks down… What do you call a trans-man attracted to a woman? [and other combinations.] This culture is not set up for trans people. Grace Stowell said “she” tells men right up front, "I'm a transgender woman." Most of the men she's been with were either gay men or bisexual men. …
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Male-to-female participant said before she started going through the change, she was not perceived as a gay man. People would address him/her as a lady, even though she (?) still had facial hair…people "must have thought I was a butch femme."
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Panelist Michelle: Since she's pre-op, she still has "...titties and a penis, so it's just more to play with."
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Panelist Mike: Likes "bears" and his current friend is a bear. [Some of the audience members murmured in reaction to this. …A bear, or sometimes "teddy bear," is a slang term for a big, fat, hairy man.]
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Lesbian female attendee said how she used to date another lesbian female, but that lesbian female transitioned to a male. However, she doesn't now consider herself to be straight; she claimed she is still a dyke. Panelist Mike affirmed this phenomenon, stating that "there are a lot of lesbian couples where one transitions."
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Stowell marching at Youth Pride 2007 in Boston. (MassResistance photo) |
For several years, one of the few links on Stowell’s BAGLY web site resource page for young people led to a transsexual medical web site which specializes in male-to-female transitioning, including graphic diagrams of penis removal and “neo-vagina” construction. More recently, the site has substituted rape crisis and partner abuse help sites (which sadly emphasizes the dangers “GLBT youth” are drawn ever deeper into). Under Stowell’s direction, BAGLY puts young adults in charge of support groups and social events for younger teens. The BAGLY queer prom at Boston City Hall follows the Youth Pride festivities every May. Chaperones have included hefty female transsexuals, and numerous cross-dressers were present (some clearly older than the age limits for the event’s participants).
While Stowell apparently personally supervises his BAGLY prom, this flyer was handed out that 2006 event to boys waiting in line:
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This card was handed out by adult men to kids. Take a close look at it. What's really going on here? |
At BAGLY, Stowell employed as office manager the founder of the radical activist blog QueerToday, the young man who also organized the riot outside the Focus on the Family/LoveWonOut conference in October 2005.
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Young people waiting to get into Stowell’s big event, the BAGLY queer prom, Boston City Hall, Youth Pride 2007. (MassResistance photo) |
Trans Profile 3: Gunner Scott
Director, Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, founder of GenderCrash, and member of Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth
Gender Identity – “genderqueer female-to-masculine person”
Partner preference – unclear. She stated in 2006: “Before I came out as trans I was partnered with a transwoman. I was lesbian-identified and I lost more [queer] friends being with her than I did when I first came out [as trans].” (Bay Windows, 1-26-06)
Gunner Scott is director and co-founder of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition. Scott appears in photos of many GLBT events in Boston. She recently has sported a beard, and apparently has had breast removal surgery. She runs the GenderCrash web site and “open mic” events (“the intersection of Boston's queer, transgender, and gender queer communities”). Scott now serves as a sub-committee chair in the Massachusetts Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth. At a recent Commission meeting, she advocated defining the “youth” to be served to include all schoolchildren, grades K-12. (And Bill H1722 would add “bisexual and transgender” to the charge of that commission.)
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Gunner Scott: At left GenderCrash photo. At right, MTPC Steering Committee photo showing beard grown from hormone treatments. |
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Scott has also been very active with The Network/LaRed organization, which deals with partner violence in the lesbian and transgender communities. The connection between transgender community and BDSM is evidenced by the $10K raised for The Network/LaRed at the 2007 New England Leather Alliance convention masquerade ball (at the Sheraton-Danvers near Boston in January 2007). That leather event was again advertised on The Network’s site in 2008:
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This photo & caption appear on The Network/LaRed’s web site. |
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Scott’s weekly event, GenderCrash, includes an “open mic” which she described (in 2005):
Gender Crash Open Mic
For poets / spoken wordsters / literary geeks / journal writers / queers / transgender / gender queers ... 7 years and celebrating!
Yes ... it's true we are the longest running open mic for queer/transgender/gender queer folks in Boston as well as the country's first spoken word event to be hosted by a transgender person and to feature transgender poets/spoken word performers. An open mic that is famous for being a welcoming place for people to try out material, and is a favorite venue of first-time performers. Gender Crash is open to all, and is queer postive, dyke positive, bi-positive, and trans-positive. Come read with go-go gender queers with words of action, erotic writing lesbian soccer moms, sweet trans boys with agendas, bears who bake and write about it, poet inspiring truck driving gay boys, devilish dykes, awe inducing poetic transwomen, princess riot grrls with diaries, transmen with type written essays, queer Daddies with bedtime stories, Beautiful bisexuals speaking sonnets, butches whispering love poems to femmes and yes you!!! Be a Rock Star.... for at least 3 minutes! [emphasis added]
Copyright © 2008 MassResistance
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