Speaker 1: Coming to you from the dining room table at East
Speaker 1: Barbary Lane. Welcome to a very special edition of Full
Speaker 1: Circle the podcast. I'm your host. Martha Madrigald, my guest today,
Speaker 1: is truly one of my heroes. I first discovered her
Speaker 1: watching Screaming Queens, the Riot at Compton's Cafeteria, for which
Speaker 1: she won an Emmy. She has had a long and
Speaker 1: distinguished academic career and she literally wrote the book on
Speaker 1: transgender history, Transgender History, The Roots of Today's Revolution. Please
Speaker 1: welcome doctor Susan Striker to the Full Circle Table. Hello Susan,
Speaker 1: how are you.
Speaker 2: Hello? Martha, I'm doing well since you're broadcasting from Barbary Lane,
Speaker 2: it's just like, what's your relationship to Anna?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, as I was transitioning and before that, Charles,
Speaker 1: my partner, said, you know, you're some wonderful combination of
Speaker 1: Martha Stewart and Anna Madrigal. And we moved to the
Speaker 1: childhood home where I grew up, and there's a wooden
Speaker 1: staircase out back by the patio that kind of goes
Speaker 1: up to the second floor. We were sitting there watching folks,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of go up and down at a
Speaker 1: barbecue and on the wooden staircase and he said, this
Speaker 1: really is the Barbary Lane and I said, well, it's
Speaker 1: like East Barbary Lane because we're in New Jersey. And Martha,
Speaker 1: Martha Madrigal was you know, it was the first name
Speaker 1: given to me, just completely in love and completely accepting
Speaker 1: of who I.
Speaker 2: Was, so it stuck.
Speaker 1: So that's that's how it's connected. And we love Armistead
Speaker 1: mop and I'm I mean we did that.
Speaker 2: We both grew Yeah, such a great story. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So being a San Franciscan, the Ani Madrigal character in
Speaker 2: the Tales of the City books are just near and
Speaker 2: dear to my heart. And I had a chance to
Speaker 2: ask Armistead once about the origin of that character, because
Speaker 2: there's somebody that I had come across in my research,
Speaker 2: a trans woman named Louise Lawrence who lived in the
Speaker 2: Bay Area in the nineteen forties through eighties, I think
Speaker 2: it was, And you know, she seemed very much like
Speaker 2: a real life an a Madrigal. She rented rooms to people,
Speaker 2: she helped connect a lot of trans women to medical
Speaker 2: service providers. People might be coming out on to the
Speaker 2: West Coast to you know, get surgery or see a doctor,
Speaker 2: and she would put them up. I remember one story
Speaker 2: I read about her that when Christine Jorkinson was in
Speaker 2: San Francisco, she happened to buy a car and Louise
Speaker 2: Lawrence drove the car back across the country to New
Speaker 2: York for Christine. You know, she just seems to be
Speaker 2: a pretty fabulous character. She's the person who introduced Alfred
Speaker 2: Kinsey to a lot of the trans women who were
Speaker 2: in his survey. So I asked armis that. I said,
Speaker 2: could it be you know, by chance that you met
Speaker 2: Louise Lawrence and was at the basis for Anna Madrigal
Speaker 2: And he said no, Actually it was somebody who I
Speaker 2: remember their former name. They were somebody who started out
Speaker 2: as a female impersonator quote unquote named Kenneth Marlowe. And
Speaker 2: I forget the name that she took after she transitioned,
Speaker 2: but Marlowe would tell stories about having been raised in
Speaker 2: a wholehouse in Nevada. Armistead met her at a fundraiser
Speaker 2: when she was transitioning called putting on the tits. Wow,
Speaker 2: that and that he thought he thought that she was
Speaker 2: a fabulous raconteur, and that that was he said, that
Speaker 2: was the origin of some of the backstory.
Speaker 1: I love that, yeah, because I haven't heard that, like
Speaker 1: who it was? That's interesting, and I have never heard
Speaker 1: of Louise Lawrence.
Speaker 2: Well, there is actually a small nonprofit archive in San Francisco,
Speaker 2: actually in a suburb of San Francisco, Valeo, run by
Speaker 2: the fabulous Miss Botton Davis, who is a queen of
Speaker 2: a certain age who made it their kind of retirement
Speaker 2: project to open their vast collection of trans historical materials
Speaker 2: to the public. And they run something that they now
Speaker 2: call the Louise Lawrence Memorial Archive. You go look it
Speaker 2: up on the website. It's a physically sponsored project of
Speaker 2: the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. And they're fabulous,
Speaker 2: you know, And I think it's great that they took
Speaker 2: that name to honor an unsung San Francisco trans woman
Speaker 2: of some significance. You might have heard of Virginia Prince,
Speaker 2: heard them who, right, Well, Virginia Prince. The first other
Speaker 2: cross dresser she met was Louise Lawrence. Because Louise lived
Speaker 2: in the Bay Area, she would do things like go
Speaker 2: to University of California at San Francisco, which was the
Speaker 2: medical school, and would would do like these like brown
Speaker 2: bag lunches, educationating service providers about trans trans needs. You know,
Speaker 2: she'd be like, hello, I am a what she called
Speaker 2: a transvestite or a permanent transvestite. I mean that she
Speaker 2: never had surgery, never took hormones, but she lived full
Speaker 2: time as a woman. And that that was who Virginia
Speaker 2: Prince met. That Virginia Prince was at a PhD in pharmacology,
Speaker 2: was doing a post doc at uc San Francisco, was
Speaker 2: going to these little brown bag lunches and that's where
Speaker 2: she met the first person that she knew to be
Speaker 2: trans and where she took her name. Virginia and Prince
Speaker 2: were from these streets near Louise Lawrence's house, Virginia Street
Speaker 2: and Prince Street, and that that is where she you know,
Speaker 2: that's how she became Virginia Prince. And the mailing list
Speaker 2: for all of those old you know, transvestia newsletters that
Speaker 2: you know that all the all the organizations that Virginia
Speaker 2: Prince wound up starting, the original mailing list came from
Speaker 2: Louise Lawrence because she had built this network of people
Speaker 2: back in the forties and early fifties that she would
Speaker 2: read the newspapers. She would notice somebody who was arrested
Speaker 2: for cross dressing, you know, you know, man caught, you know,
Speaker 2: and ladies attire blah blah blah. Right, and back in
Speaker 2: the day, they would publish people's names and addresses in
Speaker 2: the newspapers, and Louise Lawrence would write to them and say, like,
Speaker 2: you know, you know dear, you know John Doe, you
Speaker 2: know it saw your name of the paper tucks being you.
Speaker 2: But you're not alone and if you'd like to meet
Speaker 2: other people who you know are similarly inclined. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: so that's where the first subscription lists for those early
Speaker 2: transvestine you know, as they said in the day newsletters
Speaker 2: came from.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's so much about the language because
Speaker 1: we didn't have the words, you know, and and language
Speaker 1: is still evolving very much.
Speaker 2: Very much. So yeah, so if as a historian, I'm
Speaker 2: using names or words that you know, people today like,
Speaker 2: that's not how always say things. It's like absolutely right,
Speaker 2: right And and also you know, to say when when
Speaker 2: Louise Lawrence would say things like I am a permanent transvestite,
Speaker 2: it's like, well, the word transsexual had not been coined
Speaker 2: or transgender was not in use, and so you know,
Speaker 2: as you said, language.
