Editorial

by Katherine Cummings

(The Gender Centre advise that this article may not be current and as such certain content, including but not limited to persons, contact details and dates may not apply. Where legal authority or medical related matters are cited, responsibility lies with the reader to obtain the most current relevant legal authority and/or medical publication.)

The die has been cast, at least for issue 64, which will be the July - September issue, not the July -­ August issue. We would like to return to bi-monthly publication if we can find a way to do so, and we are considering a number of options. Several of you have come up with suggestions for saving mailing and/or printing cost, including picking up your copies at the Gender Centre rather than having them sent out (hard for the West Australians) or reading the essential material on the webpage (hard if you don't have access to the Internet). Another Internet-related solution came from Jan Squire (see letter pages), who suggested, among other things, that we provide a P.D.F. copy of Polare for those who would like to access it in this form. This means we would email a PDF document to those who opted to receive Polare in this way and they could then read it on their monitors and save, delete or print it (or selected parts of it) in hard copy.

There are significant advantages for those who choose the emailed P.D.F. version. They would receive their copy sooner than if it were mailed; the internal illustrations could be in colour rather than black and white; and if the recipient moved house but kept the same email address, the issues would continue to arrive without interruption.

One of my sailing clubs has recently offered this option for our monthly newsletter and I have found the new system to be far preferable to the old monochrome, mailed copy. Let me know what you think. In order to get the fullest possible response I have placed a full-page advertisement elsewhere in this issue. Note that the emailed version would be available internationally and interstate as well as within New South Wales, with considerable reduction in postage costs and delay.

Note: If you elect to go with the P.D.F. mailing your email address will not be revealed to other recipients of Polare. A "blind copy" mailing will be used so that the only email address each person sees will be her/his own.

Moving on to the peripherally related matter of copies of Polare returned because they are undeliverable. I have editorialised before on the waste of money, time and resources caused by people who move on from the addresses they have given us so that they miss out on their copies and we are lumbered with the cost of posting them out to non- functioning addresses. When the copies come back from the Post Office I remove the addresses from the address list for the next mailing but in one case I have not been able to do this for a returned copy of issue 63. The recipient scored out the address so heavily that I have been unable to decipher the address to remove it from the mailing list. Even application of a solvent to the ink failed to reveal anything legible as the fibres of the paper were destroyed by the savagery of the scoring. So guess who is inevitably going to receive an unwanted copy of the next issue? Please remember that if you want your address removed from our mailing list we have to be able to read it on the returned envelope.

This morning (D-Day Sixth of June) I received an email from Julie Peters who appeared on the cover of Issue 63. She enclosed a couple of recent digital images, showing her being very yo-ho-ho as she helped a friend take his motor­sailer down the coast of Tasmania. She was wearing, she claimed, nine layers of clothing, and still looked decidedly cool, albeit happy and tough. An interesting contrast to the pussycats and jingle-bells image on the cover of #63! Of course we did include in Julie's story a macho image of Julie offering to save a cow stuck in a tree ...

Further to my suggestion that those of us with a military background might form an association of some sort, I have now received expressions of interest from four transgenders. I would be happy to act as a convener, as Jan Squire suggests in her letter on page 5, but what would the membership envisage themselves doing? Lobbying on behalf of tgs in the service? Observing Anzac Day in some way? Trafalgar Day is more my thing but I'm flexible. Let me know.

Polare is published in Australia by The Gender Centre Inc. which is funded by the Department of Community Services under the S.A.A.P. Program and supported by the N.S.W. Health Department through the AIDS and Infectious Diseases Branch. Polare provides a forum for discussion and debate on gender issues. Advertisers are advised that all advertising is their responsibility under the Trade Practices Act. Unsolicited contributions are welcome, though no guarantee is made by the Editor that they will be published, nor any discussion entered into. The editor reserves the right to edit such contributions without notification. Any submission which appears in Polare may be published on our internet site. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor, The Gender Centre Inc.I, the Department of Community Services or the N.S.W. Department of Health.