Five Questions With… Caprice Bellefleur

caprice bellefleurCaprice Bellefleur, 57, got her BA in Economics at the U. Wisconsin @ Madison, and earned her JD. She’s been married 17 years, has no children, and is a member of the bar of the State of NY. She retired after 25 years as a computer programmer, and though she felt the urge to CD since she was a child, she didn’t – to any great extent – until she was in her mid 40s. She considers herself a person of mixed gender, and has presented as a woman in public for 7 years. Caprice is not only the treasurer of CDI-NY, but carries the special burden of being King’s Envoy on the (en)gender message boards – meaning, she’s a moderator. She handles both roles with class, culture, and enviable cleavage.
1. You do a lot with organizations for the larger GLBT, and I was wondering what kinds of things you do, and how/why you realized that service to GLBT orgs should be part of your life as a crossdresser.
I like to attend the meetings and functions of GLBT groups when I can–political, legal, social, all kinds of groups. I think it is important for trans people to be visible in the LGBT community, so that we’re not just a meaningless initial tacked on at the end. There is a lot ignorance about trans people among gays and lesbians–not all that much less than in the straight community, actually. I’ve given the “Trans 101” class to more gays than straights–especially if you count the “outreach” I’ve done in various gay and lesbian bars. And an important part of my “Trans 101” lesson is to explain how there is significant overlap between the GLB and the T segments of GLBT–many GLBs are gender-variant (“umbrella” definition T), and many self-identified trans people have G, L or B sexual orientation. When people understand that, they understand why the T belongs with GLB.
I am a member of several GLBT organizations, but I have really only been active in one: the LGBT Issues Committee of the New York County Lawyers Association (NYCLA) . Even that was something of an accident–though I now believe it to have been a very fortunate one.
I think I started with the Committee in 2002. I wanted to do something to advance the legal protections of trans people, and the Committee seemed like a good fit. (I would have gotten more involved in the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA), but its Saturday afternoon meetings were very inconvenient for me.) I had been a member of NYCLA for many years, and I saw a notice in its newsletter for the Committee. The notice outlined the Committee’s mission, which included legal matters relating to all LGBT people (even though its name at the time was still the Committee on Lesbians and Gays in the Law). I e-mailed the chair, and found out that a) a trans person would be welcome, and b) the meetings were quite convenient to my schedule. So I went, and I joined. I was the first trans person on the Committee–and the only one until this year.
From the start I was surprised at how much of the Committee’s work was trans-related–close to 50% that first year. The main thing was the founding of the West Village TransLegal Clinic Name Change Project. This is an operation where volunteer lawyers help people obtain legal name changes, something very important to anyone who is transitioning, or has already done so. I attended a number of meetings where we worked out the logistics among the various organizations involved–besides our Committee, the Gender Identity Project (GIP) of the LGBT Center and the LGBT Lawyers Association (LeGaL) were instrumental. It was there I first met Carrie Davis of GIP, Dean Spade of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and Melissa Sklarz of the Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats (GLID). Melissa, in her role as co-chair of the LGBT Committee of Community Board 2, was very helpful in getting funding for the Clinic. What developed was a monthly non-representational drop-in clinic at the LGBT Center. We (the volunteer lawyers) interview the clients and complete the Petition for Adult Name Change, which the clients then submit to the court. I usually serve once or twice a quarter.
I also served on the Law Firm Survey Subcommittee. We developed a questionnaire about the policies and practices concerning LGBT employees and the LGBT community, which we submitted to the 25 largest law firms in New York City. Our primary goal was to create a resource for LGBT law students to help them decide where to look for a job. There was a section of questions about trans issues, which I largely wrote. We envisioned giving report cards to the various firms, grading them on how we thought it would be for an LGBT person to work there. We were pleasantly surprised to find that all of the 24 firms that replied were at least somewhat LGBT-friendly. For instance, every one of them offers benefits to the same-sex partners of employees. We decided to forget about the grading. The section on trans issues was not quite as encouraging as the rest, though. Only one firm explicitly included gender identity and expression in its non-discrimination policy. None had any procedures or specific policies covering employees who wished to transition–and none of them reported having had an employee who had done so. A substantial percentage of the firms had dress codes that were not gender-neutral. Next year I want to do a follow-up survey, to see if there have been any improvements by the firms. (The report can be found at www.nycla.org/siteFiles/Publications/Publications38_0.pdf. It won the award for the best committee report at NYCLA this year.)
Right now, I am working on getting NYCLA to endorse the New York State Gender Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA). I drafted a report outlining the reasons why, which has been adopted by the Committee, and sent to the NYCLA board for its consideration.