Speaker 1: Evolved, right, And the person that comes to mind often
Speaker 1: is Marcia P. Johnson.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, you know, we used the word you mentioned
Speaker 2: my film Screaming Queens. It's like we used the word
Speaker 2: queen rather deliberately because that was the word that people
Speaker 2: used about themselves. It's like in Queen, you know, some
Speaker 2: queens were women and some queens were men. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like it was a complicated category. You know, it
Speaker 2: could be people who identified as trans women and hadn't
Speaker 2: had a chance to fully actualize themselves yet. Like maybe
Speaker 2: they were you know, working in the street based economies
Speaker 2: to try to like make their surgery and hormone money.
Speaker 2: Maybe they were guys who just you know, tricked in
Speaker 2: women's clothing. You know, maybe they were people who never
Speaker 2: intended to transition and they were living exactly how they
Speaker 2: wanted to live as a transfeminine person. So you know,
Speaker 2: but the word queen was the word that described that
Speaker 2: entire group of people, usually who were involved in some
Speaker 2: street culture of some of some kind. So yeah, so
Speaker 2: you know, now we say, you know, Mark and Sylvia,
Speaker 2: you know, they were the you know, fore mothers of
Speaker 2: our movement. It's like they used the word queen and
Speaker 2: they used the word transvestite about themselves start Street transvestite
Speaker 2: Action Revolutionaries.
Speaker 1: And Sylvia I think even more than Marcia from what
Speaker 1: from the way I understand it. You know, Marcia would
Speaker 1: sometimes present his male would sometimes be out there, you know,
Speaker 1: with her male name and sometimes was he and him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and well Sylvia too. It's like she got
Speaker 2: really disgruntled with gay community in New York by the
Speaker 2: early nineteen seventies and she moved off. She was upstate.
Speaker 2: She was using the name Ray again, was mostly working
Speaker 2: as a man. I mean, was you know, never closeted
Speaker 2: about being gay and gender queer and certainly never hid
Speaker 2: her past. But you know, she lived for a long time,
Speaker 2: you know, again in a more male presenting way, and
Speaker 2: then later in life she was like, you know, no,
Speaker 2: like this isn't right, and she you know, kind of
Speaker 2: came back out as Sylvia once more. So both Marcia
Speaker 2: and Sylvia went in an in and out of presenting
Speaker 2: in a more trans transish kind of way.
Speaker 1: Right. It's interesting, and Sylvia did it felt like she
Speaker 1: had her moment kind of in the sun towards the
Speaker 1: end of her life.
Speaker 2: Exactly, you know, I was, yeah, and I was just
Speaker 2: really glad that she was someone was rediscovered by a
Speaker 2: younger generation of people.
Speaker 1: She had that time of being celebrated. Was it England
Speaker 1: or was it Italy where they brought her over for Pride?
Speaker 2: It was in Italy. Yeah, Yeah. I had a when
Speaker 2: I went to do some some work with some of
Speaker 2: the trans folks in Bologna, Italy, which is an amazing place,
Speaker 2: an amazing community of people. There, they very proudly, you know,
Speaker 2: trotted out photos of of Sylvia and of Leslie Feinberg
Speaker 2: who had who they had brought to work with them.
Speaker 2: You know what. One of the things that I remember
Speaker 2: about Star, I mean remember in the sense of being
Speaker 2: a historian who's studied, is like I found this pamphlet
Speaker 2: or you know, flyer once where they were making their
Speaker 2: demands for you know, what they wanted, and it, you know,
Speaker 2: said something like, you know, in every city of a
Speaker 2: million people, there needs to be a clinic dedicated to
Speaker 2: you know, trans people. It's like there needs to be
Speaker 2: doctors on site, and there need to be job placement programs,
Speaker 2: and there needs to be you know this, that and
Speaker 2: the other and there needs to be something that helps
Speaker 2: people who've been incarcerated. It's like boom boom boom boom bum,
Speaker 2: like these this ten point program that they had, and
Speaker 2: that is exactly what they had in Bologna. It's like
Speaker 2: the city government because it used to be a they
Speaker 2: called it red Bologna for a reason, and not just
Speaker 2: for the red tile roofs. It's like that it was
Speaker 2: a stronghold of leftist politics, and the left leaning government
Speaker 2: of Bologna was like totally supportive of trans rights. They
Speaker 2: gave the trans community a building. It's like they gave
Speaker 2: the gay community a building. But they also recognized that
Speaker 2: trans issues overlapped but were different, and there was a
Speaker 2: separate trans organization. It stood Formento Italiano Transcessuale initially and
Speaker 2: then they changed it to me like Movement of Italian
Speaker 2: Transgender People. They changed what the logo meant. But the
Speaker 2: MIT building in Bologna, it was owned by this organization
Speaker 2: that served trans people. They had like dropping medical clinics,
Speaker 2: they had job placements stuff. Everybody who worked there was
Speaker 2: formerly incarcerated and this was like a job for them,
Speaker 2: you know, to get going. They had a hormone clinic,
Speaker 2: they had surgical referrals, they had counseling sessions, they had
Speaker 2: social events, they ran a film festival, and it's like,
Speaker 2: you know, it was it was amazing and they were,
Speaker 2: in a sense like doing exactly what Sylvia and Star
Speaker 2: back in the day said should be done. And you know,
Speaker 2: they managed to do it well before we've ever managed
Speaker 2: to do something like that in the You know.
Speaker 1: It's incredible to me what happens when we actually listened
Speaker 1: to the people involved, you know, and that that's across
Speaker 1: the board, but you know, it sounds like, wow, they
Speaker 1: actually listened to trans people about what our needs and
Speaker 1: you know, how we would serve our community and how
Speaker 1: we would best act. In watching all of the the
Speaker 1: legislation encounter legislation around conversion therapy, the one place that
Speaker 1: really kind of gave me heart was New Zealand because
Speaker 1: New Zealand is one of the very few places who
Speaker 1: actually seem to get it right and said, this also
Speaker 1: has to apply to religion. You know, we can't exempt
Speaker 1: a religion because that's where most of this damage is happening.
Speaker 1: And they got there by listening to the folks who
Speaker 1: were most impacted. And they've done that over with some
Speaker 1: different legislation too, you know, in terms of sex work,
Speaker 1: in terms of actually listening to the people involved and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, what would keep you saved? What do you
Speaker 1: need from your government? Imagine that as a concept.
Speaker 2: Imagine that a government saying we're here for the people, right,
Speaker 2: That's why government ex this, you know, It's like, what
Speaker 2: do the people need? How can life be better?
Speaker 1: That's what I thought. That's what you know. I hold
Speaker 1: on to that. I hold on to that ideal.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: As I was reading there were some names in transgender history.
Speaker 1: The first one that really struck me was read Ericson,
Speaker 1: who is another person I had never known about until
Speaker 1: I read the book.
Speaker 2: He was. He was amazing. I mean just I first,
Speaker 2: I mean as a as a young trans thing. When
Speaker 2: I was first starting to you know, sniff around and
Speaker 2: look for information back in the later probably not later seventies,
Speaker 2: I hadn't found anything by that, but sort of the
Speaker 2: early eighties I would come across these pamphlets that said,
Speaker 2: you know, the legal aspects of transsexualism, you know, put
Speaker 2: out by the the Ericson Educational Foundation. What is that?
