Nancy Nangeroni

Nancy Nangeroni is a diversity educator and transgender community activist. She is a founder of GenderTalk Radio, the award-winning talk show about gender and transgender issues that was broadcast from 1995 to 2006 on WMBR in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[1] Nangeroni served as an executive director of the International Foundation for Gender Education and Chair of the Steering Committee of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition.[2]

Nancy Nangeroni
Nancy Nangeroni and partner Gordene MacKenzie.
Born (1953-09-30) September 30, 1953
Boston, MA
EducationMIT, 1976 - Electrical Engineering
Occupation(s)Electrical engineer, activist, radio host, designer
OrganizationInternational Foundation for Gender Education

Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition

Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico

Career and impact

Nancy Nangeroni created the talk show GenderTalk Radio in 1995.[3] The show was focused on transgender history and contemporary issues and co-hosted by Gordene MacKenzie and Nangeroni herself. It was broadcast weekly for over 11 years.[3]

In the early 1990s, Nangeroni also founded the Boston area chapter of The Transexual Menace.[1] Throughout the decade, she wrote about trans and gender issues, co-editing and publishing In Your Face: The Journal of Political Activism,[4] and commenting continuously on anti-transgender violence and bigotry in Boston-area newspapers.[5] In 1995, after the murder of transgender youth Brandon Teena, Nangeroni helped organize one of the first national actions against trans violence. The demonstration was held outside of Falls City, Nebraska, and was attended by over 40 trans activists, including Leslie Feinberg and Kate Bornstein.[6]

With Transexual Menace, Nangeroni led the vigil for Rita Hester, a Black transgender woman murdered in Allston, Massachusetts on November 28, 1998.[7] The event of horrible violence towards a transgender person inspired the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, a campaign held annually to remember and honor the lives of transgender people reported murdered during the year.[8] Nangeroni said of the International Transgender Day of Remembrance in 2014: "Until people no longer suffer violence for daring to openly live their true gender, the TDOR remains an important reminder of the worldwide hostility, violence, and murder that too many brothers, sisters, and genderqueers suffer every day. TDOR is about remembering and honoring victims and standing together in the community against gender-based hate."

At the time of Hester's death, Nancy Nangeroni carefully chronicled the troubled media response to the event.[9] In 2000, to signify the second anniversary of Hester's death, Nangeroni interviewed her mother Kathleen Hester and younger sister Diana Hester on GenderTalk.[10] From 2006 to 2008, Nangeroni and MacKenzie co-produced and co-hosted "'GenderVision,' an educational cable television program about gender identity."[2]

Nangeroni is a Chair Emeritus of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition where she served for six years.[11]

Personal life

Early life and transition

Nangeroni was born in Boston and raised in Milton, MA.[12] For many years, a closeted Nangeroni privately identified as a crossdresser or transvestite, but lived publicly as a cisgender man. Later, she moved to Silverlake, Los Angeles. When she was 27, she collided with a car while riding her motorcycle. The accident left her hospitalized for many weeks. This experience led Nangeroni to decide to come out to her family as a transgender woman; while her parents were supportive, she did not immediately begin to live publicly as a woman.[13]

Upon returning to Boston, Nangeroni subscribed to TAPESTRY, a publication for trans and gender-nonconforming people published by the Tiffany Club and the International Foundation for Gender Education.[14] She attended Fantasia Fair[15] in Provincetown, MA and there felt that she was able to live freely as a woman for the first time; after that she became active in the trans and crossdressing community.

Later life and activism

Starting in the 1990s, Nangeroni became an activist and leader in the Massachusetts transgender community. Nangeroni also worked as an electrical engineer until 2004, when a spinal injury forced her to leave the field. Since 2017, she has focused on design work and memoir writing. In 1998, Nangeroni met her partner Gordene MacKenzie, with whom she produced GenderVision and Gender Talk. They lived together in Cambridge, MA, and then Beverly, MA until the mid-2010's. Nangeroni and MacKenzie married in 2018 and currently live in New Mexico.[3] Her website details her current work, including membership on the board of the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico.[16]

Awards and recognition

In 2000, GenderTalk received an award from GLAAD for "Outstanding LGBT Radio".[17] In 2020, Nancy Nangeroni was an honoree for the 2020 HistoryMaker Awards, presented by The History Project, Boston's LGBTQ+ archive.[18]

References
  1. "Nancy Nangeroni Interview". theoutwordsarchive.org. Retrieved 2021-11-28.
  2. Kowalska, Monika (2014-04-25). "The Heroines of My Life: Interview with Nancy Nangeroni". The Heroines of My Life. Retrieved 2021-11-28.
  3. "Nancy Nangeroni bio | GenderTalk". Retrieved 2021-11-28.
  4. "Collection: In Your Face - Digital Transgender Archive Search Results". www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net. Retrieved 2023-03-12.
  5. Allen, Samantha (2015-11-20). "The Trans Murder That Started a Movement". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2023-03-12.
  6. Wilchins, Riki; Beemyn, Genny (2021), "Transexual Menace", The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies, Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc., pp. 858–859, retrieved 2023-03-12
  7. Times, The Rainbow (2015-11-04). "Trans Community & Allies to Honor Transgender Lives During TDOR 2015". The Rainbow Times | New England's Largest LGBTQ Newspaper | Boston. Retrieved 2021-11-28.
  8. Phelps, Rob. "Boston's HistoryMaker Awards goes virtual through month of October | Boston Spirit Magazine". Retrieved 2021-11-28.
  9. "Rita Hester's Murder and the Language of Respect | GenderTalk". Retrieved 2021-11-28.
  10. "'Everybody knew Rita': Decades later, still no answers in slaying of Black trans woman". NBC News. Retrieved 2021-11-28.
  11. "Here's what most people get wrong about the transgender community". PBS NewsHour. 2015-04-23. Retrieved 2021-11-28.
  12. "Nancy Nangeroni". The Outwords Archive. Retrieved 2023-03-12.
  13. "Living to Tell and Telling to Live | GenderTalk". Retrieved 2023-03-12.
  14. "Transgender Tapestry - Digital Transgender Archive". www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net. Retrieved 2023-03-12.
  15. "About TransWeek | TransWeek". Retrieved 2023-03-12.
  16. "Nancy Nangeroni Online". www.nangeroni.net. Retrieved 2023-03-12.
  17. "What Does Transgender Day of Remembrance Mean to You - Q&A with Ethan St. Pierre | GLAAD". www.glaad.org. Retrieved 2021-11-28.
  18. "Announcing the 2020 HistoryMaker Awards Honorees | The History Project". historyproject.org. Retrieved 2021-11-28.
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