June 28, 2023 • 44 mins
In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Danl Goodman about the gay liberation movement of the early 1970s that blew open the gates for LGBT rights.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People That Cool Stuff. You're
twice a week podcast that usually I write a little
introduction thing for. I'm your host, Margaret Kilchoy, and my
guest is Daniel Daniel.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
That's me. I'm happy to be back track from DJ
Danel track You're not gonna believe this flex bomb. That
is what all of DJ Daniels you should look up?
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Are there, Daniel? I know you've showed me videos of
you DJ, but are there videos on the internet?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
They make me so happy. You're just so Daniel is
so zoned. Oh well, thank you. Our group is called
Gladiator and we still have some stuff on Spotify or
you could, you know, google Gladiator Live.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
What kind of stuff do you dju.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
We were an electronic music group. We played a lot
of like hip hop influenced electronic music. It's called trap
music and electron trap music. It's original trap music. It's
like you know, like like this, the I and whatnot.
But yeah, exactly, but played a lot of that, played
a lot of house. Another genre we were very into
was mombatone, which is a portmanteau that reggaetone and a
(01:13):
Dutch house song called Mumba by this uh, this artist
Silvia Ecomo and a remix by this dude Afrojack. It's
a long story, but basically it's kind of like reggaetone
but just electronic, and it was very, very danceable, and
I think it kind of like helped push for Well. Actually,
I'm not going to take credit for Eyes. I won't.
I won't take credit for it, but the genre of
moonbatone is definitely helpful in bringing reggaetone to a pop
(01:38):
culture audience in some in some capacity. In some capacity,
it was always incredibly popular music around the world. But
you inn is that what you're sat? Oh no, oh no,
I really put my foot in it.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Oh, And depends on how much Ian agrees with that,
might or might not make it into the I know it.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Ian, if that feels really wrong, please cut it.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
No wait no, Ian, you can interject your own recording
about how you feel about it. You won't hate having
that extra work because Ian is both our audio engineer
and the other half of that particular DJ collective Gladiator
A Gladiator.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I have the full Gladiator on staff, which is something
I like to bring up as much as I possibly can.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Here another another something for the for the audience here
is this is a sticker that we used to hold on.
Can I cover my face that it focuses? There we go.
This is an old sticker of Ian and I when
I had a full on zzy top beard. It was
famous for bucket hats. WHOA, everything has changed? Shall we
bring that back? What that? Well? No, Stephanie will not
(02:44):
let me bring the beard back. But maybe the bucket hats.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
We can make cool Zone media stickers that are still
just that. Those faces we could. I think you two
should be the face of cool Zone Media. I agree,
and that is okay. So Sophie is our producer, the
afore mentioned Ian is the audio engineer, and our theme
music was written for us by un woman. Damn you.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I know that.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
In the script for under preamble it just says stuff.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yes, it's highlighted. So this is part two of a
three parter on the queer groups of the early nineteen
seventies in the US and the UK. Last time we
talked about the birth of the Gay Liberation Front. Now
we're going to talk about a splinter from that which
just did so fucking much. We're talking about Star the
Street Transvestite Action revolutionaries. I'd actually only ever heard of
(03:43):
them in passing like they were like, oh, there's like
a mutual aid group that passed out food to street
queer sex workers in New York City, And that's true.
They did do that. They also did so much more
than that. Hell yeah, So Star was for and by
street gay people, street homeless people, and anybody that needed help. Basically,
(04:08):
it was founded in nineteen seventy by Sylvia Rivera and
Marsha P. Johnson, who are both veterans of the Stonewall
rioting and the Gay Liberation Front and the GAA. Actually
they were kind of did it all. They are most
famous now people be like, oh, the you know, trans
woman of color who threw the first brick at Stonewall.
It is not true that they like quote through the
(04:30):
first brick at Stonewall. That doesn't matter. They are people
who fought in the riots and did amazing work as organizers,
and their contributions should still not be taken away. But
so Star started during the defense for other gay people
because we've always been working together. In nineteen seventy, NYU
(04:54):
canceled a bunch of planned dances once they realized they
were sponsored by the gays dundon ooo oooh the canceling
not the case. Yeah yeah, well boo. From the point
of view of NYU, you.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So the GLF, the Radical lesbians, the one word that
talked about before, and other groups occupied the hall at
least eighty people. The numbers fluctuated. Sometimes there'd be as
few as ten, sometimes there'd be as many as like
three hundred. For almost a week they occupied a building
of NYU. Hell yeah, yeah, no, I I never heard
of it, you know, But then again, people were occupying
(05:30):
universities like every fucking week in nineteen sixty nine, nineteen seventy.
In this case, I think so street gays came and
helped street gays in this context, being gay people lived
on the street because they had no home, and Sylvia
and Marsha, who are both homeless sex workers, talked to
folks and non street gay folks were like, yeah, if
you organize, we'll have your backs. And so at this occupation,
(05:54):
this is the first time a lot of these different
groups really came together like and saw each other and
had to like live with each other and organize with
each other. Street transvestites and middle class gays black folks,
white folks, Latino folks. They all played spin the bottle
together in the basement of an NYU building, sleeping on
pool tables and shit. A lot of lesbians and street
queens hung out together for the first time. These were
(06:15):
groups that have been like kind of a little bit distanced, right,
and it was a major coming together for the movement.
The occupation lasted six nights before it was broken up
by police at gunpoint, who were like, we're gonna Jesus
I can kill you off you don't get the fuck.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Out of here, all right, fine, I guess.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, yeah. And so afterwards the street queens they were
tired of running, you know. I think a lot of
it was like, well, they were perfectly happy to do
the occupation. That better sleep on a pool table than
the doorway, you know, Right, And so they formed Star
And partly it was to get away from mafia control
(06:52):
of spaces again, right, there's a big part of all
of this, but there was no complete escape. We'll talk
about how the mafia still ties into all of it.
Their platform fought for the rights of trans people and
for street youth. I like the way they wrote here's
the last point of their manifesto. After there's eight other
points before it that are sort of like reasonable demands,
(07:12):
like hey, stop exploiting us, you know, and all that quote,
we want a revolutionary people's government where transvestites, street people, women, homosexuals,
Puerto Ricans, Indians and all oppressed people are free and
not fucked over by this government who treat us like
the scum of the earth and kills us off like
flies one by one and throws us into jail to
rot the government who spends millions of dollars to go
(07:34):
to the moon and lets poor Americans starve to death.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
So they're pretty strong. Yeah, I like that. They're just
like the way they wrote was like, well this is
what I think, you know, Yeah, I mean, you know,
got to get it out. Yeah, and very clearly too. Right.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yes, there's not a lot of it. Yeah, And there's
not a lot like jargon.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
It's just no.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
And so they were regularly, the two of them, are
and Sylvia, they were regularly like they'd go and like
get two hotel rooms and then get fifty street queers
crammed into these two hotel rooms.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Then they started sleeping in a I believe they squatted this.
It was a parked tractor trailer in an outdoor parking
lot in Greenwich Village.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Cool yeah, hell yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
And there was more than twenty Star activists living in
the trailer. And when I say Star activists, I mean
like fourteen and fifteen year olds.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Wow, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Star Marcia and Sylvia were like eighteen, so they were
like the mothers, you know, eighteen. And these these teenagers
had the scars to show from the families that they'd fled.
I'm not gonna get into like you can read about
a lot of the specific stuff that these people have suffered,
and I don't I don't feel the need to. We
can believe that their lives were hard, yeah, for real,
(08:54):
And not all of them. Most of the street queens
were somewhere in the like vestite, transfeminine, like people who
are you know, sign mail at birth, who are wearing
women's clothes, who identify all different ways later in their lives,
but at the time identified as street queens. But some
of them were also girls in men's clothes, so it
(09:14):
wasn't just the other way around. And they had all
had really fucked up, hard lives. There's a whole bunch
of stories about the premature deaths they came to coming
from violence. A few of them murdered people of their
own in street fights. A rough and tumble existence. So
they lived in this eighteen wheeler and the reason I'm
(09:36):
guessing it squatted is that one morning they woke up
and it was driving away. Wow, So they all had
to jump out yeah no, yeah, And it was like
I think Marcia and Sylvia had like gone off to
like they pull all at the end of the night.
They'd all pull all their money from panhandling and petty
crime and sex work and stuff, and they would pull
(09:57):
all their money and then Sylvie and march It would
go and buy food and they were like coming back
at dawn to like bring back food. And the truck
was like driving right, it was gone and like all
the kids are jumping out of it. One of them
who was on downers slept through it and like ended
up in California.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
California. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
I don't entirely understand the means by which is the
person that slept this long they must have like come
woken up and then been like oh fuck, I don't
really know.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
I mean, they probably woke up in the middle of
the nowhere at a rest stop that was getting like
refuel and it was like where are we you got
to stay on It's like all right, well, yeah, this
is what we're doing now. Yeah, that must have been
a niche. And so without their trailer, they rented a
piece of shit building from the mafia and they paid
for this. Okay, there's two buildings that Stars involved in,
(10:50):
and all of the stories about both of them are conflated.
This is my best piece scene in a part. The
buildings that they rented they were paid for two ways.
One with Sylvie and Marsha's sex work. They tried to
kind of be like, look, we'll do it you all please,
fifteen year olds, don't you know. And plus fundraising dances
thrown by Star and the GLF together and apparently at
(11:12):
these these dances, Sylvia would collect the donations at the
door armed with a knife to make sure that people
donated we support Yeah, she also pocketed some of the
donations for her own use, you know, to be this
is where we point out they are eighteen. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
And so the first place, the more like formal place
that they had was called the Gay Community Center the GCC,
which is one of the ancestors of all gay community
centers today, right, And it's like, I remember when I
didn't have health insurance and you know, like lived in
a van or whatever, and I like hurt my chest.
