October 7, 2025 • 60 mins
Carmen Rupe was many things—drag queen, sex worker, business owner, activist, icon—and almost the mayor of Wellington. This week, Kaytlin Bailey tells the story of New Zealand’s most beloved old pro, tracing her journey from hula dancer to trans pioneer. Carmen’s life was one of glamour, resistance, and love. She built safer spaces, fought unjust laws, and carved a path for generations to follow.
Special thanks to everyone I met in New Zealand who told me about this amazing old pro! Thank you NZPC for sponsoring my trip there. Thank you to the Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision Archive for letting us use some of the audio clips in this episode.
The Oldest Profession Podcast is produced by Old Pros, a non-profit media organization that uses storytelling to advocate for sex worker rights.
If you value our mission, please consider making a tax deductible donation. To learn more visit us at oldprosonline.org, which is also where you can get Old Pros t-shirts, sweatshirts, totes, stickers, and more. Of course, proceeds from our shop support our work at Old Pros.
We’d like to thank our Season 6 sponsors M e g a P e r s o n a l s, Assembly Four, Tryst, A Great Idea, and the New Moon Network.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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Welcome back to the Oldest Profession podcast. I'm your host, Kaytlin Bailey. And earlier this
year I had the opportunity to bring my show Whore’s Eye View to New Zealand and Australia.
And like any good study abroad student, I can't stop talking about it. So this season of The
Oldest Profession Podcast, I am bringing you old pro stories from the other side of the world.
Now, part of the reason that I went to New Zealand, or as it is locally known Aotearoa, is
because New Zealand was the first country in the world to decriminalize sex work, which
happened with the Prostitute Reform Act of 2003, which is something that we're going to get into
but not today.
Today, I want to tell you the story of Carmen Rupe, who was one of the most famous drag
performers to come out of New Zealand, a hugely successful entrepreneur, entertainer, trans
and sex worker rights advocate, who legit almost became the mayor of Wellington, New
Zealand. Let's get into it.
[opening]
Now I want to give a shout out to the incredible folks at the BATS Theater and everyone
involved in the Wellington Fringe Festival because I had a great time. And one of the reasons
that I'm bringing you the story today is because after one of my shows, this incredible audience
member came up and told me that I absolutely must learn more about Carmen Rupe.
Carmen was born Trevor Rupe on October 10th, 1936. Now, her transition into Carmen was a
process that took many decades where she spent time as a boy, a gay man, a drag queen, a
female impersonator and a trans woman. And my use of pronouns will shift to reflect these
transitions.
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Trevor was born into a family of then seven, but eventually 13 children in a part of New Zealand
known as Cherry Grove, or the meeting place of the waters. Their birth certificate lists multiple
Maori tribal affiliations, which is a traditional way the Maori maintain kin relationships. And
everywhere that Trevor and Carmen traveled, they had a network of blood relatives and tribal
relatives all over New Zealand or Aotearoa.
Carmen, like many Maori, actually inherited tribal land rights through her mother that she
maintained for the next generation. And in fact, she actually marched with the Maori to protect
those land rights on the steps of Parliament in 1975. Then, at the age of 39 years old and
already famous, her Maori identity remained a critical part of her life, her personality, and
informed much of the way that she grew up. Because although Carmen was born into a deeply
homophobic and transphobic society where every part of her sexuality and gender identity was
aggressively policed, her community, her tribe, her mother, her people always accepted her.
Carmen described her mother as a beautiful, charismatic woman, a generous host, and a
particular housekeeper. Now, she had seven children with Carmen's father, including three boys,
three girls and Trevor/Carmen. But even as a young child, Carmen knew she was different.
Here she is talking in her own words about growing up:
But through my lifetime, I was a daydreamer. I liked to dream about other things. And
instead of doing proper things, listening at school and learning the right things, I didn’t.
And I wanted to be a dancer.
Before Trevor turned five years old, tragedy struck the family. Her mother had an affair. And
when Trevor's father found out, he killed himself in a jealous fit. Now, Carmen's mother
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remarried and had six more children with another man.
And then, unfortunately, Carmen's stepfather also died from illness, leaving Carmen's mother
with 13 children. She relocated the entire family onto her father's farm. And Carmen has very
fond memories growing up as a young boy surrounded by extended family, neighbors, relatives,
folks from all over New Zealand who would come and help things on the farm when they got
busy.
Carmen remembers that her grandparents still practiced their Maori religions, kept a Maori
calendar, and were well-respected, gifted leaders in the community. She actually attributes her
truly incredible charisma to the kind of holy gifts that she inherited from this lineage.
Now, despite moving through the world as a little boy, Trevor remembers telling his mother that
when he grew up he wanted to be a nun and being very clearly told at the time, “But Trevor,
boys can't be nuns.” And so he set out to find some other way to become a woman.
This is Carmen, in her own words, talking about her childhood:
We lost our fathers young. And I always held on to my mother's apron strings all the
time. And I fell in love with my mother because she was such a wonderful mother to all of
us. And I think what began was my mother and aunties, because during the war time,
they used to dress up. They used to wear those wonderful hairdos, the Victorian curl
during the war time. They used to wear wonderful picture hats and veils, gloves,
handbags and accessories and brooches and flowers. Little things like that I never
forgot. And that's what fascinates me. And I thought of how I'd love to be dressed like
that, but I didn't know until years later that there were people like me around till I had left
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school and traveled.
Now, remember, this is all happening during World War II, right? New Zealand, of course, was a
part of the British Empire. And so Carmen remembers that as a boy, even as a Maori, he felt a
sense of identity with the British Empire, right, all things surrounding, you know, Churchill and
the multiple bombings and the, you know, World War II was like a big deal. And New Zealand,
like Australia and many other current and former British colonies, sent troops to defend the
empire. So when young Carmen or Trevor was in primary school, this was a big part of the
cultural backdrop that's happening now.
Now, Trevor didn't love school, and a part of that was definitely because they were still
practicing corporal punishment, which would be a bummer for everyone, but especially a
dreamer, unfocused student like young Trevor. So Trevor dropped out.
