LGBTQ Female Role Models: Susan Stryker

I recently just finished reading a great book callled, "Transgender History" by Susan Stryker, after it was recommended to me by Jack and Jess McDonald this summer. I was really impressed by Stryker's work and wanted to highlight her accomplishments here on the blog.

Susan Stryker is an openly transgender woman who has worked diligently to advance the transgender equality movement in America as a transgender historian. She recieved her Ph.D. in United States History at the University of California, Berkeley.

Stryker is a community-based historian, and she makes media and works to develop her community's history as a form of activism for the trans movement. Between 1997 and 2003 she worked as the Executive Director of the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco, which works to preserve and further ongoing research in LGBTQ studies in one of the largest collections of queer history in the nation. She also is a vocal feminist, noting that as someone who previously presented to society as a white male, she has a "good yardstick" for measuring misogyny and sexism.

When I was reading "Transgender History" by Stryker this past month, I realized that San Francisco actually has a really rich trans history. In addition to the Compton Cafeteria Riots (see below!) and housing one of the best LGBTQ historical collections, San Francisco is also home to the country's first transgender activist group, "Transgender Nation", founded in SanFran. in 1992. The

organization worked successfully to begin integrating transgender concerns into the larger movement for LGBTQ equality. One of the activist demonstrations that TN was best known for was it's 1993 protest of the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, in which the group rallied against the APA's diagnosis of the transgender identity as disordered (GID).

In addition to publishing "Transgender History" and many other works on transgender history, Stryker also co-directed the documentary, "Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria". (You can also find an Amazon trailer to the documentary that is a pretty good summary of it, here.) Here's an excerpt from the documentary below (there are some other great vintage footage portions on Youtube, too!)

"What happened at Compton's Cafteria that night wasn't a 'catfight' between screaming queens-it was a riot, and it kicked off a new human rights movement."

The documentary "Screaming Queens" covers the 1966 Compton Cafeteria Riots, which until this book (Transgender History) and this documentary, I knew very little about. It turns out that Stryker hadn't heard of the riots either, until she uncovered a vintage publication about them in the San Francisco GLBT historical society warehouses. The story goes that Gene Compton's cafeteria (at the corner of Turk and Taylor street) was a safe-haven in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco for transgender individuals (as well as other LGBQ individuals), and it was open 24/7.

"It was beautiful. Everybody would just die for window seats [at Compton's], just to show off. Jehovah's Witnesses used to drag crosses in the street in front of Compton's, and tell us we were going to burn in hell, but we ignored them. Compton's was fabulous. It was like Oz. Something like The Wizard of Oz."

The Tenderloin district of San Francisco had a police department that was allegedly paid off in order to keep the area open to prostitution and drug hustling, . The transgender and drag communities were eventually forced to the Tenderloin simply because restaurants, beauty shops, bars, and the hotels, etc. in other areas of the city wouldn't serve transgender people. The Tenderloin (and specifically, Turk Street), became known as "the gay ghetto", home to drag Balls and a larger transgender community. Not withstanding, the police could take transgender individuals as any time to jail for "female impersonation", and oftentimes they would:

"The first night I was in San Francisco I was arrested for 'sidewalk obstruction' by the 'tax squad', which was a police squad that generally made life unpleasant for people who didn't fit in. Later, I was arressted for 'female impersonation'. I never felt that I was impersonating female, I thought, I am a female!"

And while the Tenderloin was safer than other areas of San Francisco for transgender and queer individuals, it wasn't completely free of violence; there was once a serial kiler in the district who specifically targeted transgender individuals. The "Camelot" haven of the Gene Compton cafeteria didn't last forever either. When a new political activist group (composed of

many transgender individuals) named "Vanguard" started meeting at the restaurant, Compton's eventually started kicking them out. Nevertheless, Vanguard members picketed Compton's due to the discrimination they felt, which upset the Compton cafeteria management even further.