I like went to the this like place in Boston
that's this giant building that's a gay health clinic or whatever,
(11:56):
you know, and it was great. They treated me even
though I was uninsured and things like that. But it's
just like really important to remember that this like this
is where, this is where it comes from, this infrastructure
that was built by sex workers and by people had
really fucking hard lives. So they started the GCC. It's
(12:17):
conflated with the Star House that comes a little bit later.
It doesn't help that Sylvie and Marsha are both unreliable narrators,
quite known for embellishing the truth. The GLF and Star
rented this Gay Community Center and they use the top
floor is a classroom. They taught literacy to kids who
had grown up on the streets. They taught self defense,
they taught history, they taught crafts, whatever people wanted, right
(12:39):
and whatever people came by like whoever, it wasn't just
for those for all comers. And then There's the Star House,
which was in a much worse part of town, and
it was a flophouse for street queens, and they ran
it like a social center too, even though there was
like no for a while, there's no running water, and
for a while, there's no heat. For while, there is
no electricity, and stuff like that. And at this place
(13:04):
they offered food and childcare to the community around them
as well. Right, they're like, hey, we're hanging out here
all day, like you can leave your kids with us,
which is like kind of wild to think about, but
it was like a really important thing for the community
that they were in and their attitude about it. I'll
just quote Sylvia Rivera in an interview with Queer historian
Leslie Feinberg quote, we fed people, in clothed people. We
(13:27):
kept the building going. We went out and hustled the streets.
We paid the rent. We didn't want the kids out
in the streets hustling. They would go out and rip
off food. There was always food in the house and
everyone had fun. Later, we had a chapter in New York,
one in Chicago, one in California and England. It lasted
two to three years. Yeah, and they you know it
(13:48):
was lit by candles half the time. They had to
figure out all the plumbing and all the electrical themselves.
They ate spaghetti dinners when they were like feeling rich,
they'd have sausage in the morning. And they fought their
own drug addictions. This was a major problem in Manhattan
and New York City at the time. They often failed
to fight their own drug addictions. Often people died in
(14:10):
the attempt of fighting these addictions. It's the kind of
history that's easy to romanticize, but it's also dangerous to romanticize.
Like they're amazing, they're revolutionaries, and they had some of
the hardest lives that anyone in the US has ever lived,
and they were far from perfect, and they did so
fucking much. They were also kind of religious in their way.
They were mostly Catholic, but not in the Catholic way
that you get in church. They were more folk Catholic,
(14:32):
which is my favorite kind. Interesting to quote Sylvia, we'd
all get together to pray to our saints before we
go out hustling. A majority of the queens were Latin,
and we believed in an emotional, spiritualistic religion. We have
our own saints. Saint Barbara the patron Saint of homosexuality,
Saint Michael, the Archangel Lacaridad de Cobra, the Madonna of Gold,
(14:54):
and Saint Martha, the Saint of transformation. Saint Martha had
once transformed herself into a snake, so to her we'd pray,
please let them, don't let them see through the mask,
let us pass as women and save us from harm.
And to the other three, we'd kneel before our altar
of candles and pray. Saint Barbara, Saint Michael, Lecarada de Cobra,
(15:15):
we know we are doing wrong, but we got to live,
and we got to survive, so please help us. Bring
us money tonight, protect us and keep evil away. We
kept the sword of Saint Barbara at the front door
and the sword of Saint Michael at the back door
to ward off evil. We were watched over and for
anyone who's I had to look it up. The sort
of Saint Barbara's or Saint George are not sadly literal swords,
(15:36):
but they are potted plants.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Just cool too. The potted plant is mightier than the sword.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
As they say, Yeah, yeah, specifically and this particular context,
it probably worked better. Yeah, and the two also joined
the Young Lord's Party, who we covered extensively in the
past four parter about them, and they just fucking ruled.
It's a Puerto Rican revolution organization, and at one point
that organization provided security for Sylvia Rivera when there was
(16:06):
like all kinds of its late as constantly i mean
death threats against her, and it was like contentious in
the We talked about this in the Young Lord's episode,
but it was like contentious. Some of them were like, oh,
we don't, we don't know about trans people. But eventually
they're like, no, we do, and we will take care
of and protect this person, you know. And they met
the Young Lords and Sylvia Rivera's Puerto Rican but they
(16:26):
met the Young Lords because there was a demonstration against
police repression that the Young Lords put on and this
is the first time that a star banner was carried
in a demonstration. And then after the demo they were like, yeah,
sign me up. They were also friends with the Panthers
and Hue P. Newton, and they also pushed the envelope
about trans acceptance in the GLF and the GAA. They
(16:48):
also pushed like a lot of people are like, oh,
people had a hard time with them because of the
trans thing. That's part of it. People had a hard
time with them because of the class thing. Both of
these things, right wow, Because like, for example, the gay
dances were by donation. The GAA, the glf ones and
start decided rightly that as homeless folks they should not
(17:10):
have to donate, right yeah, And so this like caused tension.
Oh you're supposed to donate, and they're like, fuck you,
or we fucking do what we want. You know, they
marched in all the demos all the time for all
of the issues.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
One of their chants, which absolutely does not rhyme, is
go left, go gay, go pick up the gun.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
That doesn't even hit like the you're not hitting the
the the candor either the cadence and the cadence right either.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
I know, And I'm pretty sure it was in English.
I like thought it through in Spanish and like, no,
I think this is an English language chant that just whatever,
it's hard as fuck, go off.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Trans people did not have a perfect easy time in
the movement. The street kids and particular, they were often
used as cannon fodder, basically because they were willing to
be directly confrontational because they were used to short, hard
lives of conflict. So when they needed someone to like,
go fight the cops, the street kids are always willing
to go fight the cops, right, And this was taken
(18:16):
advantage of us sometimes within the movement, but overall the
GOLF and then even the less radical GAA. They stuck
with protecting the street queens and specifically, and this is
contention because of modern politics, they stuck with protecting the
T and LGBT when push came to shove. And you
(18:39):
know what else protects you? If the ad is for LifeLock,
I guess.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Uh, that'd be maybe LifeLock.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
You know who else had trans people's back was Reagan
whose gold coins by can we revisionist to one of
the people who saw that, No, that would be bad.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
When I first started writing this, I was like, and
then I'll get up and get into act up and
the AIDS crisis and I'm like, that is going to
be its own major thing to drive into amen. So
if this is an ad for Reagan, I can't make
a joke about it. He was a monster and has
a lot of blood on his hands. Fortunately he's dead,
but we don't have a lot of control over our advertisers.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
We do not, unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
So here's some ads.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
And we're back. Yay.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
So the GAA and Star they pushed New York City
to add LGBT folks to an existing Equal Rights Act.
This was like their big legal campaign that they worked
on for a very long time. And the city immediately,
of course, did what it always does, which was like, well,
you drop the T from the LGBT and we'll talk
about it, you know. To be clear, they still wouldn't
(19:57):
have done it, as we'll get to, but you know,
they are like, oh, you want to you want to
ditch the weirdos, you know, and a minority of the
GAA was like, yeah, let's drop the transvestites from the bill.
To be clear about language, I've probably talked about this
at other times in the past, but like, transvestite is
not a word that most people use anymore. I personally
(20:19):
don't see it as slurry to identify as a transvestite,
but it is.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
It is the.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Language that people were using at the time, and it
specifically tends to refer to men wearing women's clothes. All
of this gets quotes, but you know, whatever anyway, everything
is all mixed up in different ways at different times.
So they were like, hey, drop the drop the transvestites,
and GAA was like, no, we're sticking to our guns.
(20:46):
They've always been with us. One member said quote, we
would not play the game of well we could pass
pass it if we eliminate these people. In fact, the
first arrest in the GAA's history was Sylvia Rivera, who
is arrested while getting signatures for the petition for the
Gay Rights Bill, which is last week in our Newsies episode,
we talked about how one of the black newsies was
(21:08):
arrested for passing out of like just literally a flyer.
It's like the same kind of shit, nothing ever fucking changes.
The NYPD is the crew the villain in both of
these things, seventy years apart, where they're like, oh, look
a person the color doing something is absolutely free speech.
We're going to arrest them.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Classic.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yeah, So the GLF and the GAA both flooded the
courtroom in her defense. They stood up for her. The
GAA paid her legal fees, and eventually her charges were dropped.
The hearings for the bill itself carried on for a while.
During one hearing, the city tried hard to transbate the
rest of the gays and dropping trans folks. Cops tried
(21:46):
to bar drag queens from entering the courtroom. I think
they were like, oh, you're not dressed appropriately for court.
As my best bet. Angry gays surrounded their quote half
sisters this was non derogatory term, and forced them to
let the drag queens sit in the front row. The
city councilors were like, yeah, but what if men this
is some nothing's ever changed shit. They were like, yeah, well,
(22:10):
if we protect trans people, what if men in dresses
use the women's room?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (22:18):
No, yeah, And they pointed to one woman who just
come out of the women's room and We're like, what
this is their quote? What about that thing coming out
of the bathroom there? So that woman, June Bartel, who
I think was a trans woman, squatted down, lifted up
her skirts and said, how can you tell if I'm
a man or a woman?