Now, this is right when Christine Jorgenson became the first public person to undergo a sex
change operation. So this is an important moment in trans history. December 1st, 1952, The
New York Daily News published photographs of Christine before and after her transition. And
this obviously captures a young Carmen's attention, who, along with every other trans person in
the world, is suddenly aware of this brand new possibility. As soon as Carmen becomes aware
that there are other people in the world like her, she leaves her small town to go find them.
So the first job that Trevor found was working at a logging company, but obviously that work was
not for him. So after a week he quit, which I think was a really good decision. He found much
more suitable work at the post office, delivering telegrams and began traveling around, right,
visiting different relatives in different cities, and everywhere he went, Trevor found the camp or
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queer or LGBTQ+ community. So young Trevor's pingponging around between Dunedin and
Wellington and Auckland, doing various jobs, becoming a part of this like queer subculture, and
emerging as a figure within it.
Trevor had a lot of different jobs at this point in his life, right, as many young people do. He
worked at a mill. He found work as a porter at a nice hotel, even when he was too young to
serve alcohol. But his plan was to become a nurse. But in New Zealand you had to be 21 to do
that work. So he had some time to kill with odd jobs.
Pretty quickly, young Trevor finds himself among the part of the queer community that, like, runs
nightlife in New Zealand after hours. Now, a thing that you should know is that in New Zealand,
during this period of time, bars, especially hotel bars, closed by law at 6 p.m.. So after hours is a
huge chunk of time that these like house moms or queens or like elders in the camp community
rushed in to fill by cooking all of this amazing food, organizing alcohol, entertainment, including
a young Carmen doing hula dancing, which would become their signature.
And so folks in the queer community would organize these afterparties. So a young, charismatic
Trevor would go to these bars at four in the afternoon or whatever, looking for young people,
cool people, pretty people, and especially Navy boys who were a huge part of the economy and
always looking for a party.
Speaking of the military, in New Zealand, compulsive military training, like the word compulsive
suggests, was mandatory for males starting around 1909 and extending all the way into the
1970s.
So as soon as Trevor turned 18, he had to sign up for this training. Now, Trevor actually
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describes his military experience as being pretty positive. You know, all good bravado and fun
and also very gay, which makes a lot of sense. You know, you're getting a bunch of 18 year old
boys together, giving them their first taste of freedom, asking everyone to shower together, and
roll in the mud.
But because World War II was at this point several years ago, there's no active war happening.
The Army sounds a lot like summer camp, you know, with a lot of push ups.
I think it's important to remind our listeners at this point that homosexuality is still aggressively
criminalized in New Zealand. And so even though Trevor presents as pretty effeminate and he
is immediately clocked by his peers, as you know, a member of the queer community, Trevor
doesn't remember this, causing him a lot of social distress, but he is operating as a member of a
criminalized class, which gives an edge to sort of everything that Trevor is doing, just being
unapologetically himself.
Towards the end of his compulsive military training, he volunteers for the farewell talent show,
which he describes as something that would have been banned had there been a dress
rehearsal. This is where he takes his seductive and willfully provocative hula dancing to the next
level in front of a bunch of hooting and hollering 18-year-old kids, who had just been doing a
bunch of push ups together.
I can't stress enough how nervous this would have made their commanding officers because,
again, homosexuality was a crime. But Trevor finishes his training without incident, and now,
with several years of odd jobs behind him, after finding his footing in the queer community, he is
finally old enough to find work as a nurse.
(02:07):
[break]
So Trevor starts work at the Cornell Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand in the late 1950s, and
the way that they seem to be living their life at this point is that during the day, Trevor presented
to work as a male nurse, but at night they were spending an increasing amount of their time
among the queer community as sometimes a gay boy but often as a drag performer or female
impersonator. And this is the part in their life when they get introduced to sex work.
At one of these parties or bars or after a party hangs, Trevor meets an older gentleman,
Charles, who worked as a salesman specifically in high-end men's fashion. So this very
well-connected gentleman suggested to Trevor, then presenting as a very pretty gay boy, that
he might have some luck working as a male prostitute.
Trevor's reaction to this is, “Ah, money for what I love doing for free. Sign me up.”
So the logistics of how this worked in the 1950s is that this older gentleman, who of course is
socially connected to this caliber of clients, would call Trevor and say, “Hey, you're expecting
so-and-so at such and such a place at whatever time.” Trevor, proving himself the punctual and
polite young man that he was, would show up to these liaisons, show the gentleman that
Charles had connected him with a good time, and he would get £5 for his troubles.
One of the gigs that Charles would connect Trevor with was a regular route between Auckland,
New Zealand and Sydney, Australia. Now, this is in the days before jet planes, so there were
these frequent, multi-day, back-and-forth cruiser ships where people would load up in Auckland
and go to Sydney and back and forth. You guys know how boats work.
So anyway, Charles would book a room for Trevor who would spend some of his time with a
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particular gentleman caller and then either spend a few days in Sydney or come back on the
same boat depending on their nursing schedule at the hospital. This is Trevor's first introduction
to nightlife in Sydney, which is a bigger city in a bigger country.
And so it's during this period of time that Trevor tries their hand as passing as a trans sex
worker on the streets of Sydney, Australia. Now, Carmen has some fantastic stories from this
period of her life. And this is a clip about one of the tactics she used to pass as a woman:
I didn't say I was a drag queen because if I revealed to them, then they wouldn't go with
me. I just said to them, I played a trick on them and they go, “Are you working?” I said, “I
am,” but I said, “I'm not doing any sex.” “Why not?” “Because a couple of periods.” They
believed me.
Yep. Nobody asks any follow up questions about menses. That's always going to work.
Now, in both forms of sex work that Trevor and a young, yet unnamed Carmen are participating
in involve different levels of risk-taking and different kind of adaptations to reduce that risk.
So for example, when Trevor was meeting gay clients that were expecting a boy, he always
used his legal name to maneuver through the world, right. Every hotel check in, every, you
know, ship, whatever, trying to be as normal as possible. And I think this is a good instinct under
the circumstances.