I think my work on the Committee shows there are many gays and lesbians who want to help trans people achieve the legal protections that they have, or are still working to achieve. Most, if not all, of the other volunteer lawyers at the TransLegal Clinic are gay or lesbian. I am the only trans one. I have never seen any reluctance, let alone opposition, from any of the other Committee members to the Committee’s work in trans areas. The trans community is decades behind the gay and lesbian community in organizing to achieve its civil rights. We would be fools not to work with them.
Personally, I will continue with my work with the NYCLA Committee, perhaps in a leadership role next year. I also am being proposed for a position on one of the LeGaL boards for next year. One of my problems is not biting off more than I can chew, because I am also active in trans-specific organizations, such as the NYS GENDA Coalition (currently under construction), and Crossdressers International.
2. You’ve been involved with CDI for quite some time now. What are the worst pitfalls of being responsible for running a local support group?
First, I should say that Crossdressers International (CDI) is not really a support group, at least not in the traditional sense. We don’t have formal meetings where we all sit around and take turns relating our experiences and problems, and then discuss them as a group. CDI is more of a social organization. If someone wants to talk about her problems it is done informally, in small groups or one-on-one.
Second, I should point out that CDI as an organization is separate from the operation of the “CDI apartment.” The apartment is leased by one of the former CDI presidents, and CDI is really just subletting it for its weekly “open house.” There are all sorts of pitfalls in running the apartment, but I am (happily) not responsible for that (though I do act as the bookkeeper for our leaseholder).
The biggest problem in helping to run CDI is the amount of time it takes. My duties as treasurer are not tremendously time consuming, but being the webmistress of the CDI website is a different matter. I did not set out to be the webmistress. I took over the position when the previous two suddenly quit, taking most or all of the CDI website with them—in the space of less than a year. When the second one quit she left us a single page, and I taught myself enough HTML to put together a fairly simple site. It still takes a good deal of time to keep current.
Another pitfall is that as a CDI officer I feel the responsibility to attend as many of the meetings as possible. But there are a lot of conflicts with the CDI events, and sometimes I find myself wishing I were someplace else. This is especially true when another pitfall occurs: there are a lot of people who come to CDI with whom I have little or nothing in common except crossdressing. I joke that I have no need to listen to talk radio, because everything that is said there will be repeated a few hours later at CDI. A lot of the people at CDI have very different political views from mine, and I frequently have to do a fair amount of tongue-biting. And even when there is no political conflict, I often hear some people telling the same stories that I have heard them tell many, many times before. It can be very boring. CDI meetings are not generally something I particularly look forward to.
We have a rather diverse membership, especially in terms of income, education, and, frankly, intelligence. We have a few people living full-time as women, and some barely out of the closet. We have people who have earned doctorate degrees, and we have high school dropouts. This makes trying to put together events a big challenge—some people have no interest in some type of events, and in fact may be scared back into the closet by certain activities.
These are the kind of problems one finds in many small clubs—personality conflicts, lack of volunteers to do the work, etc. CDI suffers from many of these, plus unusual ones associated with crossdressing. Some of our members are still so far in the closet we have no way of contacting them. They do not even have femme name e-mail addresses. We frequently ask people to RSVP for events, but it is almost a joke—we never know who is actually going to show up. We had one dinner where we told the restaurant there would be 15 to 20 people, and over 30 came. Fortunately they had room.
3. What are the benefits?
The only real benefit is the feeling I get when I see that CDI has helped someone overcome her fears, get out of the closet, and find a place where, at least for a couple hours a week, she can be herself without worry or guilt. It really feels good knowing my work helps this happen.
4. Tell us a little bit about how you and your wife have compromised about your crossdressing, and how you came to the “plan” you’ve currently agreed on.
My wife “tolerates” my crossdressing—her word. She does not like it, and wishes it would go away. I don’t think she really sees much femininity in me at all, but she knows that crossdressing makes me happy, and she does want me to be happy. So she tolerates it.
As I said, though, she does not like it, and she does not want to be a part of it. I wish it were otherwise, but that’s the way it is (at least that’s the way it has been until very recently—which I will talk about in a bit). I can understand her feelings, and I have never pressured her to participate, though I do occasionally remind her that she is always welcome to accompany me when I go out as Caprice.
My membership is CDI has enabled me to crossdress outside of our home. In addition to my regular membership, I have become a keyholder in the apartment, which gives me 24/7 access, plus a small amount of storage space. I can change clothes and put on my make-up, and later change back there. So I can go out as Caprice without my wife having to see me, which has been her preference–she has never seen me fully presenting as a woman, with my wig and make-up. It also means our neighbors have never seen me as Caprice, which is also my wife’s preference.