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Oh? Man?
Speaker 1 (22:39):
And I don't know if there was like underwear or
underneath that. I don't know exactly what happened here, which
is not the first time in researching this in this
podcast history where a trans woman has lifted her skirts
the court to be like, fine, if you care so
much about junk, here's my fucking junk.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Here's my fucking junk. Yeah, hunk.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
So that this caused a near riot in the courtroom
when this happened, And this has started by them calling
an adult a thing right by using the bathroom that
they were less likely to get murdered for using, because
that's the other thing, right, The reason that I mean, well,
the reason that women use the women's room is it's labeled.
(23:23):
And I remember at one point being like, well, there's
this is when I was just a just a quote
transvestite or whatever, identify as a man who wore dresses
or whatever, and I'd be like, name Margaret. It was
all a very confused time in my life. When I
was younger, I'd be like, well, I look at the drawing,
and the drawing is of me, but the gender is
the wrong, you know, like like right, like whatever, it's
not safe for people to whatever. I remember, okay, we
(23:46):
actually just said, like, you know, a different. At different
points in my life, I pass or don't pass in
different ways. And I remember when I hit the point
at which there was no safe bathroom because like, if
I have like a beard and I'm in a skirt,
I can use the men's room. And everyone's like, oh whatever,
you know, sure, But I remember the point, you know,
(24:07):
I was at a show and I went into the
men's room and everyone's staring at me, and I'm like, oh, right,
because I don't look like a man. And then I'm like,
but I don't look like a woman. There is no
safe place for me to urinate at this show anyway.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
That's an aside.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
So Sonia riot in the courtroom. Queens are rushing down
the stairs. The cops rush in, right, and they're like,
and so queens start rushing down the stairs and they
bowl the riot cups. So CoP's over, and they like
tumble down the stairs because they're wearing too much stuff.
Sylvia Rivera jumps off the second floor balcony at this point,
(24:46):
like it's a punk show. By the third day of
the hearing, transvestites were banned from using any restrooms great
and the bill was defeated. It took until nineteen eighty
six before it passed at all, and it was passed
without protections or trans people. This is like my argument
about by like even without adding even without trans people
(25:06):
in the bill. It took fifteen sixteen more years before
New York was ready for it. It took another sixteen years.
It took until two thousand and two before trans people
to have legal protections under the Equal Rights Act in
New York City. More than anything, Star fought for prisoners,
especially LGBT prisoners and street youth, at demonstrations but also
(25:28):
testifying in every hearing they could, and they won a
lot of these things. They won educational rights for the
young prisoners on Rikers Island, more than sixty percent of
whom at the time we were awaiting trial without being
able to afford bail. That is still a problem today.
There's like people who die on Rikers Island because they
got I don't have the details in front of me.
(25:49):
It was like a kid who like maybe stole a
backpack or something, who fucking died on Rikers as a teenager, And.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah, I think I'm familiar with that story.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Yeah. And it's like, we theoretically have a lie Le
system in which you are not a guilty person before
you've been convicted, right theory, But if you're poor, it
doesn't matter. A lot of Star themselves spent time in
Rikers Island, and Sylvia was just fucking cool. Like mostly
this is an episode about like movements, right, Like some
(26:20):
of my episodes are more movement, some of them are
more people. It is like mostly a movement one. But
Sylvia just fucking ruled. When someone asked her to run
for office in the GAA, she said quote, I would
rather be someone who can stand here and argue with
the hierarchy, but than be the hierarchy.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
And she was.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
It's true she was the president of Star, but she
had tried to convince Marsha to be the president and
Marsha refused it. Because I had to figure out a
way to shoehorn Tolkien into the episode. It reminds me
of a quote by him, quote the most improper job
of any men, even saints, is bossing other men. Not
one in a million is fit for it, and least
of all those who seek the opportunity. The argument being that, no,
(26:57):
the only good leader is a leader who does not
seek out to be a leader. That's good, yeah, like
not attracted to power, you know, sure, but seeing it
as a burden is a very different thing. And I
think that she showed that very well. She also drew
the earliest version that I've ever found of what's now
(27:18):
the trans symbol, you know, the like circle with the
male female and androg and gene sign coming off of it. Yeah, like,
I can't source that. In nineteen seventy two, she wrote
a piece called Transvestites Your Half Sisters and Half Brothers
of the Revolution, which is an awesome title, and it
used a symbol that was like three andrew gene symbols
(27:40):
overlapping an event diagram, and it just like looks like
that symbol. It's the three arrows coming out.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
And I don't know.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
I've found people on the internet claiming that the symbol
the trans symbol comes from a radio show in two
thousand and two. This is not true. By summer two
thousand and two, I already had a hoodie with the
trans symbol silk screened on it, even though I was
a straight boy. I was very confused kid named Margaret
wearing dresses. And I'd learned this symbol from a street
a street queen, basically a trans woman named Jennifer had
(28:11):
who had already had one on her black hoodie for
a very long time.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
I asked a bunch of friends before while was writing
the script, a bunch of my friends who might know,
and all of them were like, man, that symbol is
just in the ether, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Yeah, I think it's one of the I mean, I
think this is one of the sadder realities of oppressed groups,
is that so often their history is erased by people,
you know, committing violence on them just because it's like,
you know that it's this the the horrible quote is
history is written by the winners, and it's so often
(28:44):
that as we search for more of that history from
people who were cast aside and not big old air
quotes quotes, not traditional winners, it's like we just lose
that and that is it's sad because that feels like
something that is so not i mean, not crucial to
a movement, but it's it's important to know your and
know where they come from. Feel like it's kind of
similar to the purple hand thing. It's like, is that
preserved in some way? Yeah, it's like I don't.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Know, No, No, that's such a That's such a good point.
And a lot of the work that I end up
having to do for the show is just like figuring
out there's so much stuff that just is never written about,
like sex workers in particular are written out of history,
and or rather people's sex work is written out of
history in the same way that people's queerness is written
out of history, and the same way that people's radicalness
(29:30):
of different ideological attachments. I mostly notice anarchism because of
my own biases, and it's like you'll read about all
these people, you know, like oh, Emma Goldman, the amazing
birth control activist, which is true, but like they are
entirely writing out her anarchism. And then also she herself,
in her autobiography, talks about this time that she like
(29:52):
wanted to make money for her boyfriend to shoot a guy,
and so she went out to go do sex work
to shoot and Andrew clay Frick, the industrialist who was
killing a bunch of striking workers. It was actually all
a bad idea in the end, shooting him made everything worse,
but you know, I didn't know that at the time.
And so she goes out and tries to get some
money for it, and so she like goes into sex work.
(30:13):
Probably in her own autobiography she's like, oh, I went out,
but a guy gave me a bunch of money, did
not sleep with him and said that you're not cut
out for this kind of work, right, And I think
the most likely thing there is that she didn't want
to talk about having done sex work, like explicitly, because
you don't talk about it. And so it's not just
(30:34):
the winners as in the people who like, but it's
like the winning ideologies.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Right, sure, totally, totally. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Anyway, so the Starhouse, it actually only lasted nine months
before one of its members turned out to have not
been paying the rent and they were all evicted. I
think one of the members was basically embezzling the rent.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
That sucks.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yeah, that's the best I can read. It's a little
bit reading between the lines on that one. Sure, And
a lot of the kids didn't survive the next year
on the street. A lot of them died from drugs,
a lot of them were murdered by clients. At least
two of them were murdered by clients. A lot of
straight men hired transsex workers because trans women are fucking hot,
and then kill them later in a fit of oh no,
(31:18):
I did a gay and yeah, and that's a thing
that still when people talk about transgenocide, that's like and
this is especially.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
True for.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Trans women of color, and particularly true for trans women color.
Sex workers have some of the hardest lives of anyone
who lives. Shout out to the people who keep living.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
And keep fighting, truly shout out.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
So.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
In addition to Starr, there was also the Queen's Liberation Front,
which is not about queens the borough, but queens like
drag queens. It started in nineteen sixty nine by a
drag queen named Lee Brewster and by a quote heterosexual
transvestite named Bunny Eisenhower. Is one of the things that like,
even back then, people are like, wait, I don't understand
some of you sleep with women and some of you
(32:05):
sleep with men, you know. And in the movement people
are like, yeah, like actually like bisexuality the invisible, the
invisible part of LGBT, Like they were actually there the
whole time, and actually all of their papers were like
bisexuality rules, bisexuality is great. You can be full gay,
you can be bisexual. Like it's fine, you know. So
(32:25):
the Queen's Liberation Front published Drag Magazine, which covered areas
ignored by other gay publications. They raised money for the
first Pride March, the Christopher Street Liberation day, and they
were to legalize cross dressing in New York City because
that has been illegal in the past and will probably
be illegal in the future. There are states where it
would not be legal for me to give presentations about anything.
(32:48):
There was also the Trends I know, I know. There
was also the Transvestite Information Service, the TVIS, which had
chapters across the country. So Star lasted until nineteen seventy three.
At the Pride Parade that year, in fighting was getting
the better of the movement, and Sylvia Rivera was either
if any how you ask, denied a chance to speak,
(33:11):
or if you ask the other side. She refused to
abide by the rules of who gets to like how
to ask for a chance to speak. She either could
be easily true. She was very notorious for ignoring the
rules of polite organizing and conversation. As much as I'm
like she ruled. She was a very disruptive element in organizing.
According to everyone, I'm fine with someone who whatever anyway. Yeah,
(33:35):
So she stormed the stage and she took the microphone,
and she gave a speech about the need to stand
up for gay prisoners, and she was decrying how Pride
had become white and middle class, and she was met
with booze. So then a speaker came on and spoke
out against drag, called Sylvia a genital male, claimed that
drag was just entertainment and it was misogynist and demeaning.
(33:59):
This was also met with booze. The crowd was divided,
and later that speaker, who I don't want to name,
she recanted and she wished she hadn't said that shit,
and she realized that in trans people, it's part of us. Yeah,
that's why I'm not naming her. After that, another speaker
came on from the Queen's Liberation Front and defended the queens,
(34:20):
and basically the movement is divided at this point, and
more and more the gay rights movement went towards assimilationism
and towards single issue politics, which split the LGBT from
each other. Right, incrementalism and reform became the words of
the day. It was kind of a like, well, we're
kind of getting there. Can't we just be have an
(34:42):
easy time?
Speaker 2 (34:43):
You know? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (34:45):
And this stayed the case for five or six years
until the eighties and the AIDS crisis, when it was
obvious that radical action was needed and the gay movement
looked back to its radical founding. That's a story for
a different time. First, it's time for the story about mattresses.
We haven't sold mattresses in a long time, but maybe
(35:05):
you've missed by the future. Yes, I wonder what the
ads are in the future. Let's think about what the
future ads are.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Oh man, Yeah, masks, breathers, Yeah, yeah, axes. I mean
I'm not I'm not looking forward to our toxic future,
but I am looking forward to really cool mask technology. Yeah.
And just just the just the go ahead. No, and
the sweet deals on these masks. Yeah, and the sweet
deal the percent off if you can get by listening
(35:35):
to this very podcast.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Because you know that advertisers are going to last till
the very last minute. Like I was thinking about, it's
like there's going to be people evicting people for not
paying their rent or their mortgage, while like we can
see mushroom clouds in the distance, you know, quite literally, quite.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Literally, we're kicking out into the street. No, I will
literally die. Well, I don't have money, so I don't care.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Yeah, buy one mask, get this free?
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Nice yeah. Yeah, defend yourself against ashes. Yeah, wonderful.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Here's some ads, So we're back, And a lot of
the research about this particular part about Star and also
just GLF in general. A lot of it comes from
an author I mentioned just like kind of briefly named
drop named Leslie Feinberg, and I just want to like
highlight her and talk about it really quick, because she
(36:29):
is a cool person who did cool stuff, who used
both she and Z pronouns, and so I'm going to
kind of mix it up in the script. I first
ran across here book Stonebusch Blues when I didn't even
know that I was queer. This episode is going to
be the most people now know about twenty year old
me of anything else that I've ever recorded. And Stone
Busch Blues exploded my little brain. It is a fictionalized
(36:50):
memoir about someone transitioning from butch to trans masculine in
the era before Stonewall in a working classifact family in Buffalo,
New York.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
And it describes a lesbian culture of butches and fems
in which a lot of the butcheres are stone butches,
which meant that they give pleasure sexually but don't receive pleasure,
and that's like their essentially gender and their sexual orientation
and reading that helped a lot. It helped baby Margaret
figure some shit out about herself. So thank you, Leslie.
Rest in peace.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Shout out, Leslie.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Here's a quote from that book that I think is
always worth bringing out. I'm not saying we'll live to
see some sort of paradise, but just fighting for change
makes you stronger. Not hoping for anything will kill you
for sure. Take a chance. You're already wondering if the
world could change, Try imagining a world worth living in,
and then ask yourself if that isn't worth fighting for.
(37:43):
You've come too far to give up on hope.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Leslie Feinberg was born in a Jewish, white working class
family in nineteen forty seven in Missouri, then grew up
in Buffalo, New York. Zee was a high school dropout
who started work at fourteen who went on to advance
gender studies more than anyone else I can name off
the top of my head. Z was a big part
of the move from transsexual as the primary label for
folks to transgender, and the idea behind this is like
(38:13):
moving away from the medicalization of transnests. Right. It's not
saying that transsexual is like a bad word, right, It's
just like, not necessarily everyone's experience because not everyone's experience
is medicalized. Not everyone's going to have surgery or change
their like physical sex characteristics, you know. She also spent
her time organizing with radical lesbians to do anti racist work,
(38:34):
like a group of ten of them which just go
around cities covering every piece of racist graffiti they could find.
In the early eighties, she went on a tour explaining
the AIDS epidemic and how it is being denied by
journalists and politicians. Is the organized community defense against the
Klan and four gay bars and four abortion clinics. She
just did it all. Z was Marxist. She edited the
(38:57):
newspaper the World Workers Party. By the end of her life.
She stayed involved in organizing and protests her entire life.
Her lifelong partner, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and her were finally
married in twenty eleven. Her last campaign was the campaign
to free c. C. MacDonald, who was a young Minneapolis
black trans woman who killed the transphobe who attacked her
(39:17):
and then went to prison for defending herself.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
I can hate that shit, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Leslie died at sixty five of complications from various illnesses
and from medical neglect because the doctors didn't know what
the fuck to do with them, because I don't know,
because doctors are not always medical neglect is a thing
and a problem. I'm not trying to say doctors are bad.
I'm saying that our medical system has problems.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Yes, always good to have a healthy bit of skepticism, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
And she's not subtle about her politics, right, and I
don't agree with like like, but that's not my point here.
I'm not going to get into what I disagree without
it about her. But her last words were remember me
as a revolutionary communist.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
That's so sick. I know, I know, you're just like
dying and you're like, never forget. It's like no one
was gonna forget, actually, I mean I don't know. People
probably would have been.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Like, oh, really fought for trans rice And that's true, right,
But like it's in this context, but we still got
so much more gay liberation to talk about it. It's
got drag queens drinking at the pub, it's got nuns
doing the can can, mice will be unleashed, mony Python
is involved. On part three, we're gonna talk about the
(40:36):
UK Gay Liberation Front.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Nice. Yeah, that's exciting. I'm stoked. Yeah. No, all of
them are fun, but part three is particularly fun. Oh yay.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
But what else is fun is your Twitch stream and
whatever else you want to shout.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Out pluggables, Yeah, you all over the internet. DJ Underscore
Daniel da n L. H you from me on twitch,
Twitch dot tv slash dj d a n L. The
most exciting thing happening on my twitch recently is that
every Friday, I take a single player game that I've
been meeting to beat out of my backlog and actually
finish it, because lord knows, some people have books they
(41:19):
haven't finished, some people have movies they haven't seen. I
have a whole bunch of single player video games that
I played for four hours and went never mind, I
want to go play something else, and just never finished.
And I just started Jedi Fallen Order and that game
has been a lot of fun so far. I'm a
big Star Wars fan and I just never got around
to really giving my game a shot, and I just
started that and it's been great so far. So come
on by on Fridays and check me out and do that. Hell, yeah,
(41:41):
you go.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
I used to never think that I would want to
watch other people play video games. Yeah, it's so relaxing.
It's sometimes yeah, like it really can be. It's like
when your friend or your roommate or your you know,
partner or something is sitting around playing video games and
you get to be like, oh, no, you're gonna shoot
the oh you shot the thing, and you're like, it's
(42:03):
often very nice.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
It is nice. I appreciate that. Thank you for the
cell on watching people play video game. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Yeah, no, it took me by surprise that I liked
it totally. Okay, if you like tabletop role playing games,
I'm kickstarting tabletop role playing game called p Number City,
but I've already talked about that. You can find me
on the internet Magpie kill Joy and Twitter. I did
the opposite DJ Channel. I have different handles on every
platform because I'm a fool. I'm Margaret Killjoy in Instagram,
(42:30):
but I got on the Blue Sky early enough that
I grabbed at Margaret and I'm like, but I want
at Margaret, and so I'm at Margaret instead of at
Margaret Kiljoy one Blue Sky. I hate Twitter with the
fiery passion. It's also my largest platform and my ability
to eat food relies on my ability to tell people
about the things I'm doing. So I'm still there for now.
(42:52):
But if it's the future, you'll also find me add
Apocalypse Land, selling prepper stuff, but only in the future,
not currently. Actually, there'll be a mutual aid thing. You
actually can just show up and get the apocalypse stuff. Yeah,
so I want to shout, yeah, pitch my future mutual
aid project, which probably shouldn't have been called Apocalypse Land.
(43:12):
People are very mad at me because it's like insensitive,
because the apocalypse has been really hard on people, and
how dare so anyway, Sophie, you got a plug?
Speaker 2 (43:20):
No good? Isn't it inherently hard on everyone? Isn't that
the idea? Yeah? Yeah, no, it's I don't want to
dive into the world of these people who think is problematic?
Are wrong?
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Yeah? The discourse from the discourse future the Future Discoorse, Sophie,
Can we do a podcast?
Speaker 3 (43:37):
No?
Speaker 1 (43:39):
But what if there was a podcast about Russian oligarchs
who suddenly die?
Speaker 2 (43:45):
What if?
Speaker 3 (43:46):
Oh you could listen? Is that all hosted by.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Yeah? I did say a good one and if you
want to listen to it ad free, you can subscribe
to cooler Zone, a subscription services that allows you to
receive all of our shows ad free so that you
can enjoy them at your leisure without hearing the Reagan
coin stuff. Just our fun wrap arounds about reagancoinwur.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Podcasts, and soon on something else. Hopefully I can announce
soon for my non Apple using friends.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Yeah, listen, you are heard, you are seen, worth trying
to support you.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
And if it's the future, you can find us on
shortwave radio.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Yes, gab into our semi radio.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Hello, and welcome to Cool People That Cool Stuff. You're
twice a week podcast that usually I write a little
introduction thing for. I'm your host, Margaret Kilchoy, and my
guest is Daniel Daniel.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
That's me. I'm happy to be back track from DJ
Danel track You're not gonna believe this flex bomb. That
is what all of DJ Daniels you should look up?