One night (the date is uncertain, but it is believed to be August 9th, 1966) the San.Fran. police department raided the cafeteria (presumably after conversations with the Compton management). Fighting started when a policeman grabbed one of the drag queens, and she threw coffee in his face. All hell broke loose after that, "triggering years of resentment", and "all the sugar shakers went through the windows and the glass doors." Police called for more backup as the fighting continued, and eventually a police car and a local newsstand were set on fire. (Business at Compton's never recovered, and a porn shop took it's place a few years later.) After the riot, police officer (and director of Community Relations), Elliot Blackstone pioneered services and helped to overturn many anti-transgender laws, thus improving conditions for the transgender community in San Francisco. Many transgender individuals at the riots also noted the marked change in the community:

"Out of Compton's [riots] came some very beautiful, beautiful women. We felt good about ourselves. And that's the most interesting part of it, because once you feel good about yourself, nobody can hurt you. Nobody can come in and turn anything around that you don't want."

Through her research, Stryker found that while the Stonewall Riots of June 28th, 1969 are typically cited as the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ rights movement, the Compton Cafeteria Riots were actually one of the first radical acts against police and institutional trans/homophobia in America. Stryker's work was instrumental in sheding light to this important and watershed event in our LGBTQ history (and if you notice on the Wiki page, Stryker is the primary reference of the entire account). She interviewed people in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco who she believed might have been present at the event, and collected first-hand knowledge of the riots through interviews and personal accounts.

Thus, we have Stryker to thank for uncovering an incredible part of our community's history; "the story was bigger than I could have ever imagined", she says of the night. Stryker also said that researching the riots made her feel the presence of a larger transgender and drag community; I think it's awesome that we can look to this group of empowered individuals in our community as a source of courage and strength.

Mom, We Need To Talk...

Well, it's been about two hours since I've been back in Columbus, GA and I've already cried twice.

That's how I was going to start this blog post. I was then going to proceed to tell you all about why I was crying and how upset I was about being home and not being accepted by mom. I was going to rant about how I would never be the perfect son she wanted me to be but how I would do anything I could to make her happy. All in all, it was going to be one of my sadder posts. But, I never really finished it. I kept thinking of new details to add or take away and I just never got around to posting it. Now, I'm glad I did.

In the post, I was going to talk about how my mom refuses to accept that I'm gay or even talk about it. I was going to cry about not having a good relationship with her. But, after a week of being here, I've picked up on something my mom keeps asking me:

"Baby, are you happy?"- mom asks me.

"Yeah, I am."- I reply puzzled.

"Are you sure? Because you know that all mommy wants for you is to be happy. You know that right?"- she says kinda awkwardly.

"Yes, ma'am."- In my head I'm thinking, what you talking about momma?! (anyone get the reference?)

"Good, because as long as you're happy, that's all I care about. Do you understand?"- she replies with a smile.

"Yes, ma'am."- I say still confused and baffled but maybe getting a sense of what she's hinting at.

Well, I didn't really catch on the first time she said it, but she's repeated it to me several times. Now, I'm not gonna jump for joy over this. She still hasn't said the g-word (gay) or even hinted at my sexuality. So I'm not entirely sure if that's what she's alluding to or just speaking generally. Either way, I feel like it's a step in the right direction for her. It's a long way from the "You're gonna burn in hell" and "Don't go near your little cousins" speeches. In fact, now she urges me to go hang out with them since I only see them once a year. But it did get me to thinking, what if the reason my mom and I don't have a good relationship anymore is because I've been pushing her away from trying to fix it.

I pride myself on being a very open person. I'll tell you just about anything if you ask me. If I feel I can trust a person, I'll open up to them in a matter of minutes (maybe not the best thing to do but that's how I roll). But with my mom, it's so totally different. I clam up talking about anything with her because I feel she won't understand or will rush to judgment. I don't tell her much about my friends (she's always been critical of my friend choices). I don't tell her much about my fraternity ("Why would you join a white fraternity? Do you think you're too good for a black one?"). I definitely don't tell her anything about my sexual life or even the fact that I'm somewhat active in the gay community. The only thing I do tell her about is Rhythm and Blue, my a cappella group. But even that gets some scrutiny from her ("Are you sure that singing group isn't taking up too much of your time?"). So, I basically tiptoe around all subjects in my life creating a very one-sided relationship where I know everything about her life and she knows nothing about mine.

Do I feel bad about it? Yeah, I do. But when everything that is important to me seems distracting to her, I just don't feel comfortable talking about it. Well, at least I used to. But now, things are changing. She's asking more about my college life and not being so judgmental and scrutinizing every little detail. And so I have started to open up to her more except for in one area.

Yeah, being gay, obviously. I want to tell her about the awesome LGBT friends I have. I want to rant to her about this guy I'm practically in love with even though we've only really hung out once. I want to cry to her about the past guys that have broken my heart. I want to tell her that I'm happy, truly happy. I'm enjoying life and having fun. I want to show her that being gay hasn't hindered my life or made it worse like she thought it would. In fact, it's opened up so many doors to so many amazing people and adventures. Most of all, I want to finally come out to my family but I need her support to do that. But I can't talk to her about this yet. I feel like she's still not ready. I don't want to push her to talk about something she's not ready to talk about.

But, I think she's getting there. She's slowly making her way to the point where she's ready to talk about it. So far, she's still at the awkward asking of "So... are there any... boys, I mean, young men you're interested in?". At one point, I tried to use this as my chance to go a little further with her by telling her about a guy but she hurriedly retreated back to her usual "Are you sure there aren't any girls you like? Maybe you just haven't found the right one." So, I just let it drop. She hasn't asked me that in a while. Next time, I'll try again.

For now, I'll bide my time. It seems like she's making progress. Slow, minimal progress but it's progress nonetheless. I'd love any advice on how to deal with this or maybe speed up the process a little (jk, but actually). I want both of us to be ready to have these conversations but what do I do now that I am, but she's not?

In which I have a lot of wine at Christmas

[In addition to all of our awesome visible and identifying columnists, we also have some awesome anonymous columnists that for one reason or another must use a pseudonym not their full name (and pseudopic?). Details on anonymous columnists here.]

Merry Christmas, folks!

Transgender Day of Remembrance was a while ago now, but I've found myself almost haunted by a question someone asked. I attended a reading of Gender Outlaw at the Regulator, and a woman in the audience said, "I want to raise my children to be gender neutral, but what do I say if my son asks for a Barbie?"

At first, I thought she was objecting to Barbie on feminist grounds, and I found it a really interesting question-- should you allow your sons access to toxic marketed images of femininity that you wouldn't give to your daughters?-- but then it turned out she didn't actually have a problem with Barbie. She had a problem with boys playing with girl toys. She didn't want her son to be picked on by other kids, she said; wouldn't it be better to teach him to fit in?

I have kind of a lot of problems with this.

First, I really object to the idea that a child's gender is readily apparent. Mine wasn't. How do you know it's your son asking for a Barbie? If it's your daughter, you're only going to break her heart if you deny her gender expression just so she can fit in with the "other" boys. This was my girlfriend's experience, and it caused her a lot of pain for years.

I lucked out a bit due to another flawed assumption-- the idea that "male" is somehow "gender neutral." It's way more okay for a girl (or, in my case, a "girl") to act boyish than the other way around (good ol' sexism!). So, if your goal is to give your kids a gender-free environment but you ban Barbies for the boys... you have epically failed to understand gender. Honestly, if you banned Barbies for girls, you'd still be failing at "gender neutral."

But I think the most difficult thing for me to swallow was the idea that, somehow, if the rest of the world is going to disapprove of your kid, it would help if you disapproved, too. This is the argument my mother still uses when she tries to convince my brother and I to stop dating people of the same (or in my case, "same") gender. She claims to have no problem with gay people, but wants us to be straight to make our lives easier.

Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I've always felt that I could deal with everybody else in the world with no problem if I knew I could count on supportive parents at home. I would almost certainly be going as Lawrence in class by now, for example. No problem is easier to overcome if you think your parents can't accept who you are as a person.

