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Sandi Hammond is a Boston-based musician and business woman who founded Butterfly Music Transgender Chorus, the second all-transgender chorus in the country, in 2014. [1] [2] The first, the Transcendence Gospel Choir, was established in San Francisco in the early 2000s. [3]
Hammond grew up in Wellesley, and spend a lot of time with family in Plymouth, where she worked at the former Mayflower Seafoods on the waterfront. [4] From an early age, Hammond's mother encouraged her to enter the world of music. Sandi Hammond was also part of a Boston-based children's choir when she was younger. [5] Hammond went on to study music composition, singing, and piano at Earlham College in the Midwest. She also became steeped in the school’s underlying mission for social justice, but did not foresee a future career combining her two passions.
After graduating, Hammond undertook a corporate sales job, before deciding to begin a career in music. Her debut album Rubbergirl, was released in 2003, and her second album, This Summer Night, followed in 2005, receiving critical acclaim from publications such as the Boston Herald. [6] Hammond has made appearances on WERS and WGBH radio and has toured small acoustic venues on the East Coast. As a member of the jazz vocal trio, ESP, Hammond has also appeared at notable jazz club, Regattabar and on WGBH's prestigious jazz show, Eric in the Evening.[ citation needed ]
Hammond began teaching music, mindfulness, and meditation, and spent time keeping up to date with the Transgender Alliance Facebook Page. She was shocked by information she found on the page; for example, that transgender people are four times more likely to live in extreme poverty. [4] In order to help, Hammond decided to create a choir specifically for the trans community.
When she formed the Butterfly Music Transgender Chorus, Hammond was a major donor. [7] Later, the Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston began serving as fiscal sponsor. [8] The group quickly grew to 35 members, who rehearsed at a church in Cambridge. [4] The chorus also received a high level of media interest, much of which focused on Hammond, including articles and interviews in O, The Oprah Magazine, WBUR, AP News, and ABC News. [1] [2] [9] [10] The chorus included trans women, trans men, and others who identified as nonbinary, agender, 3rd gender, intersex, trans masculine and trans feminine. The group was important for transgender singers, because most of its music was written for singers who do not fit into specific range categories, such as soprano or baritone. [11] Since Butterfly's formation, between four and seven transgender choruses have formed around the US. [12] At least one of them, the Transfinity KC Chorus in Kansas City, claims to have been directly inspired by the launch of Butterfly. [13] [14]
The Butterfly Music Transgender Chorus does not exist anymore. After two sold-out debut concerts in downtown Boston, Hammond stepped down in October 2016[ citation needed ]. This was the result of an intense debate about the impact of media exposure on the group and he fact that she herself is not trans. A small group of volunteers continued a self-led, volunteer song-circle for several months under the new name, Boston Trans Chorus. [8]
During the course of her work as a vocal coach for transgender singers, Hammond made two important discoveries that she outlined in the 13th chapter of the book, Voice and Communication Therapy for the Transgender/Transsexual Client, edited by Richard Kenneth Adler, Sandy Hirsch, and Jack Pickering. [15] Based on vocal range evaluations from over 50 trans men, who chose to take testosterone, Hammond discovered that the majority of their voices only deepened to A2, which is considered a baritone range, between tenor and bass. All but one trans man in the Butterfly Music Transgender Chorus gained enough notes to be considered a true bass (with a range that extended an additional 4th). Therefore, most trans men who elect to go on testosterone only gain about a 5th in range (usually from E3 to A2). Trans men also reported having to "re-learn" pitch-matching and sight-singing. This observation has implications for neurolinguistics and other research about how the brain learns to match pitch. [16] One trans man explained, "before, as a soprano, I could sightread anything. Now, I have to re-learn how to think a note and then execute." Many trans men in the choir used the Tunable app during rehearsals, which was originally designed for guitar tuning, to create an immediate feedback loop as they re-learned to match pitch. [16]
Transphobia consists of negative attitudes, feelings, or actions towards transgender people or transness in general. Transphobia can include fear, aversion, hatred, violence or anger towards people who do not conform to social gender roles. Transphobia is a type of prejudice and discrimination, similar to racism, sexism, or ableism, and it is closely associated with homophobia. People of color who are transgender experience discrimination above and beyond that which can be explained as a simple combination of transphobia and racism.
The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, often referred to as MWMF or Michfest, was a lesbian feminist women's music festival held annually from 1976 to 2015 in Oceana County, Michigan, on privately owned woodland near Hart Township referred to as "The Land" by Michfest organizers and attendees. The event was built, staffed, run, and attended exclusively by women, with girls, young boys and toddlers permitted.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to transgender topics.
A trans man is a man who was assigned female at birth. Trans men have a male gender identity, and many trans men undergo medical and social transition to alter their appearance in a way that aligns with their gender identity or alleviates gender dysphoria.
Transfeminism, or trans feminism, is a branch of feminism focused on transgender women and informed by transgender studies. Transfeminism focuses on the effects of transmisogyny and patriarchy on trans women. It is related to the broader field of queer theory. The term was popularized by Emi Koyama in The Transfeminist Manifesto.