When she was picking up gentlemen as a woman, she knew that as a street-based sex worker
generally, but especially as a trans sex worker, it is legit dangerous to be carrying any kind of
cash. This is a period of rampant police violence and corruption. Police officers were literally,
regularly and in a semi-organized fashion, hitting up sex workers of all genders and just taking
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their money with no repercussion. And so a young Carmen very intelligently stashed her money
behind a loose brick in the wall of a church where she was walking the streets, which means
that after every appointment, she stashed her money, which made her less vulnerable to being
robbed, not just by police officers but by anyone that would target a trans sex worker.
Like any sex worker, Trevor has regulars. There are overnights. There were these boat trips
back and forth between Sydney and the well-to-do in Auckland. Trevor got to see a lot of the
finest hotels and homes in both New Zealand and Australia and was invited to sit at the table at
a lot of fancy parties, which many sex workers are.
And these soft skills that Trevor and a young Carmen are developing serve her very well later in
life with both her political aspirations and also when she starts opening up her own
establishments. It is in Auckland, New Zealand, that Trevor adopts Carmen as his regular drag
identity.
This is Carmen, in her own words, talking about her success as a performer during this era:
I was a Hawaiian hula dancer for Wayne Martin, an old name in the clubs, and then I
became a snake and belly dancer working in the nightclub sector. I got a lot of work and
it did very, very well.
I want to point out to the audience that as Carmen is developing this persona with an
increasingly demanding performance schedule and juggling her time as a sex worker, she's also
working as a male nurse this whole time while hooking up with boys as a member of the
criminalized queer community.
And so Trevor gets caught in a couple of incidents relating to their gender identity and more
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importantly, their sexuality in a criminalized environment, which is a dangerous position to be in.
So although, you know, Trevor is incredibly charismatic, he has a lot of friends at the hospital in
high places and there are some kind people that really try to get in the way of the consequences
of getting caught in these compromising positions.
Ultimately, the hospital becomes a hostile work environment. It is no longer safe for Trevor to
work there. And so he ended up transferring hospitals in 1959 and moving for a short period of
time to Sydney, where they already had quite a bit of established relationships. He finds work as
a waiter, but he's also spending time as a drag performer and female impersonator sex worker.
And it is in this context that the Sydney police pick Carmen up for being in drag, for being a
queer person, for looking like a sex worker. It's impossible to overstate the level of police
corruption during this era, so it must have been an especially terrifying moment for young
Carmen, spending two weeks in prison as Trevor in Sydney, Australia, while the authorities
waited to hear back from New Zealand on whether or not Trevor had a record. Ge didn't, so he
is released back on their own recognizance. But it's a scary moment and this is when Carmen
really starts toying with the idea of living full time in drag for safety because it's easier to pass
than it is to get away with going back and forth between Trevor and Carmen.
Carmen moves back to New Zealand because between the arrest and some mafia interest in
her prostitution earnings, things get too hot for her. So she moves to Auckland, New Zealand
and again sort of resumes identifying as Trevor, an effeminate young man during this era. He
again finds work as a hospital and is partying and playing the whore as Carmen at night.
And it is in this context that Carmen is arrested for the second time. And this time in New
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Zealand the charges stick.
[break]
Now, Carmen describes her prison experience a little bit like how she describes her compulsive
military training experience. Obviously it's no fun for anyone to be locked up behind bars, but
Carmen, moonlighting at this point as Trevor, seems to be having a very good time.
And again, I think this can be attributed to their incredible charisma as a pretty openly queer
person. She's given her own cell for her own protection, and she immediately acquires
protectors who she genuinely enjoys connecting with. She has lovers. She builds relationships
with other prisoners, guards, and she even experiments with some drag behind bars, using
partly burnt matches for eyeliner and red crate paper for rouge and lipstick.
This is also when Carmen's propensity for entrepreneurship emerges. She's got a couple of
hustles behind bars. Because of her tight relationships with the guards, she's literally given the
keys so that she can deliver, I think, coal from prisoner to prisoner. So, this is the official job that
the guards give her and because it's easy to hide little packages in coal, she starts helping to
facilitate connections between people and money and goods from the outside world to prisoners
in the inside world, for a small and reasonable fee, of course.
Carmen is very popular behind bars. She gets a prison tattoo, sort of her trademark beauty
mark on her right cheek and the prisoners that give her this tattoo call her their Maori princess.
Now, Carmen, legally at this point, Trevor, is sentenced to six months in prison, but she is
released early because the prison system had gotten overcrowded at that point and everyone
loved her.
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Years later, after Carmen had established herself as a, you know, public person and successful
proprietor of this, you know, fantastic coffee shop, which we’ll get into, a number of her fellow
inmates from the Mount Crawford prison, took the time to come and visit her, which I think really
speaks to her popularity and the kind of impact that she has on people.
Right before Carmen goes to the Mount Crawford prison, her mother unfortunately died. Her
mother was very young. She was only 44 years old. She suffered from chronic asthma for her
entire life. But Carmen and her mother and really her entire extended family are very close. But
after her mother's death, when she emerges from prison, she realizes that there's this not
insignificant inheritance waiting for Carmen. And again, having, you know, gone to prison for
prostitution-related issues and having all of these run-ins with the police in both New Zealand
and Australia because of her gender identity, Carmen makes it a priority to create a life where
she can be herself 100% of the time and actually uses the inheritance from her mother to set up
her first boarding house, which she opens and runs as Carmen.
Now, I want our listeners to understand that it was very challenging for even the most
respectable cis woman to get a loan or open a line of credit during this time. And under normal
circumstances, right, a trans woman like Carmen would use their identity as Trevor to open up
these loans, but because Trevor has a criminal record, Carmen presents herself to the bank
officer as a mourning, widowed woman and actually gets a loan, which is incredible.
Years later, when this guy was interviewed, he says plainly that he did not realize that he was
talking to the soon to be famous Carmen Rupe. Rather, he thought that he was talking to a lady.
That's how good she was.
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Eventually, Carmen gets the necessary permits and paperwork, bank loan, uses her mother's
inheritance, and opens up her first boarding house. She has ten rooms. She does all of the
renting, cooking, cleaning, general maintenance, and is described by all of her tenants as a
warm and welcoming personality, just a natural born hostess, just like her mother.