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Are there, Daniel? I know you've showed me videos of
you DJ, but are there videos on the internet?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
They make me so happy. You're just so Daniel is
so zoned. Oh well, thank you. Our group is called
Gladiator and we still have some stuff on Spotify or
you could, you know, google Gladiator Live.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
What kind of stuff do you dju.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
We were an electronic music group. We played a lot
of like hip hop influenced electronic music. It's called trap
music and electron trap music. It's original trap music. It's
like you know, like like this, the I and whatnot.
But yeah, exactly, but played a lot of that, played
a lot of house. Another genre we were very into
was mombatone, which is a portmanteau that reggaetone and a
(01:13):
Dutch house song called Mumba by this uh, this artist
Silvia Ecomo and a remix by this dude Afrojack. It's
a long story, but basically it's kind of like reggaetone
but just electronic, and it was very, very danceable, and
I think it kind of like helped push for Well. Actually,
I'm not going to take credit for Eyes. I won't.
I won't take credit for it, but the genre of
moonbatone is definitely helpful in bringing reggaetone to a pop
(01:38):
culture audience in some in some capacity. In some capacity,
it was always incredibly popular music around the world. But
you inn is that what you're sat? Oh no, oh no,
I really put my foot in it.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Oh, And depends on how much Ian agrees with that,
might or might not make it into the I know it.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Ian, if that feels really wrong, please cut it.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
No wait no, Ian, you can interject your own recording
about how you feel about it. You won't hate having
that extra work because Ian is both our audio engineer
and the other half of that particular DJ collective Gladiator
A Gladiator.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I have the full Gladiator on staff, which is something
I like to bring up as much as I possibly can.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Here another another something for the for the audience here
is this is a sticker that we used to hold on.
Can I cover my face that it focuses? There we go.
This is an old sticker of Ian and I when
I had a full on zzy top beard. It was
famous for bucket hats. WHOA, everything has changed? Shall we
bring that back? What that? Well? No, Stephanie will not
(02:44):
let me bring the beard back. But maybe the bucket hats.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
We can make cool Zone media stickers that are still
just that. Those faces we could. I think you two
should be the face of cool Zone Media. I agree,
and that is okay. So Sophie is our producer, the
afore mentioned Ian is the audio engineer, and our theme
music was written for us by un woman. Damn you.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I know that.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
In the script for under preamble it just says stuff.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yes, it's highlighted. So this is part two of a
three parter on the queer groups of the early nineteen
seventies in the US and the UK. Last time we
talked about the birth of the Gay Liberation Front. Now
we're going to talk about a splinter from that which
just did so fucking much. We're talking about Star the
Street Transvestite Action revolutionaries. I'd actually only ever heard of
(03:43):
them in passing like they were like, oh, there's like
a mutual aid group that passed out food to street
queer sex workers in New York City, And that's true.
They did do that. They also did so much more
than that. Hell yeah, So Star was for and by
street gay people, street homeless people, and anybody that needed help. Basically,
(04:08):
it was founded in nineteen seventy by Sylvia Rivera and
Marsha P. Johnson, who are both veterans of the Stonewall
rioting and the Gay Liberation Front and the GAA. Actually
they were kind of did it all. They are most
famous now people be like, oh, the you know, trans
woman of color who threw the first brick at Stonewall.
It is not true that they like quote through the
(04:30):
first brick at Stonewall. That doesn't matter. They are people
who fought in the riots and did amazing work as organizers,
and their contributions should still not be taken away. But
so Star started during the defense for other gay people
because we've always been working together. In nineteen seventy, NYU
(04:54):
canceled a bunch of planned dances once they realized they
were sponsored by the gays dundon ooo oooh the canceling
not the case. Yeah yeah, well boo. From the point
of view of NYU, you.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So the GLF, the Radical lesbians, the one word that
talked about before, and other groups occupied the hall at
least eighty people. The numbers fluctuated. Sometimes there'd be as
few as ten, sometimes there'd be as many as like
three hundred. For almost a week they occupied a building
of NYU. Hell yeah, yeah, no, I I never heard
of it, you know, But then again, people were occupying
(05:30):
universities like every fucking week in nineteen sixty nine, nineteen seventy.
In this case, I think so street gays came and
helped street gays in this context, being gay people lived
on the street because they had no home, and Sylvia
and Marsha, who are both homeless sex workers, talked to
folks and non street gay folks were like, yeah, if
you organize, we'll have your backs. And so at this occupation,
(05:54):
this is the first time a lot of these different
groups really came together like and saw each other and
had to like live with each other and organize with
each other. Street transvestites and middle class gays black folks,
white folks, Latino folks. They all played spin the bottle
together in the basement of an NYU building, sleeping on
pool tables and shit. A lot of lesbians and street
queens hung out together for the first time. These were
(06:15):
groups that have been like kind of a little bit distanced, right,
and it was a major coming together for the movement.
The occupation lasted six nights before it was broken up
by police at gunpoint, who were like, we're gonna Jesus
I can kill you off you don't get the fuck.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Out of here, all right, fine, I guess.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, yeah. And so afterwards the street queens they were
tired of running, you know. I think a lot of
it was like, well, they were perfectly happy to do
the occupation. That better sleep on a pool table than
the doorway, you know, Right, And so they formed Star
And partly it was to get away from mafia control
(06:52):
of spaces again, right, there's a big part of all
of this, but there was no complete escape. We'll talk
about how the mafia still ties into all of it.
Their platform fought for the rights of trans people and
for street youth. I like the way they wrote here's
the last point of their manifesto. After there's eight other
points before it that are sort of like reasonable demands,
(07:12):
like hey, stop exploiting us, you know, and all that quote,
we want a revolutionary people's government where transvestites, street people, women, homosexuals,
Puerto Ricans, Indians and all oppressed people are free and
not fucked over by this government who treat us like
the scum of the earth and kills us off like
flies one by one and throws us into jail to
rot the government who spends millions of dollars to go
(07:34):
to the moon and lets poor Americans starve to death.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
So they're pretty strong. Yeah, I like that. They're just
like the way they wrote was like, well this is
what I think, you know, Yeah, I mean, you know,
got to get it out. Yeah, and very clearly too. Right.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yes, there's not a lot of it. Yeah, And there's
not a lot like jargon.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
It's just no.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
And so they were regularly, the two of them, are
and Sylvia, they were regularly like they'd go and like
get two hotel rooms and then get fifty street queers
crammed into these two hotel rooms.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Then they started sleeping in a I believe they squatted this.
It was a parked tractor trailer in an outdoor parking
lot in Greenwich Village.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Cool yeah, hell yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
And there was more than twenty Star activists living in
the trailer. And when I say Star activists, I mean
like fourteen and fifteen year olds.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Wow, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Star Marcia and Sylvia were like eighteen, so they were
like the mothers, you know, eighteen. And these these teenagers
had the scars to show from the families that they'd fled.
I'm not gonna get into like you can read about
a lot of the specific stuff that these people have suffered,
and I don't I don't feel the need to. We
can believe that their lives were hard, yeah, for real,
(08:54):
And not all of them. Most of the street queens
were somewhere in the like vestite, transfeminine, like people who
are you know, sign mail at birth, who are wearing
women's clothes, who identify all different ways later in their lives,
but at the time identified as street queens. But some
of them were also girls in men's clothes, so it
(09:14):
wasn't just the other way around. And they had all
had really fucked up, hard lives. There's a whole bunch
of stories about the premature deaths they came to coming
from violence. A few of them murdered people of their
own in street fights. A rough and tumble existence. So
they lived in this eighteen wheeler and the reason I'm
(09:36):
guessing it squatted is that one morning they woke up
and it was driving away. Wow, So they all had
to jump out yeah no, yeah, And it was like
I think Marcia and Sylvia had like gone off to
like they pull all at the end of the night.
They'd all pull all their money from panhandling and petty
crime and sex work and stuff, and they would pull
(09:57):
all their money and then Sylvie and march It would
go and buy food and they were like coming back
at dawn to like bring back food. And the truck
was like driving right, it was gone and like all
the kids are jumping out of it. One of them
who was on downers slept through it and like ended
up in California.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
California. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
I don't entirely understand the means by which is the
person that slept this long they must have like come
woken up and then been like oh fuck, I don't
really know.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
I mean, they probably woke up in the middle of
the nowhere at a rest stop that was getting like
refuel and it was like where are we you got
to stay on It's like all right, well, yeah, this
is what we're doing now. Yeah, that must have been
a niche. And so without their trailer, they rented a
piece of shit building from the mafia and they paid
for this. Okay, there's two buildings that Stars involved in,
(10:50):
and all of the stories about both of them are conflated.
This is my best piece scene in a part. The
buildings that they rented they were paid for two ways.
One with Sylvie and Marsha's sex work. They tried to
kind of be like, look, we'll do it you all please,
fifteen year olds, don't you know. And plus fundraising dances
thrown by Star and the GLF together and apparently at
(11:12):
these these dances, Sylvia would collect the donations at the
door armed with a knife to make sure that people
donated we support Yeah, she also pocketed some of the
donations for her own use, you know, to be this
is where we point out they are eighteen. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
And so the first place, the more like formal place
that they had was called the Gay Community Center the GCC,
which is one of the ancestors of all gay community
centers today, right, And it's like, I remember when I
didn't have health insurance and you know, like lived in
a van or whatever, and I like hurt my chest.
