Fantasia Fair or FanFair is a major week-long conference for transgender people and cross-dressers, held every October in Provincetown, Massachusetts, a small Portuguese fishing village and largely gay and lesbian tourist village on the very tip of Cape Cod. This annual event is significant because it is the longest-running transgender conference and because it allows transgendered and transsexual people space to experiment with gender-role presentations in a safe and affirming community.
At its inception in 1975, Fantasia Fair was ten days long and considered an event for heterosexual cross-dressers. Most of the programs focused on personal presentation, and the registration fee, which included housing, was quite expensive. By the 1990s, however, the nature of the attendees was more diverse, including both male-vectored and female-vectored transsexuals as well as cross-dressers, transgenderists, and genderqueer people of every sexual orientation.
The number of attendees is small compared to other transgender conferences, which, in combination with the informal and friendly nature of Provincetown, gives Fantasia Fair an intimate air which is much-valued by attendees.
Fantasia Fair's parent organization is Real-Life Experiences, Inc., a nonprofit corporation which makes annual awards to transgender pioneers at a banquet held during the Fair.
Famous quotes containing the word fair:
“If there be any man who thinks the ruin of a race of men a small matter, compared with the last decoration and completions of his own comfort,—who would not so much as part with his ice- cream, to save them from rapine and manacles, I think I must not hesitate to satisfy that man that also his cream and vanilla are safer and cheaper by placing the negro nation on a fair footing than by robbing them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)