Carmen is transparent about the economics of this period of her life. Every penny that she is
paid as a drag performer is reinvested into her character. We're talking electrolysis, we're talking
shoes, we're talking clothing, manicures, pedicures, the thousand and one expenses of being
not just a woman but a fabulous woman with an increasingly public profile.
One of the incidents that puts Carmen on the map nationally is when she was arrested for being
a trans woman and actually wins her right in court to be herself.
Here's what happened. So again, at this point in her life, Carmen is running a boarding house as
Carmen. She is working as a drag performer as Carmen, and she is transporting herself from
point A to point B as Carmen. Now, she has an aversion to public transportation, probably
because of the transphobia and also it's New Zealand, like there's not a lot of public
transportation. And she's not driving for whatever reason.
So one night after one of her gigs, she's waiting for a taxi that she had called and it starts to
rain. As I mentioned earlier, every penny that she makes is being reinvested into her wardrobe.
So getting rained on is a little bit of a micro-emergency in Carmen's life. So when a car that isn't
a taxi pulls over and offers her a ride, she doesn't hesitate to get it.
So she gets in the car. She's dressed as Carmen. She says hello to the driver. She's very polite,
charismatic, glittery, lovely person to be around. But her driver makes an illegal U-turn and gets
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pulled over by the police, who immediately recognize Carmen as a locally famous person. And
they take it upon themselves to let the driver know that Carmen isn't a cis lady.
This, of course, offends the driver who actually pursues charges against Carmen for ruining his
night by being herself. So Carmen hires a lawyer who brilliantly suggests that Carmen go to
court as Carmen. She makes a Mae West-style entrance decked to the nines in absolutely
perfect form, waltzing into the courtroom, introducing herself to the judge. All eyes are on
Carmen when the judge insists that she go back at home and come back to court as Trevor.
At this point, Carmen hasn't really been Trevor in a couple of years, so Trevor comes back in an
ill-fitted suit that just looks wrong on them. Their hair is like pulled back into a ponytail, which
also looks wrong. Their face without the makeup, like, it's all just wrong. And so the judge is like,
“Oh yeah, I see what you mean. You look way better as Carmen, this is fine.” And writes a ruling
that establishes not just Carmen's right to move through the world as themselves, but every
trans person in New Zealand.
This case, of course, makes headlines and establishes Carmen as a nationally famous figure,
and this accomplishment alone would make her a trans rights activist hero. But this is just the
beginning.
[break]
After winning her landmark court case, Carmen never appears as Trevor ever again. She legally
changes her name and eventually pursues the full surgical transition. And it's at this point in her
life where she really transitions to creating spaces and opportunities for trans folks, queer folks,
and sex workers throughout New Zealand. And this is when she opens Carmen's International
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Coffee Lounge.
So even though Carmen has successfully been running a boarding house for years at this point,
it's a stretch for her creditors to give her the kind of capital required to open up this decadently
decorated brick and mortar lounge/brothel. This is a period in Carmen's life where she describes
having to resort to survival sex work really for the first time in her life.
Now she's worked as a male escort. She's worked as a trans sex worker, subsidizing her
performance career in Sydney. But this is the first time where she needs sex work to eat, waiting
for construction and permits and loans to come through in the immediate weeks leading up to
opening up her business.
Now, Carmen describes this period of her life as single-mindedly bulldozing her way past
street-based sex work culture. She has no respect for territories or seniority or any of the other
community-based survival strategies that sex workers sometimes engage in. Carmen is trying to
eat until she can open up the doors of her establishment.
Now, once she gets Carmen's International Coffee Lounge open, she always creates space for
some of the street-based sex workers that she effectively bullied in her past.
But, like, this is not a go-along-to-get-a-long period of Carmen's life. She is playing to win or at
least survive. Now, Carmen had a clear vision for the kind of establishment that she wanted to
open and executed it beautifully. Here she is in her own words:
So what I did was I painted the whole place red, red carpets, red walls, fabulous
paintings on the wall,and flat leather furniture. We didn't open at daytime. We weren't
interested, so we can sleep in. Anyway, you wouldn't believe it. 5000 American sailors
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from the enterprise ship came sailing in the night I opened up, and they saw my ads in
their houses to entertain you because I ran a brothel upstairs. They’re gorgeous too,
beautiful. And I had half a dozen. There was tea and coffee downstairs. The suites are
all upstairs.
So the way that Carmen's worked is that, you know, it opened up after hours, which again was 6
p.m. and served coffee, sandwiches, and beer, if you knew who to ask. And all of the servers
that she hired were sex workers. She called them hostesses, and she was very clear about
codes of conduct, expectations of behavior, as were many of the brothel owners that we've
covered on this podcast. And she created an environment and an atmosphere where young
queer folks, trans folks and a few cis women could safely and securely trade sexual services for
money while creating a scene that drew all kinds of people to it. Here is Georgina Beyer talking
about the magic of Carmen's charisma and what she created at her international coffee lounge:
She became a Wellington icon just locally because of some of the scandalous things that
she would be involved with. But I can tell you this much, that the high brows and the low
brows all came together in her establishments.
Now, of course, Carmen employed people of all sexualities and gender expressions. She
outfitted four or five bedrooms upstairs for entertaining. And the way that the business model
worked was that all of her hostesses could decide for themselves whether or not or which
specific sexual services were available and Carmen's first priority was making sure that the
restaurant part of her business operated smoothly.
So if one of her hostesses wanted to do some private entertaining, they would first check in with
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Carmen. Carmen would make sure that they didn't have more pressing obligations, and then her
hostess would go upstairs. The patron would leave through the front door and then reenter the
brothel part of her business through a side door. And whatever happened between consenting
adults happened. Because Carmen's hostesses offered a variety of services for a variety of
different tastes, Carmen invented a system of communication that helped navigate some of the
awkwardness of gender preferences with sexual hookups, specifically her teacups. So if
somebody was looking for a cis girl, then a patron would turn their teacup upside down. If they
were looking for a trans person, then they would set their teacup on the side, and if they were
looking for a young man, then they would simply put their saucer on top of their teacup.
And in this way, you could affirmatively consent to the kind of entertainment that you were
looking for and leave it in the capable hands of Carmen's fantastic hostesses. So in this way,
Carmen is creating opportunities for the next generation of queer folks in her community to do
this work safely and to build a financially sustainable life in community with one another.
This is one of the many folks speaking at Carmen's memorial about not just the scene, but also
the safety that she created for them.
And of course in the old days when the destroyer closed, in those days it was 10 p.m.
closing. We had a girl go, so we were at Carmen's Coffee Lounge. It was truly fantastic.
It was the place where we all felt safe and secure. And Carmen looked after us. She took
us all under her wing.
Carmen gives up her boarding house and fully devotes herself into turning this coffee
lounge/brothel into the scene that it became. She, of course, dresses the part every night fully in
(05:58):
drag, not just as a drag queen, but as a drag star. Carmen, decked out to the nines, like any
respectable madam, would be creating a draw unto herself.
And this place becomes hugely popular not only among sex workers and their clients and
members of the queer community, but she also introduces, like, straight, moneyed New Zealand
to gay and cool New Zealand, which is a very important bridge in any community. And this place
becomes a tourist destination. Like, I believe the maximum capacity was 80 legally. And Carmen
got 150 people in that establishment every night with a line around the block. This was the place
to see and be seen in addition to being a place to sometimes do some illicit entertaining.
Now, no one would describe Carmen as being shy about her achievements, but she does have
a great relationship with other madams in the community. She specifically making
recommendations and keeping a finger on the pulse of what's happening in sexy New Zealand.
And when one of her contemporaries, the famous Flora MacKenzie, passed away, Carmen took
it upon herself to declare herself the number one madam in New Zealand. And you know what?
I believe it.
Because Carmen's International Coffee Lounge is so successful, Carmen expands. She opens
The Balcony, which is this fabulous theater that hosts Carmen and also a ton of other renowned
performers. She also opens up The Peacock as a kind of, like, run-off space for the people
waiting in line to get into Carmen's original coffee lounge. And this spot evolves into a hub of the
lesbian community in Wellington. She opens up Cleopatra's Coffee Lounge and a couple of
other sort of, like, knock-off spaces and a couple of massage parlors.
And her success in opening and running this series of beloved establishments and meeting
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houses, she creates the conditions for sex workers and queer folks all over Wellington to come
together to get to know one another, to develop this real sense of solidarity and community that I
am arguing created the conditions for decriminalization just a few decades later.
Another thing that Carmen does to strengthen her community is that when she gets bored of
running a place, which happens pretty quickly because she's obviously a creative genius, she
passes on the already operating, successful business to another member of her community.
Now, sometimes these are blood or tribal family, and sometimes this is chosen family.
Carmen, of course, at this point has become a very successful media personality, and all kinds
of journalists are asking her to talk about all kinds of things. And so, I don't know, I think, like,
the 60 Minutes of New Zealand or whatever sat Carmen down in her famous International
Coffee Lounge and did kind of a broad range interview about lots of things.
And during this interview, Carmen very casually let it slip that a few members of Parliament were
regulars at her establishment and she says, basically, that there are absolutely gay people in
Parliament in New Zealand. Of course, Carmen thinks nothing of this, right, because she's been
living her life the whole time. But politicians are like a different breed of people and so this
becomes a media scandal. The papers run with this and this makes Parliament really nervous.
So Parliament actually calls Carmen to testify on this subject with real potential legal
consequences. I'm not an expert on New Zealand politics, so I'll let you hear it from Grant
Robertson, who was New Zealand's first openly gay deputy prime minister:
She was actually called before Parliament's Privileges Committee. And now that I'm in
Parliament, I realize just what it means. The Privileges Committee almost never meets.
(06:40):
It's very hard to actually get it to meet, but she was brought there because allegedly, well
not allegedly because she had actually said that some members of Parliament might
have actually been gay or lesbian. Absolutely shocking thought at the time.
Now, obviously, this was the worst possible way for Parliament to handle this particular PR
crisis, because obviously Carmen showed up decked out to the nines and was way wittier than
anyone involved in her questioning.
So Carmen just runs absolute circles around all of these officials by simply being herself
unashamed and unafraid of the private sexual behaviors of adults, even if those adults
happened to be elected to public office. And this thrust Carmen into the political spotlight, right,
so she's not just a successful drag performer who's nationally famous. She's not just a media
personality, a successful entrepreneur, and a literally groundbreaking trans advocate, but she is
also somebody who is making waves in Parliament. And so at one point, a journalist asks her,
“Hey, Carmen, would you like to run for office?”
[break]
When Carmen is asked whether or not she is interested in running for office. She gives a
non-committal response. This non-committed response is published somewhere, and after that,
a group of community members from Wellington, many of them with deep pockets, wrote
Carmen a letter, basically saying, “We would like you to run for mayor and we would relish the
opportunity to both fund and support you during that process.”
People come out of the woodwork to support Carmen's mayoral run. Now, some of those folks
had mixed motives. I think one of her largest backers was pretty transparent about his wanting
(07:01):
to make a mockery out of the stuffiness of New Zealand politics. But the campaign that they ran
was very effective. It was so effective, actually, that it made some folks in Parliament really
nervous.
They got so nervous that there was a moment during the campaign where they tried to force
Carmen to run as Trevor Rupe on the ballot. But because Carmen had legally changed her
name and was a lady, they lost, so she ran as Carmen.
Now, just because a lot of folks in Carmen's campaign, including Carmen herself, treated it like
a publicity stunt, didn't mean that they didn't take it very seriously. And in fact, Carmen's
incredibly reasonable platform not only holds up today, but many of her suggestions actually
became law in later decades.
First, she humbly suggests that bars should obviously be allowed to be open after 6 p.m.. She
further suggests that the drinking age should be lowered to 18 and that prostitution, abortion,
and homosexuality should all be decriminalized. She brings a ton of awareness to these issues,
and so even though she doesn't win her case, she moves the needle on all of this.
Now, Carmen describes the election night as a nail-biter. And, in fact, polls showed Carmen
winning until pretty late in the evening when the tide turns and one of her more boring
opponents ends up seizing the day.
But Carmen had a huge impact on the political discourse in New Zealand and certainly the way
that trans folks, queer folks, and sex workers were perceived not just by the general public but
by people in Parliament.
Carmen's run for mayor completes her transition into a well-known, much-sought-after national
(07:22):
figure, right. She becomes a public speaker. She is a celebrity about town. And she spends an
increasing amount of her time doing various appearances, supporting charities, being invited to
this, like, endless parade of ribbon cutting events and, you know, being photographed in front of
things and with people.
In 1979, then in her early forties, Carmen begins winding down her affairs in Wellington and
decides that she would like to live out the rest of her days in Sydney, Australia and the entire
country of New Zealand comes together to throw her a farewell party. This, like so many things,
is a practically civic affair. Politicians, celebrities, the media, everyone comes together to
celebrate Carmen.
Carmen did move to Sydney, where she set up a wonderful life for herself, enjoying her status
as a grande dame in the queer community and spending a lot of time with family. And in 2003,
Carmen was inducted into the Variety Hall of Fame. And in 2008, she made headlines by riding
her mobility scooter at the front of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade, which is Australian
Pride, topless.
Carmen died at the ripe age of 75 years old at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, Australia, on
December 15th, 2011 from kidney failure. And her funeral, like so much of her life, was a grand
affair. Prominent figures, TV personalities all came to show their respect for the life and legacy
of Carmen Rupe.
This is Grant Robertson, again, speaking about Carmen's impact:
Overall, I mean the main thing I think of Carmen is of somebody who broke ground and
there always has to be someone who is someone who is prepared to put the end and
(07:43):
stand up for who they are and a person who had to constantly battle discrimination
throughout their life, but never, ever took a single step backwards, even when she was in
the mobility scooters, even took a single step backwards in later years. And that's the
kind of spirit that she brought to the city.
I'll give the last word to Georgina Beyer, New Zealand's first trans sex worker elected to
Parliament, whose story will be telling later this season:
And what a fabulous, fantastic, interesting life she led that had a social change element
to it. She was a force, a tour de force, frankly, that existed here as a business person,
who not only had a coffee lounge, strip club, tea rooms, brothels. Which, truly, she was a
self-promoter of the greatest degree, a fantastic entrepreneur.
She had a niche. And within that niche that encompassed her love of entertainment, her
love of her showgirl lifestyle, her brushes with the law, legendary.
So. I'm pleased to be the next generation after her who has benefited from the legacy of
what she's done. I'm just but one. There are many. But politically…to actually…she sort
of put the hairline fracture in the pink ceiling. And then I went ahead and smashed it, and
got it.
And if it wasn't for figures like her at that time, who were visible out there being who she
was and happy to live in her skin to then pass that on to all of us in the diversity of the
rainbow community as an inspiration for us to sort of go, well…and we loved her. And
New Zealand loved her. And as it's turned out, so does Australia. [laughter]
[closing]
00;00;00
(00:01):
Welcome back to the Oldest Profession podcast. I'm your host, Kaytlin Bailey. And earlier this
year I had the opportunity to bring my show Whore’s Eye View to New Zealand and Australia.
And like any good study abroad student, I can't stop talking about it. So this season of The
Oldest Profession Podcast, I am bringing you old pro stories from the other side of the world.
Now, part of the reason that I went to New Zealand, or as it is locally known Aotearoa, is
because New Zealand was the first country in the world to decriminalize sex work, which
happened with the Prostitute Reform Act of 2003, which is something that we're going to get into
but not today.
Today, I want to tell you the story of Carmen Rupe, who was one of the most famous drag
performers to come out of New Zealand, a hugely successful entrepreneur, entertainer, trans
and sex worker rights advocate, who legit almost became the mayor of Wellington, New
Zealand. Let's get into it.
[opening]
Now I want to give a shout out to the incredible folks at the BATS Theater and everyone
involved in the Wellington Fringe Festival because I had a great time. And one of the reasons
that I'm bringing you the story today is because after one of my shows, this incredible audience
member came up and told me that I absolutely must learn more about Carmen Rupe.
Carmen was born Trevor Rupe on October 10th, 1936. Now, her transition into Carmen was a
process that took many decades where she spent time as a boy, a gay man, a drag queen, a
female impersonator and a trans woman. And my use of pronouns will shift to reflect these
transitions.
(00:22):
Trevor was born into a family of then seven, but eventually 13 children in a part of New Zealand
known as Cherry Grove, or the meeting place of the waters. Their birth certificate lists multiple
Maori tribal affiliations, which is a traditional way the Maori maintain kin relationships. And
everywhere that Trevor and Carmen traveled, they had a network of blood relatives and tribal
relatives all over New Zealand or Aotearoa.
Carmen, like many Maori, actually inherited tribal land rights through her mother that she
maintained for the next generation. And in fact, she actually marched with the Maori to protect
those land rights on the steps of Parliament in 1975. Then, at the age of 39 years old and
already famous, her Maori identity remained a critical part of her life, her personality, and
informed much of the way that she grew up. Because although Carmen was born into a deeply
homophobic and transphobic society where every part of her sexuality and gender identity was
aggressively policed, her community, her tribe, her mother, her people always accepted her.
Carmen described her mother as a beautiful, charismatic woman, a generous host, and a
particular housekeeper. Now, she had seven children with Carmen's father, including three boys,
three girls and Trevor/Carmen. But even as a young child, Carmen knew she was different.
Here she is talking in her own words about growing up:
But through my lifetime, I was a daydreamer. I liked to dream about other things. And
instead of doing proper things, listening at school and learning the right things, I didn’t.
And I wanted to be a dancer.
Before Trevor turned five years old, tragedy struck the family. Her mother had an affair. And
when Trevor's father found out, he killed himself in a jealous fit. Now, Carmen's mother
(00:43):
remarried and had six more children with another man.
And then, unfortunately, Carmen's stepfather also died from illness, leaving Carmen's mother
with 13 children. She relocated the entire family onto her father's farm. And Carmen has very
fond memories growing up as a young boy surrounded by extended family, neighbors, relatives,
folks from all over New Zealand who would come and help things on the farm when they got
busy.
Carmen remembers that her grandparents still practiced their Maori religions, kept a Maori
calendar, and were well-respected, gifted leaders in the community. She actually attributes her
truly incredible charisma to the kind of holy gifts that she inherited from this lineage.
Now, despite moving through the world as a little boy, Trevor remembers telling his mother that
when he grew up he wanted to be a nun and being very clearly told at the time, “But Trevor,
boys can't be nuns.” And so he set out to find some other way to become a woman.
This is Carmen, in her own words, talking about her childhood:
We lost our fathers young. And I always held on to my mother's apron strings all the
time. And I fell in love with my mother because she was such a wonderful mother to all of
us. And I think what began was my mother and aunties, because during the war time,
they used to dress up. They used to wear those wonderful hairdos, the Victorian curl
during the war time. They used to wear wonderful picture hats and veils, gloves,
handbags and accessories and brooches and flowers. Little things like that I never
forgot. And that's what fascinates me. And I thought of how I'd love to be dressed like
that, but I didn't know until years later that there were people like me around till I had left
(01:04):
school and traveled.
Now, remember, this is all happening during World War II, right? New Zealand, of course, was a
part of the British Empire. And so Carmen remembers that as a boy, even as a Maori, he felt a
sense of identity with the British Empire, right, all things surrounding, you know, Churchill and
the multiple bombings and the, you know, World War II was like a big deal. And New Zealand,
like Australia and many other current and former British colonies, sent troops to defend the
empire. So when young Carmen or Trevor was in primary school, this was a big part of the
cultural backdrop that's happening now.
Now, Trevor didn't love school, and a part of that was definitely because they were still
practicing corporal punishment, which would be a bummer for everyone, but especially a
dreamer, unfocused student like young Trevor. So Trevor dropped out.
Now, this is right when Christine Jorgenson became the first public person to undergo a sex
change operation. So this is an important moment in trans history. December 1st, 1952, The
New York Daily News published photographs of Christine before and after her transition. And
this obviously captures a young Carmen's attention, who, along with every other trans person in
the world, is suddenly aware of this brand new possibility. As soon as Carmen becomes aware
that there are other people in the world like her, she leaves her small town to go find them.
So the first job that Trevor found was working at a logging company, but obviously that work was
not for him. So after a week he quit, which I think was a really good decision. He found much
more suitable work at the post office, delivering telegrams and began traveling around, right,
visiting different relatives in different cities, and everywhere he went, Trevor found the camp or
(01:25):
queer or LGBTQ+ community. So young Trevor's pingponging around between Dunedin and
Wellington and Auckland, doing various jobs, becoming a part of this like queer subculture, and
emerging as a figure within it.
Trevor had a lot of different jobs at this point in his life, right, as many young people do. He
worked at a mill. He found work as a porter at a nice hotel, even when he was too young to
serve alcohol. But his plan was to become a nurse. But in New Zealand you had to be 21 to do
that work. So he had some time to kill with odd jobs.
Pretty quickly, young Trevor finds himself among the part of the queer community that, like, runs
nightlife in New Zealand after hours. Now, a thing that you should know is that in New Zealand,
during this period of time, bars, especially hotel bars, closed by law at 6 p.m.. So after hours is a
huge chunk of time that these like house moms or queens or like elders in the camp community
rushed in to fill by cooking all of this amazing food, organizing alcohol, entertainment, including
a young Carmen doing hula dancing, which would become their signature.
And so folks in the queer community would organize these afterparties. So a young, charismatic
Trevor would go to these bars at four in the afternoon or whatever, looking for young people,
cool people, pretty people, and especially Navy boys who were a huge part of the economy and
always looking for a party.
Speaking of the military, in New Zealand, compulsive military training, like the word compulsive
suggests, was mandatory for males starting around 1909 and extending all the way into the
1970s.
So as soon as Trevor turned 18, he had to sign up for this training. Now, Trevor actually
(01:46):
describes his military experience as being pretty positive. You know, all good bravado and fun
and also very gay, which makes a lot of sense. You know, you're getting a bunch of 18 year old
boys together, giving them their first taste of freedom, asking everyone to shower together, and
roll in the mud.
But because World War II was at this point several years ago, there's no active war happening.
The Army sounds a lot like summer camp, you know, with a lot of push ups.
I think it's important to remind our listeners at this point that homosexuality is still aggressively
criminalized in New Zealand. And so even though Trevor presents as pretty effeminate and he
is immediately clocked by his peers, as you know, a member of the queer community, Trevor
doesn't remember this, causing him a lot of social distress, but he is operating as a member of a
criminalized class, which gives an edge to sort of everything that Trevor is doing, just being
unapologetically himself.
Towards the end of his compulsive military training, he volunteers for the farewell talent show,
which he describes as something that would have been banned had there been a dress
rehearsal. This is where he takes his seductive and willfully provocative hula dancing to the next
level in front of a bunch of hooting and hollering 18-year-old kids, who had just been doing a
bunch of push ups together.
I can't stress enough how nervous this would have made their commanding officers because,
again, homosexuality was a crime. But Trevor finishes his training without incident, and now,
with several years of odd jobs behind him, after finding his footing in the queer community, he is
finally old enough to find work as a nurse.
(02:07):
[break]
So Trevor starts work at the Cornell Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand in the late 1950s, and
the way that they seem to be living their life at this point is that during the day, Trevor presented
to work as a male nurse, but at night they were spending an increasing amount of their time
among the queer community as sometimes a gay boy but often as a drag performer or female
impersonator. And this is the part in their life when they get introduced to sex work.
At one of these parties or bars or after a party hangs, Trevor meets an older gentleman,
Charles, who worked as a salesman specifically in high-end men's fashion. So this very
well-connected gentleman suggested to Trevor, then presenting as a very pretty gay boy, that
he might have some luck working as a male prostitute.
Trevor's reaction to this is, “Ah, money for what I love doing for free. Sign me up.”
So the logistics of how this worked in the 1950s is that this older gentleman, who of course is
socially connected to this caliber of clients, would call Trevor and say, “Hey, you're expecting
so-and-so at such and such a place at whatever time.” Trevor, proving himself the punctual and
polite young man that he was, would show up to these liaisons, show the gentleman that
Charles had connected him with a good time, and he would get £5 for his troubles.
One of the gigs that Charles would connect Trevor with was a regular route between Auckland,
New Zealand and Sydney, Australia. Now, this is in the days before jet planes, so there were
these frequent, multi-day, back-and-forth cruiser ships where people would load up in Auckland
and go to Sydney and back and forth. You guys know how boats work.
So anyway, Charles would book a room for Trevor who would spend some of his time with a
(02:28):
particular gentleman caller and then either spend a few days in Sydney or come back on the
same boat depending on their nursing schedule at the hospital. This is Trevor's first introduction
to nightlife in Sydney, which is a bigger city in a bigger country.
And so it's during this period of time that Trevor tries their hand as passing as a trans sex
worker on the streets of Sydney, Australia. Now, Carmen has some fantastic stories from this
period of her life. And this is a clip about one of the tactics she used to pass as a woman:
I didn't say I was a drag queen because if I revealed to them, then they wouldn't go with
me. I just said to them, I played a trick on them and they go, “Are you working?” I said, “I
am,” but I said, “I'm not doing any sex.” “Why not?” “Because a couple of periods.” They
believed me.
Yep. Nobody asks any follow up questions about menses. That's always going to work.
Now, in both forms of sex work that Trevor and a young, yet unnamed Carmen are participating
in involve different levels of risk-taking and different kind of adaptations to reduce that risk.
So for example, when Trevor was meeting gay clients that were expecting a boy, he always
used his legal name to maneuver through the world, right. Every hotel check in, every, you
know, ship, whatever, trying to be as normal as possible. And I think this is a good instinct under
the circumstances.
When she was picking up gentlemen as a woman, she knew that as a street-based sex worker
generally, but especially as a trans sex worker, it is legit dangerous to be carrying any kind of
cash. This is a period of rampant police violence and corruption. Police officers were literally,
regularly and in a semi-organized fashion, hitting up sex workers of all genders and just taking
(02:49):
their money with no repercussion. And so a young Carmen very intelligently stashed her money
behind a loose brick in the wall of a church where she was walking the streets, which means
that after every appointment, she stashed her money, which made her less vulnerable to being
robbed, not just by police officers but by anyone that would target a trans sex worker.
Like any sex worker, Trevor has regulars. There are overnights. There were these boat trips
back and forth between Sydney and the well-to-do in Auckland. Trevor got to see a lot of the
finest hotels and homes in both New Zealand and Australia and was invited to sit at the table at
a lot of fancy parties, which many sex workers are.
And these soft skills that Trevor and a young Carmen are developing serve her very well later in
life with both her political aspirations and also when she starts opening up her own
establishments. It is in Auckland, New Zealand, that Trevor adopts Carmen as his regular drag
identity.
This is Carmen, in her own words, talking about her success as a performer during this era:
I was a Hawaiian hula dancer for Wayne Martin, an old name in the clubs, and then I
became a snake and belly dancer working in the nightclub sector. I got a lot of work and
it did very, very well.
I want to point out to the audience that as Carmen is developing this persona with an
increasingly demanding performance schedule and juggling her time as a sex worker, she's also
working as a male nurse this whole time while hooking up with boys as a member of the
criminalized queer community.
And so Trevor gets caught in a couple of incidents relating to their gender identity and more
(03:10):
importantly, their sexuality in a criminalized environment, which is a dangerous position to be in.
So although, you know, Trevor is incredibly charismatic, he has a lot of friends at the hospital in
high places and there are some kind people that really try to get in the way of the consequences
of getting caught in these compromising positions.
Ultimately, the hospital becomes a hostile work environment. It is no longer safe for Trevor to
work there. And so he ended up transferring hospitals in 1959 and moving for a short period of
time to Sydney, where they already had quite a bit of established relationships. He finds work as
a waiter, but he's also spending time as a drag performer and female impersonator sex worker.
And it is in this context that the Sydney police pick Carmen up for being in drag, for being a
queer person, for looking like a sex worker. It's impossible to overstate the level of police
corruption during this era, so it must have been an especially terrifying moment for young
Carmen, spending two weeks in prison as Trevor in Sydney, Australia, while the authorities
waited to hear back from New Zealand on whether or not Trevor had a record. Ge didn't, so he
is released back on their own recognizance. But it's a scary moment and this is when Carmen
really starts toying with the idea of living full time in drag for safety because it's easier to pass
than it is to get away with going back and forth between Trevor and Carmen.
Carmen moves back to New Zealand because between the arrest and some mafia interest in
her prostitution earnings, things get too hot for her. So she moves to Auckland, New Zealand
and again sort of resumes identifying as Trevor, an effeminate young man during this era. He
again finds work as a hospital and is partying and playing the whore as Carmen at night.
And it is in this context that Carmen is arrested for the second time. And this time in New
(03:31):
Zealand the charges stick.
[break]
Now, Carmen describes her prison experience a little bit like how she describes her compulsive
military training experience. Obviously it's no fun for anyone to be locked up behind bars, but
Carmen, moonlighting at this point as Trevor, seems to be having a very good time.
And again, I think this can be attributed to their incredible charisma as a pretty openly queer
person. She's given her own cell for her own protection, and she immediately acquires
protectors who she genuinely enjoys connecting with. She has lovers. She builds relationships
with other prisoners, guards, and she even experiments with some drag behind bars, using
partly burnt matches for eyeliner and red crate paper for rouge and lipstick.
This is also when Carmen's propensity for entrepreneurship emerges. She's got a couple of
hustles behind bars. Because of her tight relationships with the guards, she's literally given the
keys so that she can deliver, I think, coal from prisoner to prisoner. So, this is the official job that
the guards give her and because it's easy to hide little packages in coal, she starts helping to
facilitate connections between people and money and goods from the outside world to prisoners
in the inside world, