March 29, 2023 • 47 mins
In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Bridget Todd about some trans people in history who lived long happy lives and accomplished wonderful things.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to cool People who did cool stuff.
I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. With me today is the
one and only Bridget Todd. Bridget, how are you on
this day that is totally a different day than the
last time we recorded. Oh, I'm doing great. This is
a totally different day, fresh energy, love it, Yeah, totally.
Our producer is Sophie. Our audio engineers Ian Our theme
(00:24):
music was written for us by a woman. And so
this is cool trans people in History week, apparently. And
today I've got a story that I'm really fucking stoked on.
It's one of the most overlooked figures in history. I
never heard of him. Today we're gonna talk about this
doctor named Alan Hart. You ever heard of Alan Hart?
I have not. I've asked my friends who were like, like,
(00:45):
he's an X ray tech. And I asked my like
radical X ray tech friend and they were like nope.
And I asked my like trans man doctor friend and
he's like nope. Like he's cool, he's fucking But but
in order to talk about Alan Hart, We've got to
talk about suberculosis. His favorite topic or right here. When
I first started doing this podcast, I told a ton
(01:06):
of stories that took place in the nineteenth century. And
one thing they kept coming up over and over again
every one of my stories. If they weren't killed by
the state, they were getting killed by tuberculosis, just over
and over again. This, this fucking just murderer of people.
Tuberculous has been around in humans since basically forever. Actually,
unlike a lot of things like the flu only reached
a lot of places in the medieval era. And shit,
(01:27):
I don't that's not in my script. Don't quote me
on that. But like diseases get added to humanity over time,
like COVID, it's going to be like a thousand years
from now, people like, you know, there's a time before COVID.
You know, it's so optimistic. There's gonna be a few
coole thousand years. So tuberculosis has been around forever. In
twenty twenty, it was still the second leading of cause
(01:49):
of death from an infectious disease, second only to COVID. Wow.
It's particularly prevalent in Southeast Asia, and there is antibiotic
treatment available, and so it is a disease of poverty,
particularly common in places. Overcrowding, malnutrition, poor sanitation, all that stuff.
Most of the world uses them moderately these days, not
the days of the guy we're going to be talking about.
(02:11):
Most of the world uses a moderately effective TB vaccine,
but in the US, Canada, and Europe, TB is rare
enough that most people don't get vaccinated, and we focus
more on preventative screening and things like that. Good testing
and treatment cannot get down substantially. But of course that's
not available everywhere because money and capitalism and such. So
(02:31):
why are we talking about tuberculosis not just because it's
my weird accidental interest, because we're gonna talk about one
of the people who dedicated his life to doing something
about tuberculosis. A pioneer of TV detection. He's credited as
having saved millions of lives, is the thing I keep saying.
He's also the first transman to get gender confirming surgery
in the US, and the first sort of known in
(02:55):
general and history. But I hate sweeping statements like that,
because you know, there's always like a culture that the
West doesn't care about, that's been doing it for her
centuries that we're going to find out about or whatever.
You know. He was also a novelist who was writing
gay characters more than one hundred fucking years ago, and
he was a fucking cool guy. His name is Alan L. Hart.
He was born in October eighteen ninety in Kansas with
(03:19):
a girl's name. His parents were middle class. His dad
was a grain merchant with a small farming community, so
probably kind of one of the more like pillars of
the community type people. Or I don't know, if he's
a good whatever, I don't know about him. He dies
real quick. It doesn't go well for the family in Kansas.
Another old timey disease, typhoid comes through and takes out
(03:40):
not only not only Allan's dad, but both of his
mom's brothers in eighteen ninety two, so his mom's not
having a good time. He's two years old. His mom, Edna,
packs up her kid and moves back to Oregon near Albany,
and she marries a new guy and they have no kids,
so it's an only child. Alan, like the other people
(04:03):
were talking about today, and this is not the only
trans experience, Alan never had any doubts about his gender.
I think it is often the kind of people who
needed it so much a hundred years ago that they
were willing to go through this incredible effort. Are more
likely've known since they were young. That is my personal
I guess, you know, as someone who like for my
own I'm fairly open about this. Like I didn't know
(04:25):
I was a girl when I was young. I knew
I wished I was a girl, and there did feel
like a difference there, right, I like tried to pick
a girl's name in fourth grade and then realized I
was already getting beat up too much. You know, Alan
never any doubts about his gender. He never expressed any
interesting girly things, only boy things. He demanded pockets on
all of his clothes. That was one of his big things.
(04:47):
I love that. It's I mean, women's clothing does not
have enough pockets, and I appreciate that. It's like, you
know what, fuck this, it's pockets. I know I have these.
I'm a nerd. I have women's tactical pants and they
don't have back pockets. What they do have a reason.
It's actually kind of a cool reason. They have this
(05:08):
like huge zipper so you can kind of unzip the
butt so you can piss outside without taking your pants off.
It's actually, yeah, it's actually cool. But I just just
think it was f I was like, excuse me, and
then I was like very based. Okay, okay, right now,
it was actually designed by some women, like they're they're
actually fairly nice. Um anyway, So he demands pockets and
(05:31):
all his clothes, which should be a you and a
sex demand. He made collar He makes collars and cuffs
out of cardboard to make his like girl's clothes look
more masculine, about like you know, nineteenth century clothes. It's
all weird and colliery and stuff. He told his mom,
you know, he lost his family, right mom. Mom was
in trouble. So he told his mom very calmly, that
(05:51):
he would grow up into would be a man and
take care of her. He liked to play Civil War soldier.
He's white, but he was born into Kansas, so I
like to think he played Union soldier. But it might
just as I like him a lot. He's a He's
an outdoorsy boy. He likes chopping wood and carrying knives
and ship. Anytime he gets any money, he goes and
buys like men and straw hats and like pocket knives
(06:13):
and shit. I feel like I know his type, like
light totally knives and weapons and straw hats Yeah, totally. Um.
He would play dolls with friends neighbors who come over
as long as he was the father and the head
of the family of the dolls. What a good detail,
(06:37):
I know. He followed his grandfather around dutifully. His grandfather's
this like super tough, outdoorsy type. Who played that? Do
you ever played that game? Oregon Trail? Mum? Grandfather played
Oregon Trail on hardcore mode where if you die in
the game, you die in real life because you're actually
on the Oregon Trail. And so he's homeschooled for a while,
(07:00):
and he's able to be himself while he's homeschool because
he lives out in the country. His mother and his
grandparents supported him presenting as a boy, or might be
better to say they indulged him, but later they are
outright supportive, which rules. Will talk more about that later.
When he was twelve, though, his mom and his stepdad
moved into town and he started going to the worst
of all schools, middle school. He at school, he had
(07:22):
to wear dresses and he had to answer to Lucille.
Classmates made fun of him for basically not being very
good at pretending to be a girl. You know, they're like,
why aren't you more of a girl, and he's like,
I'm a yeah. So he disappeared into his books and studies,
and he was made fun of for being too skinny,
and he got called the living skeleton, which is a
really funny nickname. This doesn't roll off the tongue, A
(07:45):
very complicated nickname for anyway. Yeah, it's not easy to
shout at a child, at a young person and like hey,
you're living skeleton. Doesn't really work, No, I know, they
really had to want it. He also realized that not
only was he a boy, but he was a straight boy,
which is to say, like girl. This does not get
called straight throughout his life, but he realizes he likes girls,
(08:06):
and being same sex attracted as a kid was actually
not the red flag. Being same sex attracted as a
kid in this time and place was seen as natural,
and it's the kind of thing one naturally grows out
of unless one is specifically inclined to homosexuality. So like,
all kids kiss each other, but only the gay kids
grow up still kissing each other is the kind of argument, right,
(08:30):
And kids exploring with each other was summed up as
horseplay and nothing to worry about. So girls kissing other
girls wasn't a sign of lesbianism. However, girls wishing they
were boys was the scary sign of lesbianism. I know,
like kind of some weird logic there, I know, And
we're gonna talk a little bit more about this logic.
(08:50):
This one gets into some of the like third sex
and invert in a lot of the ways that she
gets discussed. Because we know more about he gets written
about more, and so there's more about him than some
of the other people I've covered. He graduates second of
his class out of fifteen, tiny tiny class, and he
goes first to Albany College, which later becomes Lewis and
Clark College when I moved to Portland, and he when
(09:13):
he's in college, he writes an anonymously publishes in like
the school newspaper or whatever, some love poems for a
girl he likes. And this is the wild part. It
works Eva Cushman falls for him and the two start
hooking up. The power of poetry. I know, I know.
It's not the best love poetry. I didn't include it.
(09:34):
It's fine. It's like to my Irish color. I was like,
wouldn't have worked on me. No, I've seen pictures of
this guy. It would have worked on me. Oh okay,
he looks like my first boyfriend who's a transman doctor.
So and so this was controversial that they were dating
(09:55):
because they're adults, you know. So they pretended it was
a joke, and in the school newspaper they announced this
is their writing. They announced quote Eva Cushman and Lucille
Hart that's Alan hereby announced to the public that it
is all a joke about them being in love and
about to get married. I love how like it's like, oh,
the whole thing about us being in love and Kate
(10:16):
live without each other and like each It's just a joke,
you know, like very detailed. I ironically left her in
my will. These are our ironic great grandchildren. These are
ironically cradle her every night. Yeah, totally. Um. And so
the two start taking trips into Portland, the big you know,
(10:38):
big city, to go see theater and hang out in
late night cafes and shit and go be like cool hipsters.
And the nineteen tens, I think, and early nineteen tens.
And in college, he still dresses as a girl, but
in the most masculine way. It's this way that flags
it at the time, but not to you now right.
I'm like, looking at all these pictures of him in
(10:59):
the the writers will be like, and you can see
here his masculine pose and dress, and I'm like, that
is a lady with long hair and a collared shirt,
like ruffles everywhere, wearing a skirt, you know. But at
the time he's very actively presenting. He puts a man's
tie with those women's shirt. His long hair is long,
but it's sort of unadorned, and his posture and pose
(11:20):
is clearly like masculine, and he's got fucking dumb energy.