Shortly after I started going to CDI (seven years ago), the annual Debutante Ball was held. I wanted to go to this especially, because as a new member I was one of the “debutantes” being recognized. But it was scheduled for a Saturday evening. This upset my wife very much, because she considers the weekend to be couples time, “date night”—because of work, it was just about the only time we could go out together. So I offered to limit my weekend crossdressing to one evening a year. She accepted, and the agreement has continued ever since. Like all good compromises, neither party is really happy with the situation, but we both can live with it.
In the last few months, my wife has slightly changed her position concerning relationship to my crossdressing–mostly because she has finally read a little bit of MHB. She has attended one of your couples’ meetings at the LGBT Center (though I presented as a man for that). She has said she wants to go again, perhaps with me presenting as a woman. We will have to see how that works out.
5. You seem to like drag queens – why? Do you think CDs are missing out by not getting to know their local drag scene?
I find drag performers can be very entertaining, particularly those who can do more than just look good and lipsync to recorded music. The ones can also sing and/or do comedy (such as Jesse Volt or Hedda Lettuce, or really dance (Edie), or even perform magic (Cashetta), are the most fun for me. I enjoy it when they can physically impersonate the performers they are lipsyncing. Drag shows can be fun–though the recent trend of surgically and/or hormonally enhanced performers is not particularly to my taste. This is especially true when the surgery is bad–I saw one performer who looked like she had had a couple of rectangular Sara Lee pound cakes inserted in her chest. How did I know they were rectangular? Because she went topless–another trend I do not like. Unfortunately this seems to be what is necessary to win the big drag pageants these days. It certainly gets the gay audience at the Monster Bar excited (though I have to wonder how well-acquainted they are with what a woman’s breasts are supposed to look like).
To me it is much more entertaining when it is all an illusion–I marvel at how beautiful and sexy a drag performer can look, when I know she has hairy arms and legs.
Beyond the shows, I’ve gotten to know a few of them personally, at least to a certain extent. I started going to Jesse Volt’s Wednesday night drag show at the Monster Bar after the Androgyny Lounge closed in 1999, and we needed a place to go after the CDI Open House. We found we were welcome at the Monster (a two-story Greenwich Village gay bar, with a piano bar upstairs and a dance floor below). Jesse’s show was fun, and I wrote an article about the show and the bar for the CDI newsletter. After it was published, one of the CDI people handed her a copy in the middle of her show, and she actually stopped to read it a bit. She started inviting us up on stage, to show the audience what a bunch of CDs look like. Soon she was limiting it to two or three of us–always including me. Jesse noticed I am something of a clothes-horse, saying that I never wore the same thing twice. This was not totally true, but I did try pretty hard not to wear the same combination of things more than once in six months.
I became part of Jesse’s show. After a while I was the only one she invited up, and she developed a little comedy routine involving describing my outfit, as if I were a model in a fashion show. We had a couple of phone conversations, and I was able to talk to her some more at Lips Restaurant, where she hostesses the Thursday night show. I also got to know some of the other drag performers there, and a couple just from the Monster. It is fun when a performer notices me in the audience, and introduces me to the rest of the crowd. It is flattering when one of them, a veteran, wants to know how I do my cleavage.
I would not say I am close friends with any of them, but I have exchanged some personal information with a few. I’ve gone out with them a few times after they get off work. I have great respect for drag performers. They work very hard, for rather little money–especially the waitresses at Lips. Most of them are friendly to CDs, though they may start out knowing no more about us than the average gay man. I’ve taught Trans 101 to more than one drag performer.
A couple of them are living fulltime as women. I think all of the rest identify as a gay men, though Jesse Volt says she is also transgendered. (She treasures the home movie of her clomping around in her mother’s high heels at the age of 3.) Almost by definition a drag performer is gender-variant, though there are some for whom it is solely a way of making money. I know one who put himself through cosmetology school working at Lips. Once he graduated and got a job in a salon, he grew a beard and never dressed as a woman again.
None of them are very political, even the two living fulltime as women. I have heard TG political activists advocate enlisting drag queens in the cause for TG rights, but I do not think they feel much connection to being transgendered. What CDs will miss by ignoring their local drag scene is the opportunity to do a little TG outreach in the gay community, but I don’t think that trying to enlist drag performers in the campaign for TG rights will be very fruitful. Otherwise, all they will miss is a little fun.