Speaker 2: You know? And there was a whole series of self
Speaker 2: help pamphlets. It's like, you know, how to legally change
Speaker 2: your name. Now. Eric's an educational foundation. And by the
Speaker 2: time I started, you know, being a serious historian of
Speaker 2: the you know, the trans movement of trans people's lives,
Speaker 2: mostly in North America, mostly in the parts of North
Speaker 2: America that are now the United States. It was at
Speaker 2: that time, in the early nineties, that I learned who
Speaker 2: was this person behind the Ericson Educational Foundation. And his
Speaker 2: name was Read Ericson. He went by Eric, Eric Erickson,
Speaker 2: or just Ericson most of the time he was a
Speaker 2: trans man. He transitioned in nineteen six two. He was
Speaker 2: fabulously wealthy. His his father was an electrical engineer, and
Speaker 2: that he had sent Ericson the son, you know, to
Speaker 2: kind of learn the family business. Ericson was the first
Speaker 2: person assigned female at birth to get a master's degree
Speaker 2: in engineering from Louisiana State University. And what they were
Speaker 2: doing in Louisiana, because the family was based mostly in Philadelphia,
Speaker 2: was that they ran a business called Schoogl Industries that
Speaker 2: that took old car batteries, extracted the lead from them,
Speaker 2: and then sold the lead to the petroleum industry as
Speaker 2: a fuel additive. I mean, not exactly like a you know,
Speaker 2: green economy kind of guy. But maybe they didn't know
Speaker 2: quite so much back in the nineteen forties and fifties,
Speaker 2: but that the reason they were in Louisiana is that
Speaker 2: that's where the oil industry was that they were working with.
Speaker 2: And then they eventually got into oil and gas lea saying,
Speaker 2: and they became quite wealthy, I mean not only from
Speaker 2: the industry, but from all of the collateral stuff that
Speaker 2: they were doing around it. And Erickson lived most of
Speaker 2: his younger life as a sort of a dashing butch lesbian.
Speaker 2: I've seen photos of him before his transition, and you know,
Speaker 2: it's like I think think about him as this socialite
Speaker 2: butch moving in very you know, high powered circles in
Speaker 2: New York and like dating people who were like the
Speaker 2: children of members of the Roosevelt administration and prominent banking families.
Speaker 1: I mean that he moved in these very very nice
Speaker 1: He was almost the gentleman Jack of the twentieth.
Speaker 2: Century, the gentleman Jack the twentieth century, or I think
Speaker 2: of him kind of like kind of like you know,
Speaker 2: Tony Stark, iron man kind of guy. He was an inventor,
Speaker 2: he was wealthy, he thought outside the box about everything. Well,
Speaker 2: when his father died and he inherited the family business,
Speaker 2: he was like, all right, actually I'm a guy, and
Speaker 2: he is the one who who funded all of the
Speaker 2: doctors who were doing the research.
Speaker 1: It's like that was the part that it's got like, yeah, that,
Speaker 1: I mean those early programs that were so important, like
Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins, like.
Speaker 2: Horicans, UCLA, Stanford, you know, the University of Texas, Galveston.
Speaker 2: So Ericson was the money bags behind the doctors who
Speaker 2: were doing the research. He's the person wholled Harry Benjamin's
Speaker 2: foundation that funded the publication of the Transsexual Phenomenon. I
Speaker 2: mean he also funded the One Institute for Homophile Studies
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles, which was a gay advocacy organization founded
Speaker 2: by this guy door leg which amassed this amazing librarian
Speaker 2: archive of queer historical materials that's now part of the
Speaker 2: Special Collections at University of Southern California. But that Erickson
Speaker 2: was just super influential in early homophile activism, in the
Speaker 2: provision of healthcare for trans people, for the development of
Speaker 2: what we would now call the medical model. He kind
Speaker 2: of orchestrated that, you know, and I think of it
Speaker 2: as you know, there a lot of people who aren't
Speaker 2: crams can get their nickers in a twist about trans people,
Speaker 2: but most of them don't really care about like what
Speaker 2: can we do to make the life of trans people better?
Speaker 2: You know? And Ericson was the one going like, yeah,
Speaker 2: there needs to be something happening here. How can I
Speaker 2: use my money to make that happen? And he he
Speaker 2: is the person who put all of that in place,
Speaker 2: as to put the medical model in place as a
Speaker 2: way of serving trans people, not of just sort of
Speaker 2: studying trans people as freaks somehow. So you know, thank
Speaker 2: you read Ericson for all of that. The thing that
Speaker 2: I am most fascinated about with him, though, is that,
Speaker 2: like I said, he was an engineer, but he was
Speaker 2: also somebody who had serious interests in esoteric and occult religions.
Speaker 2: He had a lot of you know I called New
Speaker 2: Age beliefs, and so he he he had he said,
Speaker 2: you know, we can take kind of an engineering approach
Speaker 2: to transsexualism. You know, you can say, like you know what,
Speaker 2: it's like, it's not rocket science. It's like it's like
Speaker 2: shoot these drugs in your body. It's like, you know, cut,
Speaker 2: cut and staple here, you know, turn this inside out,
Speaker 2: you know, move this tissue here to there. It's like
Speaker 2: it's just engineering, you know, it's a physical thing. And
Speaker 2: then it's like you sign here to change the legal
Speaker 2: you know, documents and what. It's just like it's just
Speaker 2: a technical problem. It's not you know, it's not I
Speaker 2: It's like nobody needs to lose their mind over right, right,
Speaker 2: and you can do that. So that's what he called like,
Speaker 2: you know, physical transsexualism. But then he said there's also
Speaker 2: something called spiritual transsexualism that for him was all about
Speaker 2: how you develop and elevate your conscious business and awareness.
Speaker 2: And he's like totally into psychedelic drugs and you know,
Speaker 2: and what you know he thought of was like East
Speaker 2: West fusion religion, and he funded people who were doing
Speaker 2: work and like ethno botanicals, Like how is it that
Speaker 2: you know, tribes in the highlands of Mexico. It's like,
Speaker 2: use you know, traditional plant medicines to do you know,
Speaker 2: they're you know, sacred practices. I mean, he was totally
Speaker 2: into all of that back in the sixties. Yeah, in
Speaker 2: the sixties, mostly uh, and for me like that that
Speaker 2: is well, I will just say like, as somebody who
Speaker 2: has gone through a medical transition, I totally appreciate what
Speaker 2: has been available to me. But I also just really
Speaker 2: get a kick out of how the same person who
Speaker 2: who helped orchestrate all of that also saw a completely
Speaker 2: different w way of being trans. And you know, for me,
Speaker 2: it's just saying like, you know, there is no one
Speaker 2: way to be a trans person, and you know it
Speaker 2: should be a big tent kind of concept I think
Speaker 2: within the community. You know, we should not be quite
Speaker 2: as turf marking and boundary policing as we can be
Speaker 2: about you know, who's a real what and which thing
Speaker 2: is preferable to which other thing and just say, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like Ben Ben Franklin would say, if we don't
Speaker 2: all hang together, we're all going to hang separately.
Speaker 1: Well right, And I couldn't agree with that more, you know,
Speaker 1: And that's it's I feel like I'm beating a drunk
Speaker 1: with that, you know, on every platform that I have,
Speaker 1: which is you know, there's not a right or way
Speaker 1: wrong to be to being trans. This is you know,
Speaker 1: an inside job your trans because you say you're trans
Speaker 1: because we throughout history, you know, we've had more folks
Speaker 1: who didn't or couldn't transition or there was no such thing.
Speaker 1: Then we've had the folks who've had access, you know,
Speaker 1: And then to say that that that there's now some
Speaker 1: hierarchy doesn't make a lot of sense. I have Elizabeth Coffee.
Speaker 1: Williams is a very good friend of mine. And Elizabeth
Speaker 1: had her confirmation surgery I want to say in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two in Baltimore, seventy two or seventy three, and
Speaker 1: you know, she was from Philadelphia. She you know, came
Speaker 1: out to her parents, I think the day she graduated
Speaker 1: high school and they put her outside and she found
Speaker 1: out about the gender clinic at Johns Hopkins. Then moved
Speaker 1: to Baltimore where she met John Waters and the Dreamlanders,
Speaker 1: and she wound up in four of his films. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's Elizabeth and Pink Flamingos who is the transflasher. That's Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: and she was in yeah, I think total of four
Speaker 1: of his films. But you know, she tells the story
Speaker 1: of when she went to Johns Hopkins, they didn't want
Speaker 1: to help her because she didn't fit their model of
Speaker 1: what it was to be trans and you know, she
Speaker 1: was already living as herself, and you know she was
Speaker 1: in little short shorts and tank tops or pulter tops
Speaker 1: or whatever. And you know, one of the things that
Speaker 1: you agreed to you weren't allowed to meet any of
Speaker 1: the other trans folk being served in the clinic. They
Speaker 1: weren't allowed to know one another. And there was this
Speaker 1: agreement at that time that you wouldn't talk about it.
Speaker 1: You know, your goal was to go, you know, assimilate.
Speaker 1: And she said, you know, all I need you to
Speaker 1: do is fix this little problem I have. That's all
Speaker 1: I need you for. You know, you do this thing
Speaker 1: that I need because you know, my pants will look better.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's all I need from you. And it
Speaker 1: took a long time. And I think she finally like
Speaker 1: accosted one of the surgeons. And I want to say
Speaker 1: Moon or Mooney, but I'm probably getting that wrong. In
Speaker 1: like the gift shop.
Speaker 2: Johnny money.
Speaker 1: I think that was money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was not. It was the called himself
Speaker 2: a psycho neuro into chronology. Okay, he wasn't the surgeon.
Speaker 1: But he he was the one who she finally like
Speaker 1: got in the coffee shop or the gift shop or somewhere,
Speaker 1: and like pleaded once again, and he went back to
Speaker 1: the folks and said, you know, she's exactly who we're
Speaker 1: here to help. You know, even though she didn't fit
Speaker 1: their idea of, you know, what, what she should be.
Speaker 1: She wasn't going to go be Donna Reed. She was
Speaker 1: going to go be Jennie Choplin, you know that was
Speaker 1: and she was going to tell people. You know, she's
Speaker 1: been out since then.
Speaker 2: I would love to put her in touch with people.
Speaker 2: I know at Johns Hopkins. There's a faculty member there,
Speaker 2: Jules gil Peterson, who works on who is trans and
Speaker 2: works on trans history, and I'm sure that she would
Speaker 2: love to interview.
Speaker 1: That would be great. Yeah, And I think she'd be
Speaker 1: very willing to do that because you know, she talks
Speaker 1: openly about it and what was interesting talk about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's like it just lays me today.
Speaker 2: How you know, you listen to the right wing and
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, trans people did not exist before,
Speaker 2: you know, twenty eighteen. Yeah apparently, and right she's like
Speaker 2: it's a new thing, it's a social contagion. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just like there are so many people who are
Speaker 2: still around who have decades and decades and decades of
Speaker 2: life experience as trans. And you know, I think I
Speaker 2: think it would be great in the current political moment
Speaker 2: to just have a you know, I pardon my friends,
Speaker 2: just a bunch of old trannies, you know, out there
Speaker 2: like talking about us like back in the day.
Speaker 1: I agree, I agree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So nothing new under the sun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'm so thankful for them, and you know,
Speaker 1: they were instrumental.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I was just so fortunate to get to know Elizabeth
Speaker 1: and Claudia Hadad and others, you know who really kind
Speaker 1: of got my mind around this whole thing and say, honey,
Speaker 1: you're just trans. Just relax, you know, and there's not
Speaker 1: a one way to do basically, like you know, she
Speaker 1: I would have moments and you know, she would just
Speaker 1: kind of slap me out of it, you know. And
Speaker 1: and I think I always say, we need trans friends,
Speaker 1: We need them, We need the folks with whom we
Speaker 1: just have a shorthand you know that we just understand
Speaker 1: one another at least, Yeah, on that basic level. And
Speaker 1: Elizabeth got mentioned in Disclosure, the documentary right about trans
Speaker 1: folks in film, and what happened was Jen Richards actually
Speaker 1: brought up her story. So Jen Jen was being interviewed,
Speaker 1: and when they were talking about, you know, erasure, an
Speaker 1: early erasure. Elizabeth had interviewed several times to play the
Speaker 1: character of Elizabeth Eden, and Sidney Lamette loved her and
Speaker 1: wanted to hire her. And you know, she even had
Speaker 1: herself looking very much like Elizabeth Eden. And then the
Speaker 1: money folks got involved, and you know, made at Chris Srandon, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Chris Srrandon's career was launched.
Speaker 2: Michael launched from made It Chris and that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And and that's when she stopped acting. She said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I've had enough. It's okay. Because if
Speaker 1: ever there was a part she was born literally to play,
Speaker 1: it was that one. Yeah. And and now that you know,
Speaker 1: of course, the only way to portray a trans woman
Speaker 1: is with a sist.
Speaker 2: Dude, Yeah, who needs thank you?
Speaker 1: Who needs you? Took the words who needs a shave?
Speaker 2: But where's a pink bathrobe? And has long nails? And
Speaker 2: it's crazy yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, because that that made sense to.
Speaker 2: Folks, that's exactly who al Pacino would follow him up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and yet here was Elizabeth, who was this this
Speaker 1: trans woman who was already thriving and you know, already
Speaker 1: alive and well regarded and living her life, you know,
Speaker 1: living her life in Philadelphia, and she had been in Baltimore,
Speaker 1: she was in San Francisco for a while, and uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: she didn't. She didn't look the part. And she's like, well,
Speaker 1: god damn it.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, you look like a woman.
Speaker 1: It's like we need a transsexuals as did Elizabeth Eden.
Speaker 1: And it was like we put pictures of the two
Speaker 1: of them side by side at the time, and it
Speaker 1: was just it was almost eerie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I've I've seen pictures of her, so she yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so this is nothing is new. And you know,
Speaker 1: I read trans Gender History several years ago, I want
Speaker 1: to say, when the revised edition came out, so twenty seventeen, right, seventeen, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh and I reread it just in preparation to
Speaker 1: sit down with you. And I'm taking again that you know,
Speaker 1: even terf ism, even this this gender critical nonsense that
Speaker 1: you know, feels new to a lot of trans people
Speaker 1: is new. This stuff is not new. And you know
Speaker 1: the Jenice Raymond was was, you know, selling this stuff
Speaker 1: how long ago?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, yeah, like her book came out in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine, Transsexual Empire. But you know, you know where
Speaker 2: Raymond winds up with at the end of that book,
Speaker 2: because there's this famous line in it where she says,
Speaker 2: you know, the problem of transsexualism would best be solved
Speaker 2: by morally mandating it.
Speaker 1: Guy.
Speaker 2: Right now, it's like that's almost like word for word
Speaker 2: what Michael Knowles, the you know, right wing infotainment fascist
Speaker 2: person who was speaking at spat Seapack recently, you know,
Speaker 2: who said, you know, transgenderism should be mandated out of existence. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and people said that's genocidal, and he says, I can't
Speaker 2: be genocidal because it's like trans people don't actually even exist,
Speaker 2: you know, it's not a real thing. And but it's like,
Speaker 2: whether he knew it or not, he was I think
Speaker 2: he probably knew it. He was he was almost directly
Speaker 2: quoting this transphobic feminist from you know, forty plus years ago,
Speaker 2: you know, And I say probably knew it because you know,
Speaker 2: I do research on the history of the transphobic rite
Speaker 2: as well as transgender communities and people than themselves. And
Speaker 2: you know, I will say that, you know, to use
Speaker 2: that us in them language is like they know far
Speaker 2: more about us than we know about them. They read things.
Speaker 2: It's like I read, I mean like literally like anti Semitic,
Speaker 2: pro nazi, fascist, conspiracy theory stuff, and like they cite
Speaker 2: things that that you know that you know that most
Speaker 2: people who share my politics don't read what the right
Speaker 2: is actually doing. And when I look at what the
Speaker 2: right is doing, their arguments, their talking points, it's like,
Speaker 2: look at the bibliographies and their books. It's just like
Speaker 2: they read. Yeah, and I think we need to educate
Speaker 2: ourselves far more about how they frame our issues based
Speaker 2: on these like very long standing transphobic tropes and memes
Speaker 2: and discourses.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you do it. You know, it's that's hard.
Speaker 1: That's hard for me. And I absorb a lot of
Speaker 1: news and I do try to pay attention to what
Speaker 1: they're doing, but I have to, you know, I confess
Speaker 1: I get that news from mainstream news sources. I don't
Speaker 1: go where they read because uh, that's waiting somewhere that
Speaker 1: I don't like to be. And you know, it's hard,
Speaker 1: it's really hard, because you're right, it's important to know
Speaker 1: what they're saying and what they're doing. And I keep
Speaker 1: saying if this fails politically, they'll knock it off, or
Speaker 1: at least to this degree, I think.
Speaker 2: I think, I think you're right. I mean, they're they're
Speaker 2: definitely throwing the spaghetti to the wall and seeing if
Speaker 2: it'll stick right now, and that I guess. You know,
Speaker 2: there has been a persistent strand of transphobia within you know,
Speaker 2: within other social movements in this country. It's like it's
Speaker 2: not new, but that what is new, I think is
Speaker 2: the traction that it's getting right now.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And the way that a major political party in cahoots
Speaker 2: with well funded evangelical Christians as well as like far
Speaker 2: right wing reactionary people, there is this weird amalgamation of
Speaker 2: interests that are transphobic for their own particular reasons that
Speaker 2: are all cross pollinating each other right now, and that
Speaker 2: the organized political right has found these very effective talking
Speaker 2: points against trans people, many of which were first kind
Speaker 2: of workshopped in transphobic lesbian feminist separatist communities back in
Speaker 2: the seventies, and they're trotting them out as campaign tools
Speaker 2: right now. You know. One of the other kind of
Speaker 2: cross polleniza pollenizations that I've seen is that so much
Speaker 2: of that early turfy feminism. The people who were promulgating
Speaker 2: it were former Catholics, Mary Daily Deannis Raymond, and a
Speaker 2: lot of their arguments are are rooted in a sort
Speaker 2: of a version of Catholic theology, you know, like notions
Speaker 2: of you know, you know, natural and moral law ideas
Speaker 2: about bodily integrity and you know, what is the body for,
Speaker 2: what God's purpose for the body, and that's why you're
Speaker 2: not supposed to, you know, have abortions and use contraception.
Speaker 2: It's like it's sort of the same framework. And I
Speaker 2: think we don't really see that. I mean, we don't
Speaker 2: make that connection as easily as we might because Daily
Speaker 2: and Raymond were both they both renounced not like Folicism,
Speaker 2: but Christianity and developed a more goddess centered feminist religion.
Speaker 2: But it's like, I as I read them, it's like
Speaker 2: they imported a lot of very conservative Catholic theology you
Speaker 2: know by another name into some of the ways that
Speaker 2: they thought and acted, and particularly the way that these
Speaker 2: these sort of conservative Catholic ideas informed their position on
Speaker 2: trans people and provide a sort of intellectual or moral
Speaker 2: basis to their argument. But it's in the so that
Speaker 2: that sort of turfy feminism had been around in the
Speaker 2: seventies and eighties, but what happened in the nineties was
Speaker 2: that there were a lot of powerful, mostly Catholic interests
Speaker 2: under the you know, I mean the Pope at the
Speaker 2: time was personally pretty transphobic, and that there was a
Speaker 2: lot of concern over how these big international conferences that
Speaker 2: were put on by the United Nations, you know, on
Speaker 2: women's rights, you know, international women's rights, that there was
Speaker 2: a shift in that language between like women's rights to
Speaker 2: gender rights and wanting to talk about gender discrimination rather
Speaker 2: than discrimination against women. And there were a bunch of people,
Speaker 2: it's like, these conservative Catholics, a lot of African Evangelical Christians,
Speaker 2: white mostly Western European and North American feminists who were
Speaker 2: involved in anti trafficking work. They all kind of cross
Speaker 2: pollinated with each other. In Beijing in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 2: at this UN conference on women, there was a conservative
Speaker 2: Catholic writer named Dale O'Leary who published a book right
Speaker 2: there called, oh what was it called gender ideology, you know,
Speaker 2: the deconstruction of women. It's like and so you start
Speaker 2: to see this arguments like when you say gender but
Speaker 2: you mean women, like that's this like false ideological construction
Speaker 2: that just erases the biological specificity of women. And it's
Speaker 2: part of this you know, global northern Western secular elite thing.
Speaker 2: It's like wanting to destroy God's plan for the family.
Speaker 2: It's like and and you can just start to see
Speaker 2: this cluster around nineteen ninety five where everything that is
Speaker 2: just blossoming and full noxious, you know bloom right now.
Speaker 2: It's like the seeds of all that come together about
Speaker 2: twenty five years ago, and it kind of percolated along
Speaker 2: in a more subterranean way for a while. But then
Speaker 2: in the context of you know, I think in the US,
Speaker 2: it's the thing that really let the genie out of
Speaker 2: the bottle, so to speak, was the Obama presidency because
Speaker 2: you had all of these racists with like Obama derangement syndrome,
Speaker 2: and like they just could not wrap their head around
Speaker 2: a black man as president of the United States. And
Speaker 2: you know, you've got Sarah Palin who's running on the
Speaker 2: Republican ticket, and she's the one I think who more
Speaker 2: than anybody else, started saying, you know what I consider
Speaker 2: to be the you know, crazy, conspiratorial, you know, racist,
Speaker 2: batshit crazy wing nut stuff out loud and in public
Speaker 2: as part of a very you know, highly you know,
Speaker 2: televised and you know, mass mediafied presidential campaign. And I
Speaker 2: think that was the thing that really like gave permission
Speaker 2: for people to start doubling down on that, and the
Speaker 2: public sphere and then the organized right it's like they're
Speaker 2: going like, yeah, this, we're losing on gay marriage. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like we're gonna we're in a rearguard action here.
Speaker 2: We lost on gays in the military. It's like the
Speaker 2: trans thing, it's like it's complicated, it's divisive, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, we can really use this and for you know,
Speaker 2: in some ways, I think since about two thousand and
Speaker 2: seven eight with the about passing into the Employment Non
Speaker 2: Discrimination Act, I think we started to see the right
Speaker 2: wing field testing ideas about how to use transgender as
Speaker 2: a wedge to split the left, you know, and you
Speaker 2: wind up with Barney Frank actually like cutting trans people
Speaker 2: out of you know, employment into Employment Non Discrimination Act.
Speaker 2: You know, then you've got the bathroom bills. You started
Speaker 2: to see a little bit of anti trans rhetoric in
Speaker 2: the twenty sixteen Republican primary, and it didn't really become
Speaker 2: much of an issue in the election between Trump and Clinton.
Speaker 2: It's like, at that level, there wasn't a lot of
Speaker 2: you know, chatter about trans. But in the Republican primaries
Speaker 2: leading up to that, you know, I had people like
Speaker 2: Mike Pence and Ted Cruz who were definitely you know,
Speaker 2: saying a lot of the anti trans stuff that's gone
Speaker 2: much more mainstream. But then it really wasn't until you know,
Speaker 2: Trump is out, Biden is in that the right seems
Speaker 2: to have really lost its mind and orchestrated a very
Speaker 2: deliberate campaign. I mean, I don't know if you've been
Speaker 2: following this, it's like it's hard to not sound like
Speaker 2: you are a conspiracy theorist, right, but there was this
Speaker 2: dump of email and text message communications that fed into
Speaker 2: a story that was published in Mother Jones of you know,
Speaker 2: something like twenty six hundred pages of material from this
Speaker 2: person who had been trans de transitioned started working with
Speaker 2: the right wing, you know as a you know, de transitioner,
Speaker 2: saying like this is all bad. But then they're like,
Speaker 2: oh no, no, it's like I was wrong about that.
Speaker 2: To retransitioned. And after they retransitioned, they gave to you know,
Speaker 2: left wing journalists, all of the paper trail of the
Speaker 2: conversations that they had been involved in with you know,
Speaker 2: people from Alliance Defending Families and you know other right
Speaker 2: wing groups and Republican elected officials in you know, in
Speaker 2: state houses. There was this one particular legislator in North
Speaker 2: Dakota who seemed to play a pretty key role in
Speaker 2: trying to promote legislation that had been drafted, like by
Speaker 2: Alliance Defending Families. They would develop model legislation, they would
Speaker 2: feed it to this guy. He would work with other
Speaker 2: legislators and other states, and that there was a you know,
Speaker 2: a deliberate campaign to roll out very similar kinds of
Speaker 2: legislation at the state level across every state where Republicans
Speaker 2: controlled the legislatures. So it's you know, the anti drag
Speaker 2: stuff that you know, save the children sports stuff, anti
Speaker 2: you know, like banning affirmative care for people who were
Speaker 2: under the age of eighteen or even in Missouri, just
Speaker 2: like trying to ban trans health care at all, although
Speaker 2: there's been a temporary stay put on that for now
Speaker 2: in Texas, you know, saying that you know, child Protective
Speaker 2: Services should investigate families that are supportive of their trans kids.
Speaker 2: I mean, it is a full on war on training.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: And in Texas is interesting because they were kind of
Speaker 1: early adapters of a lot of this legislation, and then
Speaker 1: of course Chase Stranger, who we should all pray for
Speaker 1: to whatever and whomever we pray you know, knocked so
Speaker 1: much of that back, and they were ultimately not successful.
Speaker 1: That then the attorney general and the governor got together
Speaker 1: and said, well, how can we screw with trans people?
Speaker 1: You know, It's like, well, we can't do it legally,
Speaker 1: so let's do it this way by edict and right doing.
Speaker 2: It, you know, doing it the way that they do
Speaker 2: it through control of the administrative apparatus of the state.
Speaker 2: But you know, the thing that really concerned me is
Speaker 2: the way that in states for there is a Republican
Speaker 2: super majority in the legislature or where they control both
Speaker 2: houses and the governor's office, that you know, they're just
Speaker 2: doing flat out undemocratic things. It's like they're just like
Speaker 2: refusing to see people who are duly elected to represent
Speaker 2: their constituents. Right, you know, sorry, you believe the wrong thing,
Speaker 2: We're just going to like kick you out of the legislature.
Speaker 1: So I have a little bit of a theory here,
Speaker 1: I mean, because you know, you said there's a connection
Speaker 1: between trans rights and reproductive rights and the fight for either,
Speaker 1: and I believe that they are very much connected.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean, it is about bodily autonomy. It is
Speaker 2: about the control of your own reproductive anatomy, and it's
Speaker 2: about saying that your body is for you to live
Speaker 2: through it, not as a resource for the state or
Speaker 2: somebody else's religion. Right.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting to me to see the pushback, you know,
Speaker 1: when abortion comes on the ballot. Now, so that they
Speaker 1: got their Supreme Court to do what they wanted, you know,
Speaker 1: with overturning Row, but then you know they've they got emboldened.
Speaker 1: So you're seeing states like Kansas say hell no when
Speaker 1: they get the chance to vote on it. And I
Speaker 1: saw a recent survey I want to say it was Gallup,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure about that, where fifty three percent
Speaker 1: of registered Republicans said the anti trans legislation is going
Speaker 1: too far.
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, no, I saw that too. It was it
Speaker 2: was actually believe it or not a Fox newspaper, and
Speaker 2: so yeah, I think it was like fifty seven percent,
Speaker 2: you know, said anti trans legislation going too far is
Speaker 2: a is a major problem. And then like another twenty
Speaker 2: six percent, I think it was said it was a
Speaker 2: minor problem, but only so like eighty six percent of
Speaker 2: people thought it was a problem at some level, and
Speaker 2: only fifteen percent said it wasn't a problem at all,
Speaker 2: and only I think like three percent said like, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I mean, it's something that pretty much everybody
Speaker 2: has an opinion about. Oh yeah, that only a diehard
Speaker 2: minority supports, and that eighty six percent of the population
Speaker 2: thinks it is somewhat of a problem.
Speaker 1: Do you think this more.
Speaker 2: Than half of the people think it's a bad problem.
Speaker 1: Is this the last gas of the far right ideology?
Speaker 1: Or is it just going to come back in a
Speaker 1: different way.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm pretty cynical, okay, you know, just like
Speaker 2: I You know, there was a saying I heard in
Speaker 2: a I think it was actually a Mealosh Foreman film.
Speaker 2: It's like Czech filmmaker where where one of the characters
Speaker 2: says nothing is so good that it couldn't be better,
Speaker 2: you know, and nothing is so bad that it couldn't
Speaker 2: be worse. And I think, yeah, that's probably true. You know.
Speaker 2: I I had a friend that was emailing with yesterday
Speaker 2: or today about that poll that you just mentioned, and
Speaker 2: you know, she said, what we really need now is
Speaker 2: our You know, Senator, have you no decency moments?
Speaker 1: I agree?
Speaker 2: Like, like in the the Red Scare back in the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties, which was horrible, It's like, it's like, I
Speaker 2: think what's happening right now on trans issues is as
Speaker 2: horrible as that. And there was, you know, totally a
Speaker 2: panic around communism and communists in the government and infiltrating
Speaker 2: everything and blacklist in Hollywood. I mean people lost their
Speaker 2: jobs and wrecked their careers, ruined their lives over the
Speaker 2: Red Scare and the Blacklist, and you know, we're seeing
Speaker 2: things like that happen to trans people now. But that moment,
Speaker 2: you know, in the House on American Activities Committee, hearing
Speaker 2: that McCarthy is, you know, trying to like call everybody
Speaker 2: a communist and kick them out of government. Uh, you know,
Speaker 2: you had guys is like, Senator, have you no decency?
Speaker 2: And it kind of, you know, it just it hit
Speaker 2: the moment where a lot of people kind of put
Speaker 2: the brakes on and you're like, right, this is like
Speaker 2: totally out of hand, and you started to see it
Speaker 2: unwind a little bit, and so, you know, I hope
Speaker 2: something like that happened.
Speaker 1: Well, you talked about trans you know, the pendulum, and
Speaker 1: I think there is one. So I am hopeful, you know,
Speaker 1: because these clips do go viral. I think part of
Speaker 1: the problem is the saturation of everything. You know, We're
Speaker 1: so inundated with all of the information. But I've seen
Speaker 1: some remarkable speeches. I've seen some impassioned parents, and I've
Speaker 1: even seen a couple of you know, Republican state legislators
Speaker 1: say I cannot do this to human beings. It's beyond
Speaker 1: our scope. It's beyond our purview.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, it seems like the governor of Montana, which
Speaker 2: just passed some of the more draconian legislation, his own
Speaker 2: child is not binary and has has has you know,
Speaker 2: talked to their dads and like dad, like, don't do
Speaker 2: this to me and my community, and he was like,
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's like, you know, I got to
Speaker 2: get reelected. And so I think as long as as
Speaker 2: long as there is foaming at the mouth of rabid
Speaker 2: transphobes in the Republican Party, I think they're going to
Speaker 2: continue doing this. At least through twenty twenty four, and
Speaker 2: you know, it's like it but to your point about abortion,
Speaker 2: it's it's like, there has definitely been a mobilization against
Speaker 2: the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and it hasn't played
Speaker 2: well for the Republicans, thank god. And you know, it's like,
Speaker 2: I think that we could conceivably see something like that
Speaker 2: that happening of people saying like this anti trans thing
Speaker 2: is you know, batshit crazy and it's just wrong. And
Speaker 2: you know, honestly, I don't really care that much about
Speaker 2: trans people, but it's like we need to kind of
Speaker 2: get off the get off this thing right now, it's like,
Speaker 2: and stop obsessing over it. And it's not the problem
Speaker 2: that they're thinking it is, and you know, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: So I think we'll see how it plays out over
Speaker 2: the next eighteen months. I don't I don't imagine that
Speaker 2: it will abate until you know, second week of November
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty four and the best of all circumstances, right,
Speaker 2: but hopefully it will. It will not be it will
Speaker 2: not be the wedge or the you know, the accelerant
Speaker 2: that the right hopes it will be. It's like that
Speaker 2: they have to have overplayed their hands.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's because it I think it's
Speaker 1: part of why we didn't have that red wave. You know,
Speaker 1: they took the House, they didn't take the Senate. We
Speaker 1: gained in the Senate, you know, but they they didn't.
Speaker 1: You know, what is there they have five extra seats ten.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's something that you know, somebody coughs wrong,
Speaker 1: It could it could shift. And so I think this
Speaker 1: at least has something to do with it. I think
Speaker 1: Roe probably has more to do with it.
Speaker 2: And I'm wondering if yeah, and then yeah, no, I
Speaker 2: mean I think you're I think you're right, But yeah,
Speaker 2: I think the other thing that we really have to
Speaker 2: be mindful of is the really racially motivated voter suppression
Speaker 2: and you know, the gerrymandering. It's like because they're just
Speaker 2: you know, they are trying to orchestrate a political system
Speaker 2: that locks in a kind of minoritarian rule. And when
Speaker 2: you look at you know, like these polls that we've
Speaker 2: just been talking about, where most people actually oppose what
Speaker 2: it is that they're doing and the way they're using
Speaker 2: trans issues and to do it. The only way they
Speaker 2: can hold on to power is through these repressive, anti
Speaker 2: democratic actions that game the system in particular ways to
Speaker 2: get non majoritarian outcomes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's scary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is scary, but you know that I'm going
Speaker 2: to need to probably start winding this down a little bit.
Speaker 2: But yeah, but the it's been a great conversation. Really
Speaker 2: have appreciated the free flowing nature of it all the
Speaker 2: the I was I gonna say, one of the things
Speaker 2: that I tell young people today is like, for first
Speaker 2: of all, it's like, you know, don't don't give up.
Speaker 2: You know, just like the only thing that has ever
Speaker 2: changed the course of political history is like mass mobilizations
Speaker 2: of people, you know, at some level becoming ungovernable and
Speaker 2: you know, compelling change to happen. And you know, we
Speaker 2: we as the people, always have that as a tool
Speaker 2: in our toolkit, you know, if we can get people
Speaker 2: moving in the right So don't give up, hope. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And second, it's like, you know, there are still people
Speaker 2: out there who are persuadable, you know, and that we
Speaker 2: need to be talking to those people, need to be
Speaker 2: doing our education and outreach work. But that you know,
Speaker 2: there's no question that we now have a whole lot
Speaker 2: more work to do, and I mean that that I
Speaker 2: feel like a lot of the work that people in
Speaker 2: my generation did has been undone at the level of
Speaker 2: civil rights and of health care access. You know that that.
Speaker 2: But the flip side of that coin is to say, well,
Speaker 2: we we made some progress and now there's been a
Speaker 2: role back. But I know that you have the same
Speaker 2: capacity to do that work. I know that that work
Speaker 2: can be done. And the other thing I would say
Speaker 2: is that you know, it totally sucks to be criminalized,
Speaker 2: to like be denied access to care, to have your
Speaker 2: families and jobs at housing at risk just because you're trans.
Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, it's like, that
Speaker 2: is the world that I grew up in. It's like
Speaker 2: I grew up as a person trying to figure out
Speaker 2: how to deal with being trans in the sixties and
Speaker 2: seventies and eighties and when I finally when I transitioned,
Speaker 2: you know, in the late eighties early nineties, the world
Speaker 2: that I was coming into at that time, it's like
Speaker 2: by saying that I was trans, it's like you could
Speaker 2: be fifty one fifty, you could lose access to your kids,
Speaker 2: you could be busted by the cops for walking while trans,
Speaker 2: you had no employment discrimination. You know, most trans healthcare
Speaker 2: services were not provided. You know, we're not covered by insurance.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of gatekeeping, there was very little information,
Speaker 2: and so that wasn't good. But I can also say
Speaker 2: it's survivable, you know, just like we as trans people
Speaker 2: are strong people who find our way and that you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's you. You can be yourself to yourself. You
Speaker 2: can be like free in your heart and strong in
Speaker 2: your self knowledge, you know, and nobody can take that
Speaker 2: away from you. Like however hard the external circumstances are,
Speaker 2: just like you can find that place of self validation
Speaker 2: if nothing else. And I just you know, I just
Speaker 2: feel like there's there there there's no going back really,
Speaker 2: you know, to what things were like half a century ago.
Speaker 2: I mean, we might face really hard political repression that
Speaker 2: makes their life very very difficult. But something has changed
Speaker 2: in the attitude of people. I mean, I think younger
Speaker 2: people today have a very different orientation to.
Speaker 1: General absolutely and one another's gender identity and one another.
Speaker 1: There's a lot it's so much more open and so
Speaker 1: much more.
Speaker 2: So much more flowing. Yeah, and I you know, and
Speaker 2: you know, I don't want to put words in their
Speaker 2: mouths or you know, frames frame what they're doing in
Speaker 2: ways that they wouldn't do themselves. But when I look
Speaker 2: at it, you like, what I see, particularly around the
Speaker 2: emergence of non binary identities, is that, I mean, I
Speaker 2: think there's some people who are going to, like I
Speaker 2: want to present in a really you know, mixed or
Speaker 2: androgynous way, or you know, I have an identity as
Speaker 2: a non binary person. But you know, I also see
Speaker 2: people who, you know, like, if they didn't tell me
Speaker 2: they identified as non binary, I wouldn't know about them,
Speaker 2: you know that it's almost like a it's like a
Speaker 2: political stance or as much as anything else. And I think,
Speaker 2: and that's not to say that it's not legitimate, but
Speaker 2: what I what I see is a lot of people
Speaker 2: using the concept of non binary to essentially say I'm
Speaker 2: I'm opposed to like a compulsory gender binary, you know,
Speaker 2: like that's what I'm rejecting, and that that it's as
Speaker 2: much saying like I think of it's like, I know
Speaker 2: what my body is, but I'm choosing to express myself
Speaker 2: in some way that doesn't depend on being part of
Speaker 2: a you know, biologically defined gender binary. That's what I'm rejecting.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think that's cool. I think we
Speaker 2: have a really different attitude in society today in large
Speaker 2: parts of it to the idea of a compulsory gender
Speaker 2: binary predicated on biology. It's like, that's what's shifted, that's
Speaker 2: what people are rejected.
Speaker 1: Well, and you know, you just inadvertently brought this back
Speaker 1: full circle because we started the conversation talking about the language,
Speaker 1: and I think non binary identities, you know, we have
Speaker 1: a language for that now. I've got several friends who
Speaker 1: identified as lesbians or even identified as gay, you know,
Speaker 1: and male, and said that never fit. But I knew
Speaker 1: that I was not a trans man or a trans woman.
Speaker 1: But then I heard this language, and I heard these
Speaker 1: kids talking about it, and I went, that is what
Speaker 1: I am. That is what I always was, you know,
Speaker 1: and they them is what fits for me. And now
Speaker 1: we have the language for it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I want to close with just one. As I was
Speaker 1: rereading today, I came across a passage that is just
Speaker 1: read as poetry to me, you know. And I think
Speaker 1: our existence is an act of resistance. I think there
Speaker 1: are a lot of ways to do it. And you
Speaker 1: started talking about you know, someone I really enjoy and
Speaker 1: the passage says, as big free as successful music career demonstrates,
Speaker 1: not all forms of trans resistance have to be somberly
Speaker 1: militant to be influential. When trans and gender nonconforming lives
Speaker 1: are lived joyously and unapologetically in plain sight out or
Speaker 1: their hard truths and dangers are spoken out loud, When
Speaker 1: the knowledge that comes from living those lives is channeled
Speaker 1: into music and dance, written about and written from, played with,
Speaker 1: and fantasized over. When their beauty and weirdness they're sharp
Speaker 1: edges and dark recesses are creatively explored and collectively experienced.
Speaker 1: That is equally as important as heavy political activism. I
Speaker 1: love that passage.
Speaker 2: Oh you know what I too. I thought, it's like,
Speaker 2: you know, I haven't read that book since I wrote that,
Speaker 2: And yeah, that was like, hey, Susan, you nailed that.
Speaker 1: I really did good, good on, good on you.
Speaker 2: You know. And I remember, I mean, I remember doing
Speaker 2: the revisions for that First Boy or First Ball, and
Speaker 2: first edition of the book came out in two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight, I think, and the publisher asked for you know,
Speaker 2: an updated version, you know that could you just add
Speaker 2: a new chapter? And I thought you know, no, I
Speaker 2: need to because things changed so much. I think I
Speaker 2: need to re do like a global revision and sort
Speaker 2: of update it throughout. But writing that last chapter, it's
Speaker 2: like I wrote it, you know, in like December and January,
Speaker 2: like December of twenty sixteen and January of twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: It's like I wrote it in the immediate aftermath of
Speaker 2: the Trump election, right, I mean the reason the book
Speaker 2: ends so that the you know, the Women's march in Washington,
Speaker 2: because like that happened like the weekend before I turned
Speaker 2: the book manuscript in the next week, and I was like,
Speaker 2: that's that's where it stopped. When we really had no
Speaker 2: sense at that time how you had a sense that
Speaker 2: it was going to get bad and weird under Trump,
Speaker 2: but you didn't know exactly how bad or how weird
Speaker 2: or for how long. And I was like it was
Speaker 2: just such an open book at that point. So you know,
Speaker 2: I think I was I think I was writing from
Speaker 2: this place of like really radical vulnerability, you know, like
Speaker 2: really of just you know, trying to say like you know,
Speaker 2: it's like here we are, like we got to live,
Speaker 2: you know, like we got to find our joy. We've
Speaker 2: got to you know, it's like, can't live let this bullshit,
Speaker 2: just live rent fring in your head. You've got to just.
Speaker 1: Because if we don't have joy, what is the right exactly?
Speaker 2: You know? And maybe this will be the thing that
Speaker 2: I that I end on because I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 2: have to go. But that, uh, like read Ericson who
Speaker 2: we were speaking of earlier, it's like, I too, am
Speaker 2: a person who, well, from time to time experience Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll have I use psychedelics, That's what I'm getting, you know,
Speaker 2: and I do it, you know, with some intentionality and regularity.
Speaker 2: And there was one time, I think I think it
Speaker 2: was a like a ketamine trip where I saw this
Speaker 2: banner that's just like across my mind's eye, and the
Speaker 2: banner said the meaning of life is to experience joy
Speaker 2: as we move towards death. You know, it's like we
Speaker 2: don't get like, nobody here gets out alive, right, just
Speaker 2: like we are gonna die at some point and we
Speaker 2: should not be in denial about that. But if you
Speaker 2: don't experience joy in that passage towards the inevitability of death,
Speaker 2: it's just like, what's the point of being here? Right?
Speaker 1: Agreed on that all right. I want to thank you
Speaker 1: so much for your time. I have thoroughly enjoyed this. Likewise,
Speaker 1: please come back anytime. We would love to hear from you.
Speaker 2: Just hit me up. I'm around.
Speaker 1: I appreciate this so much. Susan Striker, thank you for
Speaker 1: joining us at the Full Circle Table. Have a great night.
Speaker 2: It's been my pleasure, all right, you too, good bye.
Speaker 1: Full Circle is a Never Scurred Productions podcast hosted by
Speaker 1: Charles Tyson Junior and Martha Madrigal, Produced and edited by
Speaker 1: Never Scurd Executive Produced by Charles Tyson Junior and Martha Madrigal.
Speaker 1: Our theme in music is by the jingle Berries.
Speaker 2: All names, pictures, music, audio, and video clips are registered
Speaker 2: trademarks and or copyrights of their respective copyright holders.