He leads the women's debate team. I think he starts
the women's debate team, and he wins state championship. He
also competes in like all gender leagues with this. He
was the literary editor of the school's newspaper. But the
whole time he's like writing about how he misses his
(11:40):
idyllic boyhood right running around and getting to be a
boy in the countryside. After two years, him and Eva
transfer to Stanford in California, and Eva's family doesn't have
any money, so Alan, whose family does, pays for both
of them, you know, ironically just just gal pals. It's
all a joke, yeah, just ironically moving to California together
(12:04):
to start our new lives, using his inheritance to pay
for her tuition. He's offered a place in a sorority,
but he turns it down because they don't invite Eva,
and he doesn't stay with Eva, but he's a romantic
the two of them. They go into San Francisco now
and like they used to go into Portland, and it's
just even fucking cooler. They're hanging out in the Tenderloin
(12:25):
district world though, like queers are and stuff. He starts
wearing even more masculine clothes, including trousers. Oh I know.
He also starts sleeping with quote dancing girls. He's really
like finding himself out there. Yeah. Yeah, he blows through
his inheritance. He goes into debt. Him and Eva broke up.
(12:46):
The thing I read was like Eva was like unexcited
about him growing more and more masculine, but I am
a feeling the fucking other ladies probably didn't help. Yeah,
that might have been part of it. He probably was like, nah,
not babe swear is just ironic joke, Yeah, totally, Like
wouldn't it be funny if I was having sex right
now with this incredibly attractive lady, I just think about
(13:08):
big girl. Yeah. Um, so they break up. I don't
know what happens to Eva. I don't know whether she's able,
because that's the other problem is if you go you
move with your boyfriend to California to go to college,
and he's paying for your college, you're kind of fucked
break up. So I don't know. I don't know what
happens to Eva. Heart starts dating an older woman in
(13:29):
her thirties who helped him like sit down and learn
budgeting and shit and basically like adult skills. And he's
a grown as adult now to it, you know, whenever
you have like big age gaps, and it's like worth
pointing out that, like everyone involved here as adults. But
it is a little like it's very it's very classic
of like, oh, he's dating, he moved to the city,
(13:50):
breaks up with his girlfriend, dates an older woman who
was like, here's how you pay a bill, here's how
you run a household. Totally I've been that woman before.
Yeah yeah, um, so he graduates. Now he goes back
to Oregon from medical school, where he's the only quote
girl in the class. And along the way he gets heartbroken.
He has a string of relationships. Whatever, this is not
(14:13):
a downside and just I think it's cool. He glived
cool life. He got to experience the world. He gets
heartbroken by a lady who's like, oh, totally I love you.
I'll totally leave my husband for you. Definitely, definitely full
on gay like that. And then and then she's like, wait,
you're broke and then breaks up with him. Yeah, it
(14:33):
happened to a lot of lesbians, I think. Or that's rough.
I know, that's rough. I know. And it's there in
med school in his psychology books, where he sees a
description of himself. A description is like we're talking about
about books, right, he sees a description of sexual inversion.
The problem is he sees it and it's a condition.
It's a bad thing, you know, it's a disorder. He's devastated.
(14:56):
There's something wrong with him. He's a quote homosexual. I
mean ironically kind it isn't, but you know whatever, And
by the standards of the time, he was. He read
everything he could in the school libraries, and he started
talking to one of his professors who to confuse the
story as much as possible. It's also named Alan doctor
Joshua Alan Gilbert, which actually seems possible to me because
this is a round. When he starts going by Alan,
(15:17):
I think it seems possible to me that he's straight
up was like, cool, nice name, I'll take that. Yeah.
So he goes to doctor Joshua Alan Gilbert, who goes
by Alan, and he's like, this is what the fuck's
happening with me? I don't really know. And Alan Gilbert
isn't really a sexologist. He's a psychologist like a broader,
(15:37):
but he develops an interest in sexology in order to
help his student and now patient. He seems really cool,
he's a very I like all the good people in
these stories. And so they're like, all right, let's figure
this out. And they start seeking. You know, they're science
medical type, so they're going down every avenue they can.
They like look for every psychiatric resource they can. They're
(15:58):
inspecting his family, Linney, looking for whatever signs of heredity
of this, you know, homosexuality and sexual inversion or whatever.
They're investigating his body for any signs of intersex traits.
And they're like, oh, you are a little bit hairy.
In this spot or whatever, you know, and there's only
one prognosis at the end of all of their studies.
Alan is indeed a homosexual, an invert, and there's no
(16:21):
known cure, not even hypnosis works they try. Alan Hart
came up with a clever solution to his problem. He's like,
what if I just socially transition and live as a man?
And Alan Gilbert is like, yeah, no, that that that
makes the most sense, right, and so inverts. The discourse
(16:43):
around this time would refer to Alan and people you
know like him as an invert. This wasn't actually meant
as a slur. It was just meant as a description
in a weird way. There's this thing in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century where all gay people were
kind of considered sort of trans Specifically, it was like
a male soul and a female ade or vice versa.
And so what was now understood as transsexuality was extreme inversion.
(17:06):
So this is why kissing other girls doesn't make you
nearly as much of a lesbian as wishing you were
a boy. I see. Yeah, And it's also tied into
this theory that humanity is naturally bisexual, and by that
they don't necessarily just mean like like boys and girls,
but they mean like physically sexed in two ways and
(17:26):
had evolved into heterosexuality, and like greater differences between men
and women, and that inverts kind of failed to sexually
differentiate themselves. So this is how you get the third
sex idea in people's minds, were like the er people
or the original way of being before people evolved into
boys and girls or whatever. Fucking nonsense. Huh. Well, what's
(17:50):
interesting to me is like, even though this was a
long time ago, it's like, when I think about some
of the really regressive things that people say about sexuality
and gender to day, listening to this almost sounds kind
of quaint or something where it's like, oh, they're trying
to explain, you know, how folks show up in a
way that I feel like today there are certain people
(18:11):
who are much more invested in things being a lot
more rigid. At least this definition like allows for you know,
a little like you know, you know, I don't know
if I'm making sense. I'm kind of rambling, but that's
kind of interesting to me. It's kind of like being like,
I don't know, you're queer, which is how I identify
as much as possible. It's like, be like, look, there
are specific ways you can define me as a transfeminine
person who is blah blah blah blah blah. I tell
(18:34):
people in person, but my you know, details of my sexuality,
not the audience's business. And that's why I like the
word queer. Yeah totally. It's because you're like, wow, I'm
fucking not straight. What do you want? You know? Yeah,
like shit the spectrum? Who knows? Like yeah, yeah, Like
I'm not bothered about it. Why are you bothered about it?
But you know what I am bothered by when I
have to pay full price for goods and services instead
(18:58):
of using the I don't think there's gonna be any
discount codes for you, dear listener. I'm sorry, there might be,
but advertisers are a thing that you can listen to
or not. Here they are and we are back and
(19:18):
so and this idea of this like kind of third
sex or sexual inversion idea, you know, there's people fighting
against it as well at the time, right because discourse
has always been there. And so like some gay men
in particular, for example, would like become as masculine as
possible to fight against this be like, we ain't no sissies.
I'm not like part girl, I'm extra man, you know.
(19:38):
But overall this is kind of where sexologists are at.
And yeah, the sexologists, even when they're pathologizing, they are,
as you're kind of saying, they're sort of trying to
sort it out, you know. And Alan's research into himself
comes just slightly before similar research it was going to
be done in Germany starting in nineteen nineteen at the
Magnus Hirshfield's Institute for Sexuality. They're actually already starting to
(19:59):
do this research in Germany also, but the institute sets
up in nineteen nineteen. And this matters because so today
basically this is where the word transsexual was coined in
nineteen twenty three. And just to remind everyone, this is
the place that the Nazis destroyed and those famous early
acts of book burning. If you look up a picture
of Nazis burning books, they are burning the books at
(20:19):
the Institute for Sexuality because trans and queer people were
at the kind of the top of the Nazis list.
Looking at you, Florida, looking at you. Anyway, you can
hear more about that institute and the Nazis and Gay
Resistance to the Nazis. On our Gay Resistance to the
Nazis episodes we did last year, Oh my god, they're
still good. Oh thanks. But of course Hurshfield wasn't the
first person to notice that some of us don't feel
(20:42):
great about the gender society is foisted on us or
the bodies we were born into. I want to quote
a research paper by Colin P. Close about this. It's
a research paper about Allen sexologists. Those physicians and psychiatrists
who developed the new scientific study of sexual desires had
been diagnosed in entreating cross gender identity and behavior in
Europe as far back as eighteen sixty. In eighteen seventy,
(21:05):
German neurologist and psychiatrist Karl Westfall described the phenomenon as
quote the feeling of being alienated from one's own sex,
and called it quote contrary sexual feeling. He defined this
reversal of sexual instinct primarily in terms of gender desires
to be slash become slash, be recognized as the other
sex rather than same sex sexual desires. His work influence
(21:29):
subsequent sexologists. He used his term and developed others such
as sexual inversion, homosexuality, so there you go. There's everyone's
backing in nineteenth century sexology. But now in the not
present day of nineteen seventeen, he and his friend Alan
Gilbert are like, let's do this shit. If we can't
(21:50):
make me more of a woman, maybe we can make
me more of a man, which was Alan's preference anyway.
And so Alan Gilbert performs a hysterectomy, a full historrect
and removes Alan's uterus. And this procedure was already well understood,
but it had never been considered part of gender affirming surgery.
Before we didn't even know what testosterone was, for example,
(22:12):
for another twenty years. Or fallow plastic like making dicks
wasn't invented for another twenty years either, which was originally
invented for remaking the dicks of wounded soldiers, not as
a gender What is a gender affirmation? If you want
you if you don't have a dick and you want
a dick, is gender affirmation to give you a dick?
Gender affirming care? Yeah? And doctor Gilbert, he goes fucking
(22:34):
above and beyond. He does more than just the surgery.
He goes through elaborate efforts to help socially transition his
patient as well, including getting him a haircut in clothes,
being like, oh no, honey, that's not going to work,
you know, to the legal name change to possibly documents
that are all proper and medical that are like Alan
as a dude, so that if he needs to he
(22:55):
can go get a passport, all at great risk to
his professional standing. He fucking go out on a limb
about this. And Alan's picture in the yearbook that year
when he graduates medical school is him with short hair,
men's clothes and the name Alan Lucille Heart. He didn't
have to change his ID, like the he just changed
his name, but he didn't have to change the marker
(23:15):
on his ID, right because driver's license didn't exist, Social
Security didn't exist. The passport's like the only fucking thing
I know. It's kind of crazy to think how much
more rigamarole we all have to deal with today. As
I can. I was like, oh, yeah, there's no driver's license.
It's just like you're cool, you know. It was like
today in twenty twenty three, there's so much paperwork just
to exist as a human in the world. I know,
(23:38):
I know, And like there's that whole thing where like
credit scores weren't invented until I'm making this up. It's
like the late eighties or some shit. I just found
this out, just like when I was a child, So
like when I was born, they didn't exist. I just
found this out. Yeah no, and yeah it's fucking yeah.
I can't wait. Yeah, we need more hoops to jump through,
(23:58):
more rigamarole what we need? Yeah? Yeah? And also I
mean I always like think, imagine being a criminal before fingerprints.
Oh my god, if I were a criminal, Like what
a time to be a criminal, you'd be running wild,
Like I don't do whatever I want? What are you
gonna prove it? I say in my head? What do
(24:19):
you want? Diver in person? My name's uh I bet
Sagerie was like a real like you probably a forger,
a forger. Forger, A forger could of like really really
ate back then. Oh they did. Um, And it was
funny because like crime rings and revolutionists were the best forgers.
(24:42):
Not surprised. Yeah, so he and he graduates top of
his class. Um. He is the first quote woman to
I think ever graduate from this particular medical schools, which
I didn't write down because I'm a good at my job.
He wasn't not a woman, so but it be. But
you know whatever, Doctor Jay Alan Gilbert, the guy who
(25:03):
did the surgery, has a good quote about the whole thing.
From a sociological and psychological standpoint. She is a man.
If society will but let her alone, she will fill
her niche in the world and leave it better for
her bravery. And that is what he did. He goes
out and he leaves the world better for his bravery.
I'm talking about his life after all this shit. First,
(25:25):
he gets a job at a hospital as a male intern,
only to get snitched out to the papers by some
snitch from his graduating class. Papers across the West Coast
run headlines like woman hospital intern masquerades as man, and
the papers are like, she'd better return to her true nature.
(25:45):
And this part is really interesting to me. They're mostly
claiming that she's doing it to get the social benefits
of being a man. They're like, and I feel like
I've run across this in modern like turf logic, you know,
where it's like, oh, you don't actually we want to
be a man, you just want to be in a
better position within the patriarch. I've definitely ran into that
(26:07):
or like I actually just saw this like horrible thing
where it's like the idea that like trans folks are
like pretending because they want some sort of social benefit
or like I want women to have to like bow
down to me, and I want to get it. I
want to get into women's spaces, So I'm pretending. It's
complete nonsense. But yeah, it is wild that it's still
endurs that that they have not come up with more
(26:28):
more material and like fifty years it's still endursed today. No,
I know, I know exactly nothing fucking changes in the
rhetoric about it, and like, and I always think it's
funny because it's like, oh yeah, like because like I
think I'm a good case study because for a decade
before I came out, I was named Margaret wearing women's
clothes and just used he pronouns and referred to myself
as a cross dresser. I was so much more socially
(26:50):
accepted in all kinds of spaces. I mean, not literal
women's spaces, which I started to be accepted into once
they came out. But like the world loves a gender
deviant man, like oh thank god, you are like doing
something different with masculinity here, are my panties or whatever,
you know, like people like fucking love non toxic masculinity,
(27:14):
and being a trans woman does not get you fucking
social benefits. It just doesn't. It's so annoying like that
people say that. But yeah, and I'm sure being a
trans man just made his life harder, but it wasn't
(27:35):
his choice, you know. I mean, he was a man.
He just happens to be a man who everyone's mad
at for not having been born with a dick. So
so Alan he goes to the Albany Papers, hometown paper
after he's like being talked about across the coast, and
he basically it's like it gives an interview I think,
to kind of clear the air as best as possible.
(27:55):
And he says, quote, I had to do it. For years.
I have been unhappy with all the inclinations and desires
of a boy. I have been happier since I made
this change than I've ever been in my life, and
I will continue this way as long as I live.
Very few people can understand. And he also in the paper,
he's like he's kind of like holds up his like
note from the doctor that says he's a boy He's like,
(28:18):
doctor's examined me, and it turns out I'm actually male,
which is like not technically a lie because this doctor
did declare a male, but it wasn't actually an intersex condition.
But that's basically, once again, the kind of defense that
is available to people. And also, I mean, like all
physical sex stuff is a spectrum, right, with multiple dimensions.
(28:40):
It's not just even a one dimensional space with like
boy and girl on each end, right, And so like
a lot more people have some elements of intersex characteristics
than than are recognized, right, So I'm not trying to
say he didn't, but I think what he was saying
was doctoricism a boy lea me a fuck alone, you know, right.
(29:02):
And his family accepts him, his mother and his grandparents
including I believe Oregon Trail Dad granddad. They when his
grandparents die later in their obituary they list him as
their grandson. And it's just fucking rules and it matters
so much. Alan marries a Portland school teacher named Anz Stark.
They run off back to Albany again, the lesser Albany, Albany, Oregon,
(29:25):
and this is his hometown and so people know his secret.
He registers for the draft because he has to because
he's a boy, which we saw what happened last time,
right is nineteen eighteen, and he asks for an exemption
and the form I looked at his draft guard it
says like, um, are you asking for an exemption? If so,
why and he just writes yes. He does not write
a reason why. But the local draft board quietly accept
(29:50):
the exemption because they know and they just have his back.
That's the best I can figure out. And he moves
to a small nearby lumbertown and he starts a small practice.
In nineteen twenty, doctor Gilbert releases an anonymous case report
about the whole thing in scholarly journals, once again kind
of risking his career to stand up and say that, hey,
this is what we did. This helped, like this is
a decent treatment. You know. It's published as Homosexuality and
(30:14):
Its Treatment in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.
But Alan and Inez stay on the move, and they're
going from small town to small town. Most likely it's
because people discovered his secret. It's also possible that they
were afraid he would Maybe he just had wanderlust. He
did write later a novel in which a doctor moves
(30:34):
constantly because scandal follows him everywhere. But the problem is
in these small towns, Ainez has nothing to do all day,
so she leaves him, which is fair. They're divorced in
nineteen twenty four. She goes on to become a Seattle
a teacher in Seattle and later in Baltimore. Lives to
be ninety four years old. Going as Alan winds up,
(30:55):
he's single. Now he winds up in Eugene, Oregon. He
gets into writing, and he gets into a woman named Ruddy.
They get married in nineteen twenty five. They stay together
thirty seven years more until Alan's death. I think he's
learned his lesson and now he needs to realize that
he needs to prioritize the life and interests of his partner.
You know, as far as I can tell you, the
fucking solid husband. I love it because it's like there's
(31:18):
not a lot of conflict in this story that I'm
telling you. It's just cool. I like it. Like he's
a romantic, he like has some relationships. He's figuring him,
figuring himself out, like I don't know, like people I
don't know. Not every story needs to be full of
conflict and heavy stuff. Sometimes just the journey of figuring
(31:40):
out who you are is enough. Yeah, totally, And and
he does really cool shit, it's just not dramatic. He
starts writing books. He writes four successful and well reviewed
doctor novels, which I think is like medical TV drama
but in book form. And these books have gay characters
and disabled characters front and center. I think a lot
of queer folks were using disability as like a way
(32:01):
to talk about being others. And I think maybe especially
trans folks might have been doing that. I'm not entirely certain.
And his editor praised them as involved, including please for
social Justice, and he dedicated his first book to his mom.
Like every male author, he struggled to write believable women characters.
(32:25):
He admits as much. Yeah, and it's like moments like
that where you're like, oh, yeah, no, I get it.
You're a dude, you know. Yeah. Yeah. It's like like
I don't understand the female mine. I've never had one,
you know, Like, like I don't know what they're thinking. Yeah,
they want flowers, so I don't know. Um. And he
(32:47):
also writes a port for the public book about how
X rays work called These mysterious rays, much like these
mysterious deals that you can get from these advertisers. So
we're back and more than writing his whole thing and
(33:09):
the thing he's remembered for, except when he's remembered as
the first, you know, transmasculine person to receive gender firming
care in the United States. Detecting tuberculosis with X rays
is a new study at the time. He is one
of the first people to document how the disease spreads
and specifically how important early detection was. He's like probably
(33:31):
the single person to develop preemptive screening. The idea of
using X rays previous to this was only like once
there were symptoms, you'd be like, oh, I think I
got TB. And so this is apparently the screening process
that's still in place today in a lot of places,
although as we were learning during the last ad break
that Bridget is aware of another way the people get
(33:53):
jabbed with things to do TB tests. Stab you in
the arm way, yeah, and I'm just like, I don't remember.
I remember going to the doctor. At some point they're like,
which shots have you had? And I'm like, I do
not know the normal ones. They don't like that answer
legas think of you new ones anyway, This is thank
(34:18):
you allan for this screening process. He gives hundreds of
lectures on this practice, and he just goes around trying
to help people find TB. He goes to a lot
of clinics, particularly public health clinics, places that do it
for free. He goes, he's forty years old, he goes
and gets a master's degree in X rays I think radiology.
