Transgender band to play at Andersons

05:39 PM Mountain Standard Time on Thursday, August 23, 2007

BY Claudia Rivero / 3TV reporter

He banned the transgender community from his Scottsdale nightclub and now the owner of Andersons Fifth Estate is back in the news.

For several months, Tom Anderson, owner of the poplar Andersons Fifth Estate nightclub, has found himself in a quandary.

“I'm dammed if I do, damned if I don't,” he said.

It started when he decided to ban the transgender crowd from his club after receiving complaints about who was using the ladies' bathroom.

“If you're a man, then you cannot use the women’s restroom," he said. "It's a simple case of security for my women who use that bathroom.”

Anderson is being criticized again.

This time it’s because of the band he invited to play next Monday night. It’s psychic TV, a transgender band.

“I'm hosting this event to show that we are not bigoted,” he said.

He said he’ll have special bathroom arrangements during the one-time event.

“The men’s bathroom will be transgendered. The men will use the restroom on the lower portion of Anderson’s,” he said.

Michele Delafrenier, who was born a man but is now a woman, was a regular at Anderson’s. After she and her friends were kicked out, she filed a sex discrimination complaint with the Attorney General’s Office.

She’s not happy about the upcoming event.

“The possibility of me passing totally in society is very little, but I have younger women in their teens, 20s who have transitioned and you can't tell the difference,” she said.

Delafrenier and her friends plan to protest the event.

“We will be there,” she said.

Anderson said he is trying to do something for the community.

“I'm trying to do something for that community to come in and enjoy themselves and I’m being criticized for this,” he said.

http://www.azfamily.com/news/local/stories/KTVKLNews20070823_transgender.633cb85e.html

_________________
Man [...] must count no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth." (Jean Paul Sartre, 1943)