I'm actually a little intimidated by the prospect of ever having children, just because childhood is so full of gender policing, and I couldn't possibly protect my children from all of it. I can't bear the thought of the kids on the playground picking on my child for liking Barbie. I might go on a one-man crusade and talk to all those kids' parents. I might just give my kid a lot of pep talks about how some people are terrible. I would probably spend a lot of my time very worried. But I would still give my kid the Barbie. For me, that would never be in question.

And, you know, I don't give my mom a lot of credit for tolerance (largely because she remains "devastated" that I like girls, six years later) but she was pretty good about letting me just be myself. And this today we had a conversation that gave me hope (for the first time ever) that when I finally tell her I'm trans, maybe I won't have to be estranged from my whole family.

I usually get some nice new clothes for Christmas. Usually it's fancy dresses, shoes, or maybe a really stylish coat. Always in hyper-feminine prints and colors. This year, it was pajamas and some nice shirts from J Crew. Two or three of them had a few ruffles but they were all in earth tones, and they were probably the least-feminine clothes my mom had ever bought me.

"I noticed you were sort of dressing more neutral," she said, "so I tried to do that."

I didn't even care that she was conflating "masculine" with "neutral." I was just so, so happy. I'm pretty sure this is the first time my mom has had anything nice to say about my unfeminine tendencies. Usually it's a constant stream of criticism because I don't shave, she liked my hair better when it was long, I should wear earrings or my piercings will close, etc. But this time... when I mentioned that the ruffles were maybe too much, she said we could go exchange them tomorrow for something I'd like better.

And then, she asked if I had dress pants for an upcoming fancy dinner; I told her I'd outgrown my last pair, and said that I was just planning to wear a dress. I groaned when I said it, but I'm not sure I needed to. She immediately dismissed the idea of wearing a dress and insisted that we'd get dress pants. This is a huge turnaround from this summer, when she nagged me into waxing my legs specifically so I could wear dresses.

And you know-- it really does make a difference in how I feel about tackling the rest of the world. So I'm only more convinced that no matter what kind of consequences it has everywhere else, parents have to resist gender-policing.

As always, I'm just chitchatting about what's on my mind to get a conversation started. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here or email me at lawrenceevalyn (at) gmail (dot) com. I'd especially love to hear from other gender-non-conforming folks to hear your point of view. Come on, queer up my break for me!

Anonymous Posts (12.13.10-12.19.10)

Every week, we collect anonymous entries sent in using the link on our sidebar and post them all on Monday. We post anything as long as it doesn't contain personal attacks or hate speech. Feel free to submit your thoughts and questions :)

These are superlate, y'all. Sorry about that, but I've literally been sleeping since my Architecture final on Sunday night. I may or may not have ended the semester with three straight all-nighters #greatdecisions. But I'm home now, and it is glorious. I can, like, get hungry at 2am and not have to decide whether I want McDonald's again that day (on a related note, Chocolate Cheerios are much better than one would expect).

Obama signed The DADT Repeal Act this morning, four days after it passed the Senate. You already know this from your News Feed, but John McCain was just The Worst. It was almost a little sad to see him acquiesce that he had lost. JK. IN YO FACE, MCCAIN. IN YO FACE. This is probably the most LOL moment from last week, though:

Hahaha. Totally.

As far as The Blog goes for break, not much has changed since last year (just change "124" to "394"). The bottom line is that things'll be slower these next coupla weeks (we will be with our families and Aris) and We should use this time to catch up on any columns we missed because we were taking some atrociously heinous class on Steel. I tried to make the sidebar as conducive to browsing old posts as possible - let me know if you have any suggestions!

Aaaaaand anonymous posts for the week, yo. Sorry again for the delay. I'm sure Alec'll make me feel amply guilty.

#1

I'm not sure if anyone else has run into this issue, but I am having a heck of a time finding someone who is interested in monogamy. This is not to say that i have any issues with others being non-monogamous, but as someone who is interested in being in an exclusive relationship... it's getting a little frustrating. I've gotten a couple (repeated) responses so far to this concern:

- "you really should try being non-monogamous"

and

-"It's college. people don't want to just date one person at a time. That comes later"

...??