And he's more than just an X ray technician. He's
organizing people on a massive scale. To quote an article
(34:42):
from the Legacy Projects Chicago, speaking nationwide on tuberculosis care,
Heart dedicated all of his time to fundraising for medical
research and to help support economically challenged TB patients. In
a move to end the stigma of the disease, Heart
spearheaded a massive nationwide campaign to use X ray technology
to to screen people. All of the groundbreaking visionary work
(35:04):
art Champion took place twenty years before the epidemilogical test
for tuberculosis was developed. As a result, it is thought
that millions of lives were saved because of this one
man's commitment. The fucking hell of a legacy. The Great
Depression hits. That whole thing that's like that happens during
his whole career. But the Great Depression hits, and he's
(35:28):
offered a job by some giant, evil medical company to
write medical ad copy because he's unemployed, and he's like, no,
I'm good. I would literally rather be poorer than write
that shit. Good for him, and instead he eventually finds
public service work, I think in Idaho, running their TV
program and stuff, and he gets on doing that. In
nineteen thirty five, writing about public health, he wrote, quote,
(35:52):
the ugly things that have grown up in medicine are
the result of the ugliness and falsity of society as
a whole, of our American preoccupation with success in making money,
of our concentration of effort on the production of things
rather than their use for a fuller human life. So
kind of an anti capitalist vibe happening in that lie.
(36:12):
He's just fucking cool, like I keep waiting for the like,
you know, like he's just doing his fucking thing. During
World War Two, he did his usual work, but for
the army, screening recruits for TB. Obviously, this was sort
of probably a dangerous time for him, because you know,
doctors were getting drafted, including older doctors during World War Two.
(36:34):
But I think he just straight up volunteers and he's
just like, he doesn't go into the army. He goes
and just just like, look, I can do my doctor thing.
That's great. In nineteen forty eight, he goes back to
college yet again, this time in Yale in Connecticut, and
he gets his second masters in public health. And he
wanted to study not just how do I look into
people's lungs and help them not die of TB? But
(36:55):
how can we arrange society so that we can look
into people's lungs and mass and help them not die
of TB. He dedicated more than forty years to preventing tuberculosis.
Impossible to count the number of lives he saved, particularly
poor folks. The people were most susceptible to it. And
he died himself of heart disease in nineteen sixty two.
(37:17):
He was seventy one years old. He was the head
of Connecticut's tuberculosis program. And when he was a kid,
he wrote down his three childhood his three goals for
his life. He wanted to be a physician, He wanted
to be a successful writer, and he wanted to be
a loving husband check check check check yep. His wife
(37:37):
of thirty seven years lived twenty years after him, which
is also a very masculine thing to do. Die before,
die early, and like your wife just has like a
another thirty years without you, Yeah, exactly, very yeah. And
he was a private person to the end. He he
(37:59):
directed his attorney to destroy all of his personal papers
and photos and shit when he died, and also to
be cremated immediately and like not have his body his
ashes like place in any ceremonial way anywhere. And so
we don't know as much about him as as we'd like,
(38:19):
because respecting people's dead people's privacy is annoying. But you know,
he burned all his personal records, and he also wanted
that quote no memorial be erected or created, or contributions
made in my name to any charitable, charitable, education, medical,
or religious institution. He like, this is how fucking humble
(38:41):
he is. He's like, don't put my name on some
fucking building. He does not want the Alan Hert Tuberculosis Center.
Do you think that's like, I'm sure a part of
it is just good old fashioned transphobia, but do you
think that that's a part of why his legacy it's
kind of forgotten, like in addition to transphobia, just that
(39:03):
like he was not somebody who wanted his name like
splashed on buildings, etc. I think so. I think he
just was, like, you know, I'm sure some of it
is that he's like sick of all the scandal and
stuff that kept him on the move for a long time,
you know, But I think he just was like, yeah,
he just didn't want to be some name, you know.
And it wasn't until the seventies, more than a decade
(39:26):
after his death, that people rediscovered that he was trans.
He lived to the last many decades of his life
like without that being an issue in any part of
his life as far as I can tell. And I
don't know, I guess I like, I hope you forgive
me wherever you are. I think you were cool as hell.
And I'm talking about you sixty years after your death.
Don't worry. I won't like create the Alan Hart Memorial
(39:46):
trans Tuberculosis Center or whatever. And there have been arguments
ever since people rediscovered that he was assigned female at birth. Honestly,
I almost wonder if this is the shit he's trying
to avoid people Like I talked about this in a
Stonewall episode. Everyone argues about Stonewall, like who gets to
own it? Like which letter of LGBT gets to own Stonewall?
And the answer is that we all fucking own it,
(40:09):
and like, fuck you, why are we bothering arguing about this?
But people have argued ever since rediscovering his assigned female
birthness about whether or not he was a transsexual, a
term that didn't find it it's way into us discourse
until after he died, or if he was a lesbian
or whatever. And I don't know what to call him
(40:31):
in terms of like people have been like, oh, you
can't calm transgender, he's gonna calm stuff that. But I
can call him when he called himself, which is a
trans not transplant, a man. He was a man like
adjectives be damned. He was very clear about how he identified,
which is that he was a man named Alan Hart
and he was a good one. So yeah, this is
(40:55):
like the platonic ideal of the title of the show.
Just cool people. He did cool stuff. I know, I
want to go out and like do some outdoor adventures
in Alan's honor. Just like, yeah, go pitch a tent
and dig a hole and poop in it. Yeah, or
whatever you do outside. No, that's good. That is the
way that you poop outside. Don't don't not dig a
(41:15):
hole before you poop. That's the bad way. Good advice. Yeah, yeah,
so that's the cool zone. Media's official stance is that
everyone go poop in a hole. But also just like, yeah,
the like I just love his whole arc. I love
(41:36):
him as the like outdoorsy kid, like just who wants
to like go outside and play and follow grandpa around
and shit. And just like the fact that his grandparents
like wrote him properly into their obituary, like made me
tear up while I was I was researching all of this,
because that shit matters. And if you're ever on the
fence about like why I doubt anyone's listening to this
(41:57):
is like really on the fence about trans acceptance or whatever,
but like that shit changes everything. Like the fact that
he dedicated his book to his mom is just like
it's it's almost certainly because his mom just accepted him, right, um,
and like means fucking everything to people. That's what I got.
(42:18):
That's what I got for a transcestory week here on
cool people did cool stuff. I'm sure this is a
topic I will be returning to. But yeah, I'm so
glad you're doing this series. I'm so glad to have
been here for it. Yeah. I mean, I feel like
I want to hear the Margaret version of like all
the cool shit that Margaret does, Like, you know, it's
(42:43):
it's nice. It's nice to think of like the legacy
and then seeing trans folks be their beautiful, brilliant selves
and like getting getting to do that. It's like we
all win when that happens, and it's really beautiful. No,
that's such a good point that just like that, I'm amazing. No, Um,
it's such a good point that, Like, yeah, because I
sometimes when I when I get caught up in history,
(43:03):
I get actually kind of like lost in the detail
of like this story, a sort of detached from everything,
even where in the back of my mind I'm like,
but I'm worried about some shit happening now or whatever.
But I do love how much in the Stonewall episode.
I know you weren't the guests for this, but you'll
get to listen to it soon, I hope. It's one
(43:24):
of the people who was involved in the early gay
rights movement referred to himself as a human battering ram,
and he was like, if it takes me breaking the
way for other people, then I guess that's what I'm
going to do, even though I'm scared to see at
heart right and like, and what's so interesting is just
like people of who are marginalized along any fucking line
(43:48):
are constantly doing that. You know. There's all of these
people who came before whose shoulders we stand on. And
then like it's even like funny to me because I've
only been out for six seven years or something like thought,
you know, and already to I'm like, a I'm an elder,
you know to some folks, yeah, and like I'm like,
what what the fuck, I'm just a millennial. But um,
(44:11):
but I'm an elder millennial. So and being like, oh, okay,
because these things that when we're doing it, we don't
realize we're doing history. You know, like Alan probably wasn't like, hell, yeah,
I'm the first guy to get his like shit ripped out.
You know. He was just trying to fucking live his life,
and then by doing it, he made shit easier for
(44:33):
people in so many ways. Well, if we want to
make it easier for people to find you on the internet,
how can there masterful transition? Thank you? Thank you. You
can follow me on social media on Instagram at Bridget
Marie in DC, on Twitter at Bridget Marie, or on
TikTok at Bridget Todd Max podcasts. A wait, no, Bridget
(44:56):
Max podcasts. I love your TikTok's. Oh my god, I'm
trying my best girl. It's it's like TikTok is. I
used to make fun of people who were like hard
it is. It's it's not easy. Yeah, you can follow
me on TikTok. You can listen to any number of
the podcasts I have, Michael's own media show, Internet Hate Machine.
(45:19):
I heart radios. There are no girls on the Internet.
Uh DCS Citycast, Local News podcast and Next Chapter podcasts.
Beef hell yeah. So if you got anything, well, I've
never plugged my Instagram. It's a Sophie Underscore ray Underscore
of Underscore Sunshine. I think I did that right. Yeah,
(45:41):
you specifically conveyed that the ray of Sunshine is sarcastic.
I'm glad that you were able to convey that in
the in your statement of it, it's actually it's actually
a family nickname. That's what all my relatives call me.
And you are Ray of Sunshine. Yeah. Yeah, I came
out blonde and everybody was like, oh, that's weird, and
then I says. You can read my most recent book,
(46:09):
Escape from Insul Island. It is very short. You can
read it in an afternoon. Um. It's available from Strangers
in the Tangled Wilderness or wherever you buy your books,
and you can follow me on social media at Margaret
Kiljoy on Instagram, at Magpie Killjoy on Twitter. Until that implodes,
I'm technically massed on, but I don't know and or
(46:30):
use it, which is not a value judgment. It's if anything,
it's a value judgment on me. And you can hear
more from me next week on Cool People, I can't
even do the don't do it. Yeah, I'm not going
to do it on this podcast Stuff Yeah, cool People,
(46:51):
Who did? Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
Or more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Hello, and welcome to cool People who did cool stuff.