I like went to the this like place in Boston
that's this giant building that's a gay health clinic or whatever,
(11:56):
you know, and it was great. They treated me even
though I was uninsured and things like that. But it's
just like really important to remember that this like this
is where, this is where it comes from, this infrastructure
that was built by sex workers and by people had
really fucking hard lives. So they started the GCC. It's
(12:17):
conflated with the Star House that comes a little bit later.
It doesn't help that Sylvie and Marsha are both unreliable narrators,
quite known for embellishing the truth. The GLF and Star
rented this Gay Community Center and they use the top
floor is a classroom. They taught literacy to kids who
had grown up on the streets. They taught self defense,
they taught history, they taught crafts, whatever people wanted, right
(12:39):
and whatever people came by like whoever, it wasn't just
for those for all comers. And then There's the Star House,
which was in a much worse part of town, and
it was a flophouse for street queens, and they ran
it like a social center too, even though there was
like no for a while, there's no running water, and
for a while, there's no heat. For while, there is
no electricity, and stuff like that. And at this place
(13:04):
they offered food and childcare to the community around them
as well. Right, they're like, hey, we're hanging out here
all day, like you can leave your kids with us,
which is like kind of wild to think about, but
it was like a really important thing for the community
that they were in and their attitude about it. I'll
just quote Sylvia Rivera in an interview with Queer historian
Leslie Feinberg quote, we fed people, in clothed people. We
(13:27):
kept the building going. We went out and hustled the streets.
We paid the rent. We didn't want the kids out
in the streets hustling. They would go out and rip
off food. There was always food in the house and
everyone had fun. Later, we had a chapter in New York,
one in Chicago, one in California and England. It lasted
two to three years. Yeah, and they you know it
(13:48):
was lit by candles half the time. They had to
figure out all the plumbing and all the electrical themselves.
They ate spaghetti dinners when they were like feeling rich,
they'd have sausage in the morning. And they fought their
own drug addictions. This was a major problem in Manhattan
and New York City at the time. They often failed
to fight their own drug addictions. Often people died in
(14:10):
the attempt of fighting these addictions. It's the kind of
history that's easy to romanticize, but it's also dangerous to romanticize.
Like they're amazing, they're revolutionaries, and they had some of
the hardest lives that anyone in the US has ever lived,
and they were far from perfect, and they did so
fucking much. They were also kind of religious in their way.
They were mostly Catholic, but not in the Catholic way
that you get in church. They were more folk Catholic,
(14:32):
which is my favorite kind. Interesting to quote Sylvia, we'd
all get together to pray to our saints before we
go out hustling. A majority of the queens were Latin,
and we believed in an emotional, spiritualistic religion. We have
our own saints. Saint Barbara the patron Saint of homosexuality,
Saint Michael, the Archangel Lacaridad de Cobra, the Madonna of Gold,
(14:54):
and Saint Martha, the Saint of transformation. Saint Martha had
once transformed herself into a snake, so to her we'd pray,
please let them, don't let them see through the mask,
let us pass as women and save us from harm.
And to the other three, we'd kneel before our altar
of candles and pray. Saint Barbara, Saint Michael, Lecarada de Cobra,
(15:15):
we know we are doing wrong, but we got to live,
and we got to survive, so please help us. Bring
us money tonight, protect us and keep evil away. We
kept the sword of Saint Barbara at the front door
and the sword of Saint Michael at the back door
to ward off evil. We were watched over and for
anyone who's I had to look it up. The sort
of Saint Barbara's or Saint George are not sadly literal swords,
(15:36):
but they are potted plants.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Just cool too. The potted plant is mightier than the sword.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
As they say, Yeah, yeah, specifically and this particular context,
it probably worked better. Yeah, and the two also joined
the Young Lord's Party, who we covered extensively in the
past four parter about them, and they just fucking ruled.
It's a Puerto Rican revolution organization, and at one point
that organization provided security for Sylvia Rivera when there was
(16:06):
like all kinds of its late as constantly i mean
death threats against her, and it was like contentious in
the We talked about this in the Young Lord's episode,
but it was like contentious. Some of them were like, oh,
we don't, we don't know about trans people. But eventually
they're like, no, we do, and we will take care
of and protect this person, you know. And they met
the Young Lords and Sylvia Rivera's Puerto Rican but they
(16:26):
met the Young Lords because there was a demonstration against
police repression that the Young Lords put on and this
is the first time that a star banner was carried
in a demonstration. And then after the demo they were like, yeah,
sign me up. They were also friends with the Panthers
and Hue P. Newton, and they also pushed the envelope
about trans acceptance in the GLF and the GAA. They
(16:48):
also pushed like a lot of people are like, oh,
people had a hard time with them because of the
trans thing. That's part of it. People had a hard
time with them because of the class thing. Both of
these things, right wow, Because like, for example, the gay
dances were by donation. The GAA, the glf ones and
start decided rightly that as homeless folks they should not
(17:10):
have to donate, right yeah, And so this like caused tension.
Oh you're supposed to donate, and they're like, fuck you,
or we fucking do what we want. You know, they
marched in all the demos all the time for all
of the issues.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
One of their chants, which absolutely does not rhyme, is
go left, go gay, go pick up the gun.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
That doesn't even hit like the you're not hitting the
the the candor either the cadence and the cadence right either.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
I know, And I'm pretty sure it was in English.
I like thought it through in Spanish and like, no,
I think this is an English language chant that just whatever,
it's hard as fuck, go off.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Trans people did not have a perfect easy time in
the movement. The street kids and particular, they were often
used as cannon fodder, basically because they were willing to
be directly confrontational because they were used to short, hard
lives of conflict. So when they needed someone to like,
go fight the cops, the street kids are always willing
to go fight the cops, right, And this was taken
(18:16):
advantage of us sometimes within the movement, but overall the
GOLF and then even the less radical GAA. They stuck
with protecting the street queens and specifically, and this is
contention because of modern politics, they stuck with protecting the
T and LGBT when push came to shove. And you
(18:39):
know what else protects you? If the ad is for LifeLock,
I guess.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Uh, that'd be maybe LifeLock.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
You know who else had trans people's back was Reagan
whose gold coins by can we revisionist to one of
the people who saw that, No, that would be bad.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
I guess.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
When I first started writing this, I was like, and
then I'll get up and get into act up and
the AIDS crisis and I'm like, that is going to
be its own major thing to drive into amen. So
if this is an ad for Reagan, I can't make
a joke about it. He was a monster and has
a lot of blood on his hands. Fortunately he's dead,
but we don't have a lot of control over our advertisers.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
We do not, unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
So here's some ads.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
And we're back. Yay.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
So the GAA and Star they pushed New York City
to add LGBT folks to an existing Equal Rights Act.
This was like their big legal campaign that they worked
on for a very long time. And the city immediately,
of course, did what it always does, which was like, well,
you drop the T from the LGBT and we'll talk
about it, you know. To be clear, they still wouldn't
(19:57):
have done it, as we'll get to, but you know,
they are like, oh, you want to you want to
ditch the weirdos, you know, and a minority of the
GAA was like, yeah, let's drop the transvestites from the bill.
To be clear about language, I've probably talked about this
at other times in the past, but like, transvestite is
not a word that most people use anymore. I personally
(20:19):
don't see it as slurry to identify as a transvestite,
but it is.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
It is the.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Language that people were using at the time, and it
specifically tends to refer to men wearing women's clothes. All
of this gets quotes, but you know, whatever anyway, everything
is all mixed up in different ways at different times.
So they were like, hey, drop the drop the transvestites,
and GAA was like, no, we're sticking to our guns.
(20:46):
They've always been with us. One member said quote, we
would not play the game of well we could pass
pass it if we eliminate these people. In fact, the
first arrest in the GAA's history was Sylvia Rivera, who
is arrested while getting signatures for the petition for the
Gay Rights Bill, which is last week in our Newsies episode,
we talked about how one of the black newsies was
(21:08):
arrested for passing out of like just literally a flyer.
It's like the same kind of shit, nothing ever fucking changes.
The NYPD is the crew the villain in both of
these things, seventy years apart, where they're like, oh, look
a person the color doing something is absolutely free speech.
We're going to arrest them.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Classic.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yeah, So the GLF and the GAA both flooded the
courtroom in her defense. They stood up for her. The
GAA paid her legal fees, and eventually her charges were dropped.
The hearings for the bill itself carried on for a while.
During one hearing, the city tried hard to transbate the
rest of the gays and dropping trans folks. Cops tried
(21:46):
to bar drag queens from entering the courtroom. I think
they were like, oh, you're not dressed appropriately for court.
As my best bet. Angry gays surrounded their quote half
sisters this was non derogatory term, and forced them to
let the drag queens sit in the front row. The
city councilors were like, yeah, but what if men this
is some nothing's ever changed shit. They were like, yeah, well,
(22:10):
if we protect trans people, what if men in dresses
use the women's room?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (22:18):
No, yeah, And they pointed to one woman who just
come out of the women's room and We're like, what
this is their quote? What about that thing coming out
of the bathroom there? So that woman, June Bartel, who
I think was a trans woman, squatted down, lifted up
her skirts and said, how can you tell if I'm
a man or a woman?
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Oh? Man?
Speaker 1 (22:39):
And I don't know if there was like underwear or
underneath that. I don't know exactly what happened here, which
is not the first time in researching this in this
podcast history where a trans woman has lifted her skirts
the court to be like, fine, if you care so
much about junk, here's my fucking junk.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Here's my fucking junk. Yeah, hunk.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
So that this caused a near riot in the courtroom
when this happened, And this has started by them calling
an adult a thing right by using the bathroom that
they were less likely to get murdered for using, because
that's the other thing, right, The reason that I mean, well,
the reason that women use the women's room is it's labeled.
(23:23):
And I remember at one point being like, well, there's
this is when I was just a just a quote
transvestite or whatever, identify as a man who wore dresses
or whatever, and I'd be like, name Margaret. It was
all a very confused time in my life. When I
was younger, I'd be like, well, I look at the drawing,
and the drawing is of me, but the gender is
the wrong, you know, like like right, like whatever, it's
not safe for people to whatever. I remember, okay, we
(23:46):
actually just said, like, you know, a different. At different
points in my life, I pass or don't pass in
different ways. And I remember when I hit the point
at which there was no safe bathroom because like, if
I have like a beard and I'm in a skirt,
I can use the men's room. And everyone's like, oh whatever,
you know, sure, But I remember the point, you know,
(24:07):
I was at a show and I went into the
men's room and everyone's staring at me, and I'm like, oh, right,
because I don't look like a man. And then I'm like,
but I don't look like a woman. There is no
safe place for me to urinate at this show anyway.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
That's an aside.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
So Sonia riot in the courtroom. Queens are rushing down
the stairs. The cops rush in, right, and they're like,
and so queens start rushing down the stairs and they
bowl the riot cups. So CoP's over, and they like
tumble down the stairs because they're wearing too much stuff.
Sylvia Rivera jumps off the second floor balcony at this point,
(24:46):
like it's a punk show. By the third day of
the hearing, transvestites were banned from using any restrooms great
and the bill was defeated. It took until nineteen eighty
six before it passed at all, and it was passed
without protections or trans people. This is like my argument
about by like even without adding even without trans people
(25:06):
in the bill. It took fifteen sixteen more years before
New York was ready for it. It took another sixteen years.
It took until two thousand and two before trans people
to have legal protections under the Equal Rights Act in
New York City. More than anything, Star fought for prisoners,
especially LGBT prisoners and street youth, at demonstrations but also
(25:28):
testifying in every hearing they could, and they won a
lot of these things. They won educational rights for the
young prisoners on Rikers Island, more than sixty percent of
whom at the time we were awaiting trial without being
able to afford bail. That is still a problem today.
There's like people who die on Rikers Island because they
got I don't have the details in front of me.
(25:49):
It was like a kid who like maybe stole a
backpack or something, who fucking died on Rikers as a teenager, And.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah, I think I'm familiar with that story.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Yeah. And it's like, we theoretically have a lie Le
system in which you are not a guilty person before
you've been convicted, right theory, But if you're poor, it
doesn't matter. A lot of Star themselves spent time in
Rikers Island, and Sylvia was just fucking cool. Like mostly
this is an episode about like movements, right, Like some
(26:20):
of my episodes are more movement, some of them are
more people. It is like mostly a movement one. But
Sylvia just fucking ruled. When someone asked her to run
for office in the GAA, she said quote, I would
rather be someone who can stand here and argue with
the hierarchy, but than be the hierarchy.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
And she was.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
It's true she was the president of Star, but she
had tried to convince Marsha to be the president and
Marsha refused it. Because I had to figure out a
way to shoehorn Tolkien into the episode. It reminds me
of a quote by him, quote the most improper job
of any men, even saints, is bossing other men. Not
one in a million is fit for it, and least
of all those who seek the opportunity. The argument being that, no,
(26:57):
the only good leader is a leader who does not
seek out to be a leader. That's good, yeah, like
not attracted to power, you know, sure, but seeing it
as a burden is a very different thing. And I
think that she showed that very well. She also drew
the earliest version that I've ever found of what's now
(27:18):
the trans symbol, you know, the like circle with the
male female and androg and gene sign coming off of it. Yeah, like,
I can't source that. In nineteen seventy two, she wrote
a piece called Transvestites Your Half Sisters and Half Brothers
of the Revolution, which is an awesome title, and it
used a symbol that was like three andrew gene symbols
(27:40):
overlapping an event diagram, and it just like looks like
that symbol. It's the three arrows coming out.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
And I don't know.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
I've found people on the internet claiming that the symbol
the trans symbol comes from a radio show in two
thousand and two. This is not true. By summer two
thousand and two, I already had a hoodie with the
trans symbol silk screened on it, even though I was
a straight boy. I was very confused kid named Margaret
wearing dresses. And I'd learned this symbol from a street
a street queen, basically a trans woman named Jennifer had
(28:11):
who had already had one on her black hoodie for
a very long time.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
I asked a bunch of friends before while was writing
the script, a bunch of my friends who might know,
and all of them were like, man, that symbol is
just in the ether, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Yeah, I think it's one of the I mean, I
think this is one of the sadder realities of oppressed groups,
is that so often their history is erased by people,
you know, committing violence on them just because it's like,
you know that it's this the the horrible quote is
history is written by the winners, and it's so often
(28:44):
that as we search for more of that history from
people who were cast aside and not big old air
quotes quotes, not traditional winners, it's like we just lose
that and that is it's sad because that feels like
something that is so not i mean, not crucial to
a movement, but it's it's important to know your and
know where they come from. Feel like it's kind of
similar to the purple hand thing. It's like, is that
preserved in some way? Yeah, it's like I don't.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Know, No, No, that's such a That's such a good point.
And a lot of the work that I end up
having to do for the show is just like figuring
out there's so much stuff that just is never written about,
like sex workers in particular are written out of history,
and or rather people's sex work is written out of
history in the same way that people's queerness is written
out of history, and the same way that people's radicalness
(29:30):
of different ideological attachments. I mostly notice anarchism because of
my own biases, and it's like you'll read about all
these people, you know, like oh, Emma Goldman, the amazing
birth control activist, which is true, but like they are
entirely writing out her anarchism. And then also she herself,
in her autobiography, talks about this time that she like
(29:52):
wanted to make money for her boyfriend to shoot a guy,
and so she went out to go do sex work
to shoot and Andrew clay Frick, the industrialist who was
killing a bunch of striking workers. It was actually all
a bad idea in the end, shooting him made everything worse,
but you know, I didn't know that at the time.
And so she goes out and tries to get some
money for it, and so she like goes into sex work.
(30:13):
Probably in her own autobiography she's like, oh, I went out,
but a guy gave me a bunch of money, did
not sleep with him and said that you're not cut
out for this kind of work, right, And I think
the most likely thing there is that she didn't want
to talk about having done sex work, like explicitly, because
you don't talk about it. And so it's not just
(30:34):
the winners as in the people who like, but it's
like the winning ideologies.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Right, sure, totally, totally. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Anyway, so the Starhouse, it actually only lasted nine months
before one of its members turned out to have not
been paying the rent and they were all evicted. I
think one of the members was basically embezzling the rent.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
That sucks.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yeah, that's the best I can read. It's a little
bit reading between the lines on that one. Sure, And
a lot of the kids didn't survive the next year
on the street. A lot of them died from drugs,
a lot of them were murdered by clients. At least
two of them were murdered by clients. A lot of
straight men hired transsex workers because trans women are fucking hot,
and then kill them later in a fit of oh no,
(31:18):
I did a gay and yeah, and that's a thing
that still when people talk about transgenocide, that's like and
this is especially.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
True for.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Trans women of color, and particularly true for trans women color.
Sex workers have some of the hardest lives of anyone
who lives. Shout out to the people who keep living.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
And keep fighting, truly shout out.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
So.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
In addition to Starr, there was also the Queen's Liberation Front,
which is not about queens the borough, but queens like
drag queens. It started in nineteen sixty nine by a
drag queen named Lee Brewster and by a quote heterosexual
transvestite named Bunny Eisenhower. Is one of the things that like,
even back then, people are like, wait, I don't understand
some of you sleep with women and some of you
(32:05):
sleep with men, you know. And in the movement people
are like, yeah, like actually like bisexuality the invisible, the
invisible part of LGBT, Like they were actually there the
whole time, and actually all of their papers were like
bisexuality rules, bisexuality is great. You can be full gay,
you can be bisexual. Like it's fine, you know. So
(32:25):
the Queen's Liberation Front published Drag Magazine, which covered areas
ignored by other gay publications. They raised money for the
first Pride March, the Christopher Street Liberation day, and they
were to legalize cross dressing in New York City because
that has been illegal in the past and will probably
be illegal in the future. There are states where it
would not be legal for me to give presentations about anything.
(32:48):
There was also the Trends I know, I know. There
was also the Transvestite Information Service, the TVIS, which had
chapters across the country. So Star lasted until nineteen seventy three.
At the Pride Parade that year, in fighting was getting
the better of the movement, and Sylvia Rivera was either
if any how you ask, denied a chance to speak,
(33:11):
or if you ask the other side. She refused to
abide by the rules of who gets to like how
to ask for a chance to speak. She either could
be easily true. She was very notorious for ignoring the
rules of polite organizing and conversation. As much as I'm
like she ruled. She was a very disruptive element in organizing.