Sandra Faye "Sandi" Patty is an American Christian music singer, known for her wide soprano vocal range and expressive flexibility.
Transgender rights in Iran are limited, with a narrow degree of official recognition of transgender identities by the government, but with trans individuals facing very high levels of discrimination, from the law, the state, and from the wider society.
"Voice therapy" or "voice training" refers to any non-surgical technique used to improve or modify the human voice. Because voice is a social cue to a person's sex and gender, transgender people may frequently undertake voice training or therapy as a part of gender transitioning in order to make their voices sound more typical of their gender, and therefore increase their likelihood of being perceived as that gender. Having voice and speech characteristics align with one's gender identity is often important to transgender individuals, whether their goal be feminization, neutralization or masculinization. Voice therapy can be seen as an act of gender- and identity-affirming care, in order to reduce gender dysphoria and gender incongruence, improve the self-reported wellbeing and health of transgender people, and alleviate concerns over an individual being recognized as transgender.
The American-Canadian sexologist Ray Blanchard proposed a psychological typology of gender dysphoria, transsexualism, and fetishistic transvestism in a series of academic papers through the 1980s and 1990s. Building on the work of earlier researchers, including his colleague Kurt Freund, Blanchard categorized trans women into two groups: homosexual transsexuals who are attracted exclusively to men and are feminine in both behavior and appearance; and autogynephilic transsexuals who experience sexual arousal at the idea of having a female body. Blanchard and his supporters argue that the typology explains differences between the two groups in childhood gender nonconformity, sexual orientation, history of sexual fetishism, and age of transition.
Sexuality in transgender individuals encompasses all the issues of sexuality of other groups, including establishing a sexual identity, learning to deal with one's sexual needs, and finding a partner, but may be complicated by issues of gender dysphoria, side effects of surgery, physiological and emotional effects of hormone replacement therapy, psychological aspects of expressing sexuality after medical transition, or social aspects of expressing their gender.
In the context of gender, passing is when someone is perceived as a gender they identify as or are attempting to be seen as, rather than their sex assigned at birth. Historically, this was common among women who served in occupations where women were prohibited, such as in combat roles in the military. For transgender people, it is when the person is perceived as cisgender instead of the sex they were assigned at birth. The person may, for example, be a transgender man who is perceived as a cisgender man.
Allucquére Rosanne "Sandy" Stone is an American academic theorist, media theorist, author, and performance artist. She is an Associate Professor Emerita at the University of Texas at Austin where she was the Founding Director of the Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory (ACTLab) and the New Media Initiative in the department of Radio-TV-Film. Stone has worked in and written about film, music, experimental neurology, writing, engineering, and computer programming. Stone is transgender and is considered a founder of the academic discipline of transgender studies.
A transgender person is someone whose gender identity differs from that typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. Some transgender people who desire medical assistance to transition from one sex to another identify as transsexual. Transgender is also an umbrella term; in addition to including people whose gender identity is the opposite of their assigned sex, it may also include people who are non-binary or genderqueer. Other definitions of transgender also include people who belong to a third gender, or else conceptualize transgender people as a third gender. The term may also include cross-dressers or drag kings and drag queens in some contexts. The term transgender does not have a universally accepted definition, including among researchers.
A transsexual person is someone who experiences a gender identity that is inconsistent with their assigned sex, and desires to permanently transition to the sex or gender with which they identify, usually seeking medical assistance to help them align their body with their identified sex or gender.
A trans woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. Trans women have a female gender identity and may experience gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria may be treated with gender-affirming care.
Reuben Zellman is an American teacher, author, rabbi, and musician. He became the first openly transgender person accepted to the Reform Jewish seminary Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2003.
The Butterfly Music Transgender Chorus was a Boston-based non-audition chorus that supported the transgender community through music, outreach, and research. Founded in 2014 by Sandi Hammond, faculty member at the New School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is thought to have been the second transgender choir in the nation, the first being the Transcendence Gospel Choir of San Francisco. The chorus held its first public performance on April 9, 2015, at the First Church in Boston.
The Transcendence Gospel Choir, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is the first documented transgender gospel choir. It was founded in 2001 by record producer Ashley Wai'olu Moore, with Yvonne Evans as its first conductor, and was a community choir and music ministry affiliated with the City of Refuge United Church of Christ.
"The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto" is a 1987 essay written by Sandy Stone. Stone's essay is considered to be the founding text of transgender studies in academia, with other critical transgender works emerging after it. The essay examines how transgender women have historically been viewed, studied, and treated by the western medical establishment.
The following is a timeline of transgender history. Transgender history dates back to the first recorded instances of transgender individuals in ancient civilizations. However, the word transgenderism did not exist until 1965 when coined by psychiatrist John F. Oliven of Columbia University in his 1965 reference work Sexual Hygiene and Pathology; the timeline includes events and personalities that may be viewed as transgender in the broadest sense, including third gender and other gender-variant behavior, including ancient or modern precursors from the historical record.