I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. With me today is the
one and only Bridget Todd. Bridget, how are you on
this day that is totally a different day than the
last time we recorded. Oh, I'm doing great. This is
a totally different day, fresh energy, love it, Yeah, totally.
Our producer is Sophie. Our audio engineers Ian Our theme
(00:24):
music was written for us by a woman. And so
this is cool trans people in History week, apparently. And
today I've got a story that I'm really fucking stoked on.
It's one of the most overlooked figures in history. I
never heard of him. Today we're gonna talk about this
doctor named Alan Hart. You ever heard of Alan Hart?
I have not. I've asked my friends who were like, like,
(00:45):
he's an X ray tech. And I asked my like
radical X ray tech friend and they were like nope.
And I asked my like trans man doctor friend and
he's like nope. Like he's cool, he's fucking But but
in order to talk about Alan Hart, We've got to
talk about suberculosis. His favorite topic or right here. When
I first started doing this podcast, I told a ton
(01:06):
of stories that took place in the nineteenth century. And
one thing they kept coming up over and over again
every one of my stories. If they weren't killed by
the state, they were getting killed by tuberculosis, just over
and over again. This, this fucking just murderer of people.
Tuberculous has been around in humans since basically forever. Actually,
unlike a lot of things like the flu only reached
a lot of places in the medieval era. And shit,
(01:27):
I don't that's not in my script. Don't quote me
on that. But like diseases get added to humanity over time,
like COVID, it's going to be like a thousand years
from now, people like, you know, there's a time before COVID.
You know, it's so optimistic. There's gonna be a few
coole thousand years. So tuberculosis has been around forever. In
twenty twenty, it was still the second leading of cause
(01:49):
of death from an infectious disease, second only to COVID. Wow.
It's particularly prevalent in Southeast Asia, and there is antibiotic
treatment available, and so it is a disease of poverty,
particularly common in places. Overcrowding, malnutrition, poor sanitation, all that stuff.
Most of the world uses them moderately these days, not
the days of the guy we're going to be talking about.
(02:11):
Most of the world uses a moderately effective TB vaccine,
but in the US, Canada, and Europe, TB is rare
enough that most people don't get vaccinated, and we focus
more on preventative screening and things like that. Good testing
and treatment cannot get down substantially. But of course that's
not available everywhere because money and capitalism and such. So
(02:31):
why are we talking about tuberculosis not just because it's
my weird accidental interest, because we're gonna talk about one
of the people who dedicated his life to doing something
about tuberculosis. A pioneer of TV detection. He's credited as
having saved millions of lives, is the thing I keep saying.
He's also the first transman to get gender confirming surgery
in the US, and the first sort of known in
(02:55):
general and history. But I hate sweeping statements like that,
because you know, there's always like a culture that the
West doesn't care about, that's been doing it for her
centuries that we're going to find out about or whatever.
You know. He was also a novelist who was writing
gay characters more than one hundred fucking years ago, and
he was a fucking cool guy. His name is Alan L. Hart.
He was born in October eighteen ninety in Kansas with
(03:19):
a girl's name. His parents were middle class. His dad
was a grain merchant with a small farming community, so
probably kind of one of the more like pillars of
the community type people. Or I don't know, if he's
a good whatever, I don't know about him. He dies
real quick. It doesn't go well for the family in Kansas.
Another old timey disease, typhoid comes through and takes out
(03:40):
not only not only Allan's dad, but both of his
mom's brothers in eighteen ninety two, so his mom's not
having a good time. He's two years old. His mom, Edna,
packs up her kid and moves back to Oregon near Albany,
and she marries a new guy and they have no kids,
so it's an only child. Alan, like the other people
(04:03):
were talking about today, and this is not the only
trans experience, Alan never had any doubts about his gender.
I think it is often the kind of people who
needed it so much a hundred years ago that they
were willing to go through this incredible effort. Are more
likely've known since they were young. That is my personal
I guess, you know, as someone who like for my
own I'm fairly open about this. Like I didn't know
(04:25):
I was a girl when I was young. I knew
I wished I was a girl, and there did feel
like a difference there, right, I like tried to pick
a girl's name in fourth grade and then realized I
was already getting beat up too much. You know, Alan
never any doubts about his gender. He never expressed any
interesting girly things, only boy things. He demanded pockets on
all of his clothes. That was one of his big things.
(04:47):
I love that. It's I mean, women's clothing does not
have enough pockets, and I appreciate that. It's like, you
know what, fuck this, it's pockets. I know I have these.
I'm a nerd. I have women's tactical pants and they
don't have back pockets. What they do have a reason.
It's actually kind of a cool reason. They have this
(05:08):
like huge zipper so you can kind of unzip the
butt so you can piss outside without taking your pants off.
It's actually, yeah, it's actually cool. But I just just
think it was f I was like, excuse me, and
then I was like very based. Okay, okay, right now,
it was actually designed by some women, like they're they're
actually fairly nice. Um anyway, So he demands pockets and
(05:31):
all his clothes, which should be a you and a
sex demand. He made collar He makes collars and cuffs
out of cardboard to make his like girl's clothes look
more masculine, about like you know, nineteenth century clothes. It's
all weird and colliery and stuff. He told his mom,
you know, he lost his family, right mom. Mom was
in trouble. So he told his mom very calmly, that
(05:51):
he would grow up into would be a man and
take care of her. He liked to play Civil War soldier.
He's white, but he was born into Kansas, so I
like to think he played Union soldier. But it might
just as I like him a lot. He's a He's
an outdoorsy boy. He likes chopping wood and carrying knives
and ship. Anytime he gets any money, he goes and
buys like men and straw hats and like pocket knives
(06:13):
and shit. I feel like I know his type, like
light totally knives and weapons and straw hats Yeah, totally. Um.
He would play dolls with friends neighbors who come over
as long as he was the father and the head
of the family of the dolls. What a good detail,
(06:37):
I know. He followed his grandfather around dutifully. His grandfather's
this like super tough, outdoorsy type. Who played that? Do
you ever played that game? Oregon Trail? Mum? Grandfather played
Oregon Trail on hardcore mode where if you die in
the game, you die in real life because you're actually
on the Oregon Trail. And so he's homeschooled for a while,
(07:00):
and he's able to be himself while he's homeschool because
he lives out in the country. His mother and his
grandparents supported him presenting as a boy, or might be
better to say they indulged him, but later they are
outright supportive, which rules. Will talk more about that later.
When he was twelve, though, his mom and his stepdad
moved into town and he started going to the worst
of all schools, middle school. He at school, he had
(07:22):
to wear dresses and he had to answer to Lucille.
Classmates made fun of him for basically not being very
good at pretending to be a girl. You know, they're like,
why aren't you more of a girl, and he's like,
I'm a yeah. So he disappeared into his books and studies,
and he was made fun of for being too skinny,
and he got called the living skeleton, which is a
really funny nickname. This doesn't roll off the tongue, A
(07:45):
very complicated nickname for anyway. Yeah, it's not easy to
shout at a child, at a young person and like hey,
you're living skeleton. Doesn't really work, No, I know, they
really had to want it. He also realized that not
only was he a boy, but he was a straight boy,
which is to say, like girl. This does not get
called straight throughout his life, but he realizes he likes girls,
(08:06):
and being same sex attracted as a kid was actually
not the red flag. Being same sex attracted as a
kid in this time and place was seen as natural,
and it's the kind of thing one naturally grows out
of unless one is specifically inclined to homosexuality. So like,
all kids kiss each other, but only the gay kids
grow up still kissing each other is the kind of argument, right,
(08:30):
And kids exploring with each other was summed up as
horseplay and nothing to worry about. So girls kissing other
girls wasn't a sign of lesbianism. However, girls wishing they
were boys was the scary sign of lesbianism. I know,
like kind of some weird logic there, I know, And
we're gonna talk a little bit more about this logic.
(08:50):
This one gets into some of the like third sex
and invert in a lot of the ways that she
gets discussed. Because we know more about he gets written
about more, and so there's more about him than some
of the other people I've covered. He graduates second of
his class out of fifteen, tiny tiny class, and he
goes first to Albany College, which later becomes Lewis and
Clark College when I moved to Portland, and he when
(09:13):
he's in college, he writes an anonymously publishes in like
the school newspaper or whatever, some love poems for a
girl he likes. And this is the wild part. It
works Eva Cushman falls for him and the two start
hooking up. The power of poetry. I know, I know.
It's not the best love poetry. I didn't include it.
(09:34):
It's fine. It's like to my Irish color. I was like,
wouldn't have worked on me. No, I've seen pictures of
this guy. It would have worked on me. Oh okay,
he looks like my first boyfriend who's a transman doctor.
So and so this was controversial that they were dating
(09:55):
because they're adults, you know. So they pretended it was
a joke, and in the school newspaper they announced this
is their writing. They announced quote Eva Cushman and Lucille
Hart that's Alan hereby announced to the public that it
is all a joke about them being in love and
about to get married. I love how like it's like, oh,
the whole thing about us being in love and Kate
(10:16):
live without each other and like each It's just a joke,
you know, like very detailed. I ironically left her in
my will. These are our ironic great grandchildren. These are
ironically cradle her every night. Yeah, totally. Um. And so
the two start taking trips into Portland, the big you know,
(10:38):
big city, to go see theater and hang out in
late night cafes and shit and go be like cool hipsters.
And the nineteen tens, I think, and early nineteen tens.
And in college, he still dresses as a girl, but
in the most masculine way. It's this way that flags
it at the time, but not to you now right.
I'm like, looking at all these pictures of him in
(10:59):
the the writers will be like, and you can see
here his masculine pose and dress, and I'm like, that
is a lady with long hair and a collared shirt,
like ruffles everywhere, wearing a skirt, you know. But at
the time he's very actively presenting. He puts a man's
tie with those women's shirt. His long hair is long,
but it's sort of unadorned, and his posture and pose
(11:20):
is clearly like masculine, and he's got fucking dumb energy.