According to everyone, I'm fine with someone who whatever anyway. Yeah,
(33:35):
So she stormed the stage and she took the microphone,
and she gave a speech about the need to stand
up for gay prisoners, and she was decrying how Pride
had become white and middle class, and she was met
with booze. So then a speaker came on and spoke
out against drag, called Sylvia a genital male, claimed that
drag was just entertainment and it was misogynist and demeaning.
(33:59):
This was also met with booze. The crowd was divided,
and later that speaker, who I don't want to name,
she recanted and she wished she hadn't said that shit,
and she realized that in trans people, it's part of us. Yeah,
that's why I'm not naming her. After that, another speaker
came on from the Queen's Liberation Front and defended the queens,
(34:20):
and basically the movement is divided at this point, and
more and more the gay rights movement went towards assimilationism
and towards single issue politics, which split the LGBT from
each other. Right, incrementalism and reform became the words of
the day. It was kind of a like, well, we're
kind of getting there. Can't we just be have an
(34:42):
easy time?
Speaker 2 (34:43):
You know? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (34:45):
And this stayed the case for five or six years
until the eighties and the AIDS crisis, when it was
obvious that radical action was needed and the gay movement
looked back to its radical founding. That's a story for
a different time. First, it's time for the story about mattresses.
We haven't sold mattresses in a long time, but maybe
(35:05):
you've missed by the future. Yes, I wonder what the
ads are in the future. Let's think about what the
future ads are.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Oh man, Yeah, masks, breathers, Yeah, yeah, axes. I mean
I'm not I'm not looking forward to our toxic future,
but I am looking forward to really cool mask technology. Yeah.
And just just the just the go ahead. No, and
the sweet deals on these masks. Yeah, and the sweet
deal the percent off if you can get by listening
(35:35):
to this very podcast.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Because you know that advertisers are going to last till
the very last minute. Like I was thinking about, it's
like there's going to be people evicting people for not
paying their rent or their mortgage, while like we can
see mushroom clouds in the distance, you know, quite literally, quite.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Literally, we're kicking out into the street. No, I will
literally die. Well, I don't have money, so I don't care.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Yeah, buy one mask, get this free?
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Nice yeah. Yeah, defend yourself against ashes. Yeah, wonderful.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Here's some ads, So we're back, And a lot of
the research about this particular part about Star and also
just GLF in general. A lot of it comes from
an author I mentioned just like kind of briefly named
drop named Leslie Feinberg, and I just want to like
highlight her and talk about it really quick, because she
(36:29):
is a cool person who did cool stuff, who used
both she and Z pronouns, and so I'm going to
kind of mix it up in the script. I first
ran across here book Stonebusch Blues when I didn't even
know that I was queer. This episode is going to
be the most people now know about twenty year old
me of anything else that I've ever recorded. And Stone
Busch Blues exploded my little brain. It is a fictionalized
(36:50):
memoir about someone transitioning from butch to trans masculine in
the era before Stonewall in a working classifact family in Buffalo,
New York.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
And it describes a lesbian culture of butches and fems
in which a lot of the butcheres are stone butches,
which meant that they give pleasure sexually but don't receive pleasure,
and that's like their essentially gender and their sexual orientation
and reading that helped a lot. It helped baby Margaret
figure some shit out about herself. So thank you, Leslie.
Rest in peace.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Shout out, Leslie.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Here's a quote from that book that I think is
always worth bringing out. I'm not saying we'll live to
see some sort of paradise, but just fighting for change
makes you stronger. Not hoping for anything will kill you
for sure. Take a chance. You're already wondering if the
world could change, Try imagining a world worth living in,
and then ask yourself if that isn't worth fighting for.
(37:43):
You've come too far to give up on hope.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Leslie Feinberg was born in a Jewish, white working class
family in nineteen forty seven in Missouri, then grew up
in Buffalo, New York. Zee was a high school dropout
who started work at fourteen who went on to advance
gender studies more than anyone else I can name off
the top of my head. Z was a big part
of the move from transsexual as the primary label for
folks to transgender, and the idea behind this is like
(38:13):
moving away from the medicalization of transnests. Right. It's not
saying that transsexual is like a bad word, right, It's
just like, not necessarily everyone's experience because not everyone's experience
is medicalized. Not everyone's going to have surgery or change
their like physical sex characteristics, you know. She also spent
her time organizing with radical lesbians to do anti racist work,
(38:34):
like a group of ten of them which just go
around cities covering every piece of racist graffiti they could find.
In the early eighties, she went on a tour explaining
the AIDS epidemic and how it is being denied by
journalists and politicians. Is the organized community defense against the
Klan and four gay bars and four abortion clinics. She
just did it all. Z was Marxist. She edited the
(38:57):
newspaper the World Workers Party. By the end of her life.
She stayed involved in organizing and protests her entire life.
Her lifelong partner, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and her were finally
married in twenty eleven. Her last campaign was the campaign
to free c. C. MacDonald, who was a young Minneapolis
black trans woman who killed the transphobe who attacked her
(39:17):
and then went to prison for defending herself.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
I can hate that shit, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Leslie died at sixty five of complications from various illnesses
and from medical neglect because the doctors didn't know what
the fuck to do with them, because I don't know,
because doctors are not always medical neglect is a thing
and a problem. I'm not trying to say doctors are bad.
I'm saying that our medical system has problems.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Yes, always good to have a healthy bit of skepticism, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
And she's not subtle about her politics, right, and I
don't agree with like like, but that's not my point here.
I'm not going to get into what I disagree without
it about her. But her last words were remember me
as a revolutionary communist.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
That's so sick. I know, I know, you're just like
dying and you're like, never forget. It's like no one
was gonna forget, actually, I mean I don't know. People
probably would have been.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Like, oh, really fought for trans rice And that's true, right,
But like it's in this context, but we still got
so much more gay liberation to talk about it. It's
got drag queens drinking at the pub, it's got nuns
doing the can can, mice will be unleashed, mony Python
is involved. On part three, we're gonna talk about the
(40:36):
UK Gay Liberation Front.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Nice. Yeah, that's exciting. I'm stoked. Yeah. No, all of
them are fun, but part three is particularly fun. Oh yay.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
But what else is fun is your Twitch stream and
whatever else you want to shout.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Out pluggables, Yeah, you all over the internet. DJ Underscore
Daniel da n L. H you from me on twitch,
Twitch dot tv slash dj d a n L. The
most exciting thing happening on my twitch recently is that
every Friday, I take a single player game that I've
been meeting to beat out of my backlog and actually
finish it, because lord knows, some people have books they
(41:19):
haven't finished, some people have movies they haven't seen. I
have a whole bunch of single player video games that
I played for four hours and went never mind, I
want to go play something else, and just never finished.
And I just started Jedi Fallen Order and that game
has been a lot of fun so far. I'm a
big Star Wars fan and I just never got around
to really giving my game a shot, and I just
started that and it's been great so far. So come
on by on Fridays and check me out and do that. Hell, yeah,
(41:41):
you go.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
I used to never think that I would want to
watch other people play video games. Yeah, it's so relaxing.
It's sometimes yeah, like it really can be. It's like
when your friend or your roommate or your you know,
partner or something is sitting around playing video games and
you get to be like, oh, no, you're gonna shoot
the oh you shot the thing, and you're like, it's
(42:03):
often very nice.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
It is nice. I appreciate that. Thank you for the
cell on watching people play video game. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Yeah, no, it took me by surprise that I liked
it totally. Okay, if you like tabletop role playing games,
I'm kickstarting tabletop role playing game called p Number City,
but I've already talked about that. You can find me
on the internet Magpie kill Joy and Twitter. I did
the opposite DJ Channel. I have different handles on every
platform because I'm a fool. I'm Margaret Killjoy in Instagram,
(42:30):
but I got on the Blue Sky early enough that
I grabbed at Margaret and I'm like, but I want
at Margaret, and so I'm at Margaret instead of at
Margaret Kiljoy one Blue Sky. I hate Twitter with the
fiery passion. It's also my largest platform and my ability
to eat food relies on my ability to tell people
about the things I'm doing. So I'm still there for now.
(42:52):
But if it's the future, you'll also find me add
Apocalypse Land, selling prepper stuff, but only in the future,
not currently. Actually, there'll be a mutual aid thing. You
actually can just show up and get the apocalypse stuff. Yeah,
so I want to shout, yeah, pitch my future mutual
aid project, which probably shouldn't have been called Apocalypse Land.
(43:12):
People are very mad at me because it's like insensitive,
because the apocalypse has been really hard on people, and
how dare so anyway, Sophie, you got a plug?
Speaker 2 (43:20):
No good? Isn't it inherently hard on everyone? Isn't that
the idea? Yeah? Yeah, no, it's I don't want to
dive into the world of these people who think is problematic?
Are wrong?
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Yeah? The discourse from the discourse future the Future Discoorse, Sophie,
Can we do a podcast?
Speaker 3 (43:37):
No?
Speaker 1 (43:39):
But what if there was a podcast about Russian oligarchs
who suddenly die?
Speaker 2 (43:45):
What if?
Speaker 3 (43:46):
Oh you could listen? Is that all hosted by.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Yeah? I did say a good one and if you
want to listen to it ad free, you can subscribe
to cooler Zone, a subscription services that allows you to
receive all of our shows ad free so that you
can enjoy them at your leisure without hearing the Reagan
coin stuff. Just our fun wrap arounds about reagancoinwur.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Podcasts, and soon on something else. Hopefully I can announce
soon for my non Apple using friends.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Yeah, listen, you are heard, you are seen, worth trying
to support you.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
And if it's the future, you can find us on
shortwave radio.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Yes, gab into our semi radio.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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