#2

“You are not your bra-size, nor are you the width of your waist, nor are you the slenderness of your calves. You are not your hair color, your skin color, nor are you a shade of lipstick. Your shoe-size is of no consequence. You are not defined by the amount of attention you get from males, females, or any combination thereof. You are not the number of sit-ups you can do, nor are you the number of calories in a day. You are not your mustache. You are not the hair on your legs. You are not a little red dress. You are no amalgam of these things.

You are the content of your character. You are the ambitions that drive you. You are the goals that you set. You are the things that you laugh at and the words that you say. You are the thoughts you think and the things you wonder. You are beautiful and desirable not for the clique you attend, but for the spark of life within you that compels you to make your life a full and meaningful one. You are beautiful not for the shape of the vessel, but for the volume of the soul it carries.”

#3

i'm really thankful for this blog. it keeps me thinking and hopeful.

that's all i have to say :)

#4

Why do LGB people not put "interested in" on Facebook? It seems like a common thread in most out people at Duke... they're active at the Center, have no problem living openly, but don't reflect that on Facebook. Is it a "I don't like labels" thing? Because it's not really a label, it's just who you're romantically interested in. Men? Women? Both? Put something! I know some people don't feel like that's pertinent information to put online, but that's the point of Facebook. You have the opportunity to portray yourself in the public square, in the manner you choose. Putting nothing just makes you look asexual in my opinion.

LGBTQ Female Role Models: Shamim Sarif

Born in 1969 in England, Shamim Sarif is a current writer and filmmaker. She has received numerous awards on her works as both an author and as a screenwriter and film director ("Best Director" at the South African Film Festival, World Cinema Best Director), and more informally she won an AfterEllen.com 2008 Visiblity Award as the "International Lesbian/Bisexual Woman of the Year". Another fun fact: her and her partner, Hannan Kattan, formed their own entertainment production company called "Enlightenment Productions". This is remeniscent of queer women creating their own spaces when the current system just doesn't cut it, such as Joan Jett from two weeks ago, who formed her own recording label-and was the first woman to ever do so.

Sarif's first film and novel, The World Unseen, is a story set in Cape Town, South Africa at the beginning of apartheid in the 1950s. Sarif herself has a personal connection to South Africa, as both her parents and grandparents were born and lived there. The story surronds two Indian South African women who work against the racism, sexism, homophobia and political tensions that they encounter in their lives.

The World Unseen (2008 release)

Sarif has also released I Can't Think Straight, as a film and novel, which is a modern-day story of two women in London who navigate family and cultural prescriptions about sexuality. If you watch the two trailers, you'll notice that Sarif uses the same actresses, Lisa Ray and Sheetal Sheth in both films, which is sort of an interesting and unique connection between the two films.

I personally really admire Shamim Sarif for making films of substance about LGBTQ women, especially regarding policital/cultural themes. As an openly lesbian herself, Sarif is a role model for visibility in addition to her accomplishments as a filmmaker and author. I've also seen both these movies, and I think I'd definitely rank them both in the top 10 LGBTQ women's films that I've seen, so if you have any free time over break, definitely check them out!

And lastly, if you like these films/novels, Sarif actually has more LGBTQ women's movies in the making: her second novel "Despite the Falling Snow" is being filmed now, and is a lesbian story set in Cold War Stalinist Moscow. I'm personally impressed by the initiative in which Sarif has decided to use her talent as an author and director to advance LGBTQ women's visibility, and I hope other openly LGBTQ women and their allies are motivated by her films and openness.

I Can't Think Straight (2008 Release)

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More Than a Little Sobering: (from The Advocate) Sorry to get superserious, because I know today has been all about #DADT and #!, but this is a, uh, pretty compelling video. This is a reminder that We've got a lot of work still ahead of Us, y'all - there are no days off. There was a frenzy of support when these suicides occurred a couple months ago, let's not forget about them. [Rant on the tendency for the Movement to treat issues like fads deleted for now.]

So obviously the school and admin really screwed up here. But would a reprimand have solved things? Even a little? Would it have maybe even made things worse? What's the most effective and realistic way of combatting bullying in schools?