He leads the women's debate team. I think he starts
the women's debate team, and he wins state championship. He
also competes in like all gender leagues with this. He
was the literary editor of the school's newspaper. But the
whole time he's like writing about how he misses his
(11:40):
idyllic boyhood right running around and getting to be a
boy in the countryside. After two years, him and Eva
transfer to Stanford in California, and Eva's family doesn't have
any money, so Alan, whose family does, pays for both
of them, you know, ironically just just gal pals. It's
all a joke, yeah, just ironically moving to California together
(12:04):
to start our new lives, using his inheritance to pay
for her tuition. He's offered a place in a sorority,
but he turns it down because they don't invite Eva,
and he doesn't stay with Eva, but he's a romantic
the two of them. They go into San Francisco now
and like they used to go into Portland, and it's
just even fucking cooler. They're hanging out in the Tenderloin
(12:25):
district world though, like queers are and stuff. He starts
wearing even more masculine clothes, including trousers. Oh I know.
He also starts sleeping with quote dancing girls. He's really
like finding himself out there. Yeah. Yeah, he blows through
his inheritance. He goes into debt. Him and Eva broke up.
(12:46):
The thing I read was like Eva was like unexcited
about him growing more and more masculine, but I am
a feeling the fucking other ladies probably didn't help. Yeah,
that might have been part of it. He probably was like, nah,
not babe swear is just ironic joke, Yeah, totally, Like
wouldn't it be funny if I was having sex right
now with this incredibly attractive lady, I just think about
(13:08):
big girl. Yeah. Um, so they break up. I don't
know what happens to Eva. I don't know whether she's able,
because that's the other problem is if you go you
move with your boyfriend to California to go to college,
and he's paying for your college, you're kind of fucked
break up. So I don't know. I don't know what
happens to Eva. Heart starts dating an older woman in
(13:29):
her thirties who helped him like sit down and learn
budgeting and shit and basically like adult skills. And he's
a grown as adult now to it, you know, whenever
you have like big age gaps, and it's like worth
pointing out that, like everyone involved here as adults. But
it is a little like it's very it's very classic
of like, oh, he's dating, he moved to the city,
(13:50):
breaks up with his girlfriend, dates an older woman who
was like, here's how you pay a bill, here's how
you run a household. Totally I've been that woman before.
Yeah yeah, um, so he graduates. Now he goes back
to Oregon from medical school, where he's the only quote
girl in the class. And along the way he gets heartbroken.
He has a string of relationships. Whatever, this is not
(14:13):
a downside and just I think it's cool. He glived
cool life. He got to experience the world. He gets
heartbroken by a lady who's like, oh, totally I love you.
I'll totally leave my husband for you. Definitely, definitely full
on gay like that. And then and then she's like, wait,
you're broke and then breaks up with him. Yeah, it
(14:33):
happened to a lot of lesbians, I think. Or that's rough.
I know, that's rough. I know. And it's there in
med school in his psychology books, where he sees a
description of himself. A description is like we're talking about
about books, right, he sees a description of sexual inversion.
The problem is he sees it and it's a condition.
It's a bad thing, you know, it's a disorder. He's devastated.
(14:56):
There's something wrong with him. He's a quote homosexual. I
mean ironically kind it isn't, but you know whatever, And
by the standards of the time, he was. He read
everything he could in the school libraries, and he started
talking to one of his professors who to confuse the
story as much as possible. It's also named Alan doctor
Joshua Alan Gilbert, which actually seems possible to me because
this is a round. When he starts going by Alan,
(15:17):
I think it seems possible to me that he's straight
up was like, cool, nice name, I'll take that. Yeah.
So he goes to doctor Joshua Alan Gilbert, who goes
by Alan, and he's like, this is what the fuck's
happening with me? I don't really know. And Alan Gilbert
isn't really a sexologist. He's a psychologist like a broader,
(15:37):
but he develops an interest in sexology in order to
help his student and now patient. He seems really cool,
he's a very I like all the good people in
these stories. And so they're like, all right, let's figure
this out. And they start seeking. You know, they're science
medical type, so they're going down every avenue they can.
They like look for every psychiatric resource they can. They're
(15:58):
inspecting his family, Linney, looking for whatever signs of heredity
of this, you know, homosexuality and sexual inversion or whatever.
They're investigating his body for any signs of intersex traits.
And they're like, oh, you are a little bit hairy.
In this spot or whatever, you know, and there's only
one prognosis at the end of all of their studies.
Alan is indeed a homosexual, an invert, and there's no
(16:21):
known cure, not even hypnosis works they try. Alan Hart
came up with a clever solution to his problem. He's like,
what if I just socially transition and live as a man?
And Alan Gilbert is like, yeah, no, that that that
makes the most sense, right, and so inverts. The discourse
(16:43):
around this time would refer to Alan and people you
know like him as an invert. This wasn't actually meant
as a slur. It was just meant as a description
in a weird way. There's this thing in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century where all gay people were
kind of considered sort of trans Specifically, it was like
a male soul and a female ade or vice versa.
And so what was now understood as transsexuality was extreme inversion.
(17:06):
So this is why kissing other girls doesn't make you
nearly as much of a lesbian as wishing you were
a boy. I see. Yeah, And it's also tied into
this theory that humanity is naturally bisexual, and by that
they don't necessarily just mean like like boys and girls,
but they mean like physically sexed in two ways and
(17:26):
had evolved into heterosexuality, and like greater differences between men
and women, and that inverts kind of failed to sexually
differentiate themselves. So this is how you get the third
sex idea in people's minds, were like the er people
or the original way of being before people evolved into
boys and girls or whatever. Fucking nonsense. Huh. Well, what's
(17:50):
interesting to me is like, even though this was a
long time ago, it's like, when I think about some
of the really regressive things that people say about sexuality
and gender to day, listening to this almost sounds kind
of quaint or something where it's like, oh, they're trying
to explain, you know, how folks show up in a
way that I feel like today there are certain people
(18:11):
who are much more invested in things being a lot
more rigid. At least this definition like allows for you know,
a little like you know, you know, I don't know
if I'm making sense. I'm kind of rambling, but that's
kind of interesting to me. It's kind of like being like,
I don't know, you're queer, which is how I identify
as much as possible. It's like, be like, look, there
are specific ways you can define me as a transfeminine
person who is blah blah blah blah blah. I tell
(18:34):
people in person, but my you know, details of my sexuality,
not the audience's business. And that's why I like the
word queer. Yeah totally. It's because you're like, wow, I'm
fucking not straight. What do you want? You know? Yeah,
like shit the spectrum? Who knows? Like yeah, yeah, Like
I'm not bothered about it. Why are you bothered about it?
But you know what I am bothered by when I
have to pay full price for goods and services instead
(18:58):
of using the I don't think there's gonna be any
discount codes for you, dear listener. I'm sorry, there might be,
but advertisers are a thing that you can listen to
or not. Here they are and we are back and
(19:18):
so and this idea of this like kind of third
sex or sexual inversion idea, you know, there's people fighting
against it as well at the time, right because discourse
has always been there. And so like some gay men
in particular, for example, would like become as masculine as
possible to fight against this be like, we ain't no sissies.
I'm not like part girl, I'm extra man, you know.
(19:38):
But overall this is kind of where sexologists are at.
And yeah, the sexologists, even when they're pathologizing, they are,
as you're kind of saying, they're sort of trying to
sort it out, you know. And Alan's research into himself
comes just slightly before similar research it was going to
be done in Germany starting in nineteen nineteen at the
Magnus Hirshfield's Institute for Sexuality. They're actually already starting to
(19:59):
do this research in Germany also, but the institute sets
up in nineteen nineteen. And this matters because so today
basically this is where the word transsexual was coined in
nineteen twenty three. And just to remind everyone, this is
the place that the Nazis destroyed and those famous early
acts of book burning. If you look up a picture
of Nazis burning books, they are burning the books at
(20:19):
the Institute for Sexuality because trans and queer people were
at the kind of the top of the Nazis list.
Looking at you, Florida, looking at you. Anyway, you can
hear more about that institute and the Nazis and Gay
Resistance to the Nazis. On our Gay Resistance to the
Nazis episodes we did last year, Oh my god, they're
still good. Oh thanks. But of course Hurshfield wasn't the
first person to notice that some of us don't feel
(20:42):
great about the gender society is foisted on us or
the bodies we were born into. I want to quote
a research paper by Colin P. Close about this. It's
a research paper about Allen sexologists. Those physicians and psychiatrists
who developed the new scientific study of sexual desires had
been diagnosed in entreating cross gender identity and behavior in
Europe as far back as eighteen sixty. In eighteen seventy,
(21:05):
German neurologist and psychiatrist Karl Westfall described the phenomenon as
quote the feeling of being alienated from one's own sex,
and called it quote contrary sexual feeling. He defined this
reversal of sexual instinct primarily in terms of gender desires
to be slash become slash, be recognized as the other
sex rather than same sex sexual desires. His work influence
(21:29):
subsequent sexologists. He used his term and developed others such
as sexual inversion, homosexuality, so there you go. There's everyone's
backing in nineteenth century sexology. But now in the not
present day of nineteen seventeen, he and his friend Alan
Gilbert are like, let's do this shit. If we can't
(21:50):
make me more of a woman, maybe we can make
me more of a man, which was Alan's preference anyway.
And so Alan Gilbert performs a hysterectomy, a full historrect
and removes Alan's uterus. And this procedure was already well understood,
but it had never been considered part of gender affirming surgery.
Before we didn't even know what testosterone was, for example,
(22:12):
for another twenty years. Or fallow plastic like making dicks
wasn't invented for another twenty years either, which was originally
invented for remaking the dicks of wounded soldiers, not as
a gender What is a gender affirmation? If you want
you if you don't have a dick and you want
a dick, is gender affirmation to give you a dick?
Gender affirming care? Yeah? And doctor Gilbert, he goes fucking
(22:34):
above and beyond. He does more than just the surgery.
He goes through elaborate efforts to help socially transition his
patient as well, including getting him a haircut in clothes,
being like, oh no, honey, that's not going to work,
you know, to the legal name change to possibly documents
that are all proper and medical that are like Alan
as a dude, so that if he needs to he
(22:55):
can go get a passport, all at great risk to
his professional standing. He fucking go out on a limb
about this. And Alan's picture in the yearbook that year
when he graduates medical school is him with short hair,
men's clothes and the name Alan Lucille Heart. He didn't
have to change his ID, like the he just changed
his name, but he didn't have to change the marker
(23:15):
on his ID, right because driver's license didn't exist, Social
Security didn't exist. The passport's like the only fucking thing
I know. It's kind of crazy to think how much
more rigamarole we all have to deal with today. As
I can. I was like, oh, yeah, there's no driver's license.
It's just like you're cool, you know. It was like
today in twenty twenty three, there's so much paperwork just
to exist as a human in the world. I know,
(23:38):
I know, And like there's that whole thing where like
credit scores weren't invented until I'm making this up. It's
like the late eighties or some shit. I just found
this out, just like when I was a child, So
like when I was born, they didn't exist. I just
found this out. Yeah no, and yeah it's fucking yeah.
I can't wait. Yeah, we need more hoops to jump through,
(23:58):
more rigamarole what we need? Yeah? Yeah? And also I
mean I always like think, imagine being a criminal before fingerprints.
Oh my god, if I were a criminal, Like what
a time to be a criminal, you'd be running wild,
Like I don't do whatever I want? What are you
gonna prove it? I say in my head? What do
(24:19):
you want? Diver in person? My name's uh I bet
Sagerie was like a real like you probably a forger,
a forger. Forger, A forger could of like really really
ate back then. Oh they did. Um, And it was
funny because like crime rings and revolutionists were the best forgers.
(24:42):
Not surprised. Yeah, so he and he graduates top of
his class. Um. He is the first quote woman to
I think ever graduate from this particular medical schools, which
I didn't write down because I'm a good at my job.
He wasn't not a woman, so but it be. But
you know whatever, Doctor Jay Alan Gilbert, the guy who
(25:03):
did the surgery, has a good quote about the whole thing.
From a sociological and psychological standpoint. She is a man.
If society will but let her alone, she will fill
her niche in the world and leave it better for
her bravery. And that is what he did. He goes
out and he leaves the world better for his bravery.
I'm talking about his life after all this shit. First,
(25:25):
he gets a job at a hospital as a male intern,
only to get snitched out to the papers by some
snitch from his graduating class. Papers across the West Coast
run headlines like woman hospital intern masquerades as man, and
the papers are like, she'd better return to her true nature.
(25:45):
And this part is really interesting to me. They're mostly
claiming that she's doing it to get the social benefits
of being a man. They're like, and I feel like
I've run across this in modern like turf logic, you know,
where it's like, oh, you don't actually we want to
be a man, you just want to be in a
better position within the patriarch. I've definitely ran into that
(26:07):
or like I actually just saw this like horrible thing
where it's like the idea that like trans folks are
like pretending because they want some sort of social benefit
or like I want women to have to like bow
down to me, and I want to get it. I
want to get into women's spaces, So I'm pretending. It's
complete nonsense. But yeah, it is wild that it's still
endurs that that they have not come up with more
(26:28):
more material and like fifty years it's still endursed today. No,
I know, I know exactly nothing fucking changes in the
rhetoric about it, and like, and I always think it's
funny because it's like, oh yeah, like because like I
think I'm a good case study because for a decade
before I came out, I was named Margaret wearing women's
clothes and just used he pronouns and referred to myself
as a cross dresser. I was so much more socially
(26:50):
accepted in all kinds of spaces. I mean, not literal
women's spaces, which I started to be accepted into once
they came out. But like the world loves a gender
deviant man, like oh thank god, you are like doing
something different with masculinity here, are my panties or whatever,
you know, like people like fucking love non toxic masculinity,
(27:14):
and being a trans woman does not get you fucking
social benefits. It just doesn't. It's so annoying like that
people say that. But yeah, and I'm sure being a
trans man just made his life harder, but it wasn't
(27:35):
his choice, you know. I mean, he was a man.
He just happens to be a man who everyone's mad
at for not having been born with a dick. So
so Alan he goes to the Albany Papers, hometown paper
after he's like being talked about across the coast, and
he basically it's like it gives an interview I think,
to kind of clear the air as best as possible.
(27:55):
And he says, quote, I had to do it. For years.
I have been unhappy with all the inclinations and desires
of a boy. I have been happier since I made
this change than I've ever been in my life, and
I will continue this way as long as I live.
Very few people can understand. And he also in the paper,
he's like he's kind of like holds up his like
note from the doctor that says he's a boy He's like,
(28:18):
doctor's examined me, and it turns out I'm actually male,
which is like not technically a lie because this doctor
did declare a male, but it wasn't actually an intersex condition.
But that's basically, once again, the kind of defense that
is available to people. And also, I mean, like all
physical sex stuff is a spectrum, right, with multiple dimensions.
(28:40):
It's not just even a one dimensional space with like
boy and girl on each end, right, And so like
a lot more people have some elements of intersex characteristics
than than are recognized, right, So I'm not trying to
say he didn't, but I think what he was saying
was doctoricism a boy lea me a fuck alone, you know, right.
(29:02):
And his family accepts him, his mother and his grandparents
including I believe Oregon Trail Dad granddad. They when his
grandparents die later in their obituary they list him as
their grandson. And it's just fucking rules and it matters
so much. Alan marries a Portland school teacher named Anz Stark.
They run off back to Albany again, the lesser Albany, Albany, Oregon,
(29:25):
and this is his hometown and so people know his secret.
He registers for the draft because he has to because
he's a boy, which we saw what happened last time,
right is nineteen eighteen, and he asks for an exemption
and the form I looked at his draft guard it
says like, um, are you asking for an exemption? If so,
why and he just writes yes. He does not write
a reason why. But the local draft board quietly accept
(29:50):
the exemption because they know and they just have his back.
That's the best I can figure out. And he moves
to a small nearby lumbertown and he starts a small practice.
In nineteen twenty, doctor Gilbert releases an anonymous case report
about the whole thing in scholarly journals, once again kind
of risking his career to stand up and say that, hey,
this is what we did. This helped, like this is
a decent treatment. You know. It's published as Homosexuality and
(30:14):
Its Treatment in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.
But Alan and Inez stay on the move, and they're
going from small town to small town. Most likely it's
because people discovered his secret. It's also possible that they
were afraid he would Maybe he just had wanderlust. He
did write later a novel in which a doctor moves
(30:34):
constantly because scandal follows him everywhere. But the problem is
in these small towns, Ainez has nothing to do all day,
so she leaves him, which is fair. They're divorced in
nineteen twenty four. She goes on to become a Seattle
a teacher in Seattle and later in Baltimore. Lives to
be ninety four years old. Going as Alan winds up,
(30:55):
he's single. Now he winds up in Eugene, Oregon. He
gets into writing, and he gets into a woman named Ruddy.
They get married in nineteen twenty five. They stay together
thirty seven years more until Alan's death. I think he's
learned his lesson and now he needs to realize that
he needs to prioritize the life and interests of his partner.
You know, as far as I can tell you, the
fucking solid husband. I love it because it's like there's
(31:18):
not a lot of conflict in this story that I'm
telling you. It's just cool. I like it. Like he's
a romantic, he like has some relationships. He's figuring him,
figuring himself out, like I don't know, like people I
don't know. Not every story needs to be full of
conflict and heavy stuff. Sometimes just the journey of figuring
(31:40):
out who you are is enough. Yeah, totally, And and
he does really cool shit, it's just not dramatic. He
starts writing books. He writes four successful and well reviewed
doctor novels, which I think is like medical TV drama
but in book form. And these books have gay characters
and disabled characters front and center. I think a lot
of queer folks were using disability as like a way
(32:01):
to talk about being others. And I think maybe especially
trans folks might have been doing that. I'm not entirely certain.
And his editor praised them as involved, including please for
social Justice, and he dedicated his first book to his mom.
Like every male author, he struggled to write believable women characters.
(32:25):
He admits as much. Yeah, and it's like moments like
that where you're like, oh, yeah, no, I get it.
You're a dude, you know. Yeah. Yeah. It's like like
I don't understand the female mine. I've never had one,
you know, Like, like I don't know what they're thinking. Yeah,
they want flowers, so I don't know. Um. And he
(32:47):
also writes a port for the public book about how
X rays work called These mysterious rays, much like these
mysterious deals that you can get from these advertisers. So
we're back and more than writing his whole thing and
(33:09):
the thing he's remembered for, except when he's remembered as
the first, you know, transmasculine person to receive gender firming
care in the United States. Detecting tuberculosis with X rays
is a new study at the time. He is one
of the first people to document how the disease spreads
and specifically how important early detection was. He's like probably
(33:31):
the single person to develop preemptive screening. The idea of
using X rays previous to this was only like once
there were symptoms, you'd be like, oh, I think I
got TB. And so this is apparently the screening process
that's still in place today in a lot of places,
although as we were learning during the last ad break
that Bridget is aware of another way the people get
(33:53):
jabbed with things to do TB tests. Stab you in
the arm way, yeah, and I'm just like, I don't remember.
I remember going to the doctor. At some point they're like,
which shots have you had? And I'm like, I do
not know the normal ones. They don't like that answer
legas think of you new ones anyway, This is thank
(34:18):
you allan for this screening process. He gives hundreds of
lectures on this practice, and he just goes around trying
to help people find TB. He goes to a lot
of clinics, particularly public health clinics, places that do it
for free. He goes, he's forty years old, he goes
and gets a master's degree in X rays I think radiology.
And he's more than just an X ray technician. He's
organizing people on a massive scale. To quote an article
(34:42):
from the Legacy Projects Chicago, speaking nationwide on tuberculosis care,
Heart dedicated all of his time to fundraising for medical
research and to help support economically challenged TB patients. In
a move to end the stigma of the disease, Heart
spearheaded a massive nationwide campaign to use X ray technology
to to screen people. All of the groundbreaking visionary work
(35:04):
art Champion took place twenty years before the epidemilogical test
for tuberculosis was developed. As a result, it is thought
that millions of lives were saved because of this one
man's commitment. The fucking hell of a legacy. The Great
Depression hits. That whole thing that's like that happens during
his whole career. But the Great Depression hits, and he's
(35:28):
offered a job by some giant, evil medical company to
write medical ad copy because he's unemployed, and he's like, no,
I'm good. I would literally rather be poorer than write
that shit. Good for him, and instead he eventually finds
public service work, I think in Idaho, running their TV
program and stuff, and he gets on doing that. In
nineteen thirty five, writing about public health, he wrote, quote,
(35:52):
the ugly things that have grown up in medicine are
the result of the ugliness and falsity of society as
a whole, of our American preoccupation with success in making money,
of our concentration of effort on the production of things
rather than their use for a fuller human life. So
kind of an anti capitalist vibe happening in that lie.
(36:12):
He's just fucking cool, like I keep waiting for the like,
you know, like he's just doing his fucking thing. During
World War Two, he did his usual work, but for
the army, screening recruits for TB. Obviously, this was sort
of probably a dangerous time for him, because you know,
doctors were getting drafted, including older doctors during World War Two.
(36:34):
But I think he just straight up volunteers and he's
just like, he doesn't go into the army. He goes
and just just like, look, I can do my doctor thing.
That's great. In nineteen forty eight, he goes back to
college yet again, this time in Yale in Connecticut, and
he gets his second masters in public health. And he
wanted to study not just how do I look into
people's lungs and help them not die of TB? But
(36:55):
how can we arrange society so that we can look
into people's lungs and mass and help them not die
of TB. He dedicated more than forty years to preventing tuberculosis.
Impossible to count the number of lives he saved, particularly
poor folks. The people were most susceptible to it. And
he died himself of heart disease in nineteen sixty two.
(37:17):
He was seventy one years old. He was the head
of Connecticut's tuberculosis program. And when he was a kid,
he wrote down his three childhood his three goals for
his life. He wanted to be a physician, He wanted
to be a successful writer, and he wanted to be
a loving husband check check check check yep. His wife
(37:37):
of thirty seven years lived twenty years after him, which
is also a very masculine thing to do. Die before,
die early, and like your wife just has like a
another thirty years without you, Yeah, exactly, very yeah. And
he was a private person to the end. He he
(37:59):
directed his attorney to destroy all of his personal papers
and photos and shit when he died, and also to
be cremated immediately and like not have his body his
ashes like place in any ceremonial way anywhere. And so
we don't know as much about him as as we'd like,
(38:19):
because respecting people's dead people's privacy is annoying. But you know,
he burned all his personal records, and he also wanted
that quote no memorial be erected or created, or contributions
made in my name to any charitable, charitable, education, medical,
or religious institution. He like, this is how fucking humble
(38:41):
he is. He's like, don't put my name on some
fucking building. He does not want the Alan Hert Tuberculosis Center.
Do you think that's like, I'm sure a part of
it is just good old fashioned transphobia, but do you
think that that's a part of why his legacy it's
kind of forgotten, like in addition to transphobia, just that
(39:03):
like he was not somebody who wanted his name like
splashed on buildings, etc. I think so. I think he
just was, like, you know, I'm sure some of it
is that he's like sick of all the scandal and
stuff that kept him on the move for a long time,
you know, But I think he just was like, yeah,
he just didn't want to be some name, you know.
And it wasn't until the seventies, more than a decade
(39:26):
after his death, that people rediscovered that he was trans.
He lived to the last many decades of his life
like without that being an issue in any part of
his life as far as I can tell. And I
don't know, I guess I like, I hope you forgive
me wherever you are. I think you were cool as hell.
And I'm talking about you sixty years after your death.
Don't worry. I won't like create the Alan Hart Memorial
(39:46):
trans Tuberculosis Center or whatever. And there have been arguments
ever since people rediscovered that he was assigned female at birth. Honestly,
I almost wonder if this is the shit he's trying
to avoid people Like I talked about this in a
Stonewall episode. Everyone argues about Stonewall, like who gets to
own it? Like which letter of LGBT gets to own Stonewall?
And the answer is that we all fucking own it,
(40:09):
and like, fuck you, why are we bothering arguing about this?
But people have argued ever since rediscovering his assigned female
birthness about whether or not he was a transsexual, a
term that didn't find it it's way into us discourse
until after he died, or if he was a lesbian
or whatever. And I don't know what to call him
(40:31):
in terms of like people have been like, oh, you
can't calm transgender, he's gonna calm stuff that. But I
can call him when he called himself, which is a
trans not transplant, a man. He was a man like
adjectives be damned. He was very clear about how he identified,
which is that he was a man named Alan Hart
and he was a good one. So yeah, this is
(40:55):
like the platonic ideal of the title of the show.
Just cool people. He did cool stuff. I know, I
want to go out and like do some outdoor adventures
in Alan's honor. Just like, yeah, go pitch a tent
and dig a hole and poop in it. Yeah, or
whatever you do outside. No, that's good. That is the
way that you poop outside. Don't don't not dig a
(41:15):
hole before you poop. That's the bad way. Good advice. Yeah, yeah,
so that's the cool zone. Media's official stance is that
everyone go poop in a hole. But also just like, yeah,
the like I just love his whole arc. I love
(41:36):
him as the like outdoorsy kid, like just who wants
to like go outside and play and follow grandpa around
and shit. And just like the fact that his grandparents
like wrote him properly into their obituary, like made me
tear up while I was I was researching all of this,
because that shit matters. And if you're ever on the
fence about like why I doubt anyone's listening to this
(41:57):
is like really on the fence about trans acceptance or whatever,
but like that shit changes everything. Like the fact that
he dedicated his book to his mom is just like
it's it's almost certainly because his mom just accepted him, right, um,
and like means fucking everything to people. That's what I got.
(42:18):
That's what I got for a transcestory week here on
cool people did cool stuff. I'm sure this is a
topic I will be returning to. But yeah, I'm so
glad you're doing this series. I'm so glad to have
been here for it. Yeah. I mean, I feel like
I want to hear the Margaret version of like all
the cool shit that Margaret does, Like, you know, it's
(42:43):
it's nice. It's nice to think of like the legacy
and then seeing trans folks be their beautiful, brilliant selves
and like getting getting to do that. It's like we
all win when that happens, and it's really beautiful. No,
that's such a good point that just like that, I'm amazing. No, Um,
it's such a good point that, Like, yeah, because I
sometimes when I when I get caught up in history,
(43:03):
I get actually kind of like lost in the detail
of like this story, a sort of detached from everything,
even where in the back of my mind I'm like,
but I'm worried about some shit happening now or whatever.
But I do love how much in the Stonewall episode.
I know you weren't the guests for this, but you'll
get to listen to it soon, I hope. It's one
(43:24):
of the people who was involved in the early gay
rights movement referred to himself as a human battering ram,
and he was like, if it takes me breaking the
way for other people, then I guess that's what I'm
going to do, even though I'm scared to see at
heart right and like, and what's so interesting is just
like people of who are marginalized along any fucking line
(43:48):
are constantly doing that. You know. There's all of these
people who came before whose shoulders we stand on. And
then like it's even like funny to me because I've
only been out for six seven years or something like thought,
you know, and already to I'm like, a I'm an elder,
you know to some folks, yeah, and like I'm like,
what what the fuck, I'm just a millennial. But um,
(44:11):
but I'm an elder millennial. So and being like, oh, okay,
because these things that when we're doing it, we don't
realize we're doing history. You know, like Alan probably wasn't like, hell, yeah,
I'm the first guy to get his like shit ripped out.
You know. He was just trying to fucking live his life,
and then by doing it, he made shit easier for
(44:33):
people in so many ways. Well, if we want to
make it easier for people to find you on the internet,
how can there masterful transition? Thank you? Thank you. You
can follow me on social media on Instagram at Bridget
Marie in DC, on Twitter at Bridget Marie, or on
TikTok at Bridget Todd Max podcasts. A wait, no, Bridget
(44:56):
Max podcasts. I love your TikTok's. Oh my god, I'm
trying my best girl. It's it's like TikTok is. I
used to make fun of people who were like hard
it is. It's it's not easy. Yeah, you can follow
me on TikTok. You can listen to any number of
the podcasts I have, Michael's own media show, Internet Hate Machine.
(45:19):
I heart radios. There are no girls on the Internet.
Uh DCS Citycast, Local News podcast and Next Chapter podcasts.
Beef hell yeah. So if you got anything, well, I've
never plugged my Instagram. It's a Sophie Underscore ray Underscore
of Underscore Sunshine. I think I did that right. Yeah,
(45:41):
you specifically conveyed that the ray of Sunshine is sarcastic.
I'm glad that you were able to convey that in
the in your statement of it, it's actually it's actually
a family nickname. That's what all my relatives call me.
And you are Ray of Sunshine. Yeah. Yeah, I came
out blonde and everybody was like, oh, that's weird, and
then I says. You can read my most recent book,
(46:09):
Escape from Insul Island. It is very short. You can
read it in an afternoon. Um. It's available from Strangers
in the Tangled Wilderness or wherever you buy your books,
and you can follow me on social media at Margaret
Kiljoy on Instagram, at Magpie Killjoy on Twitter. Until that implodes,
I'm technically massed on, but I don't know and or
(46:30):
use it, which is not a value judgment. It's if anything,
it's a value judgment on me. And you can hear
more from me next week on Cool People, I can't
even do the don't do it. Yeah, I'm not going
to do it on this podcast Stuff Yeah, cool People,
(46:51):
Who did? Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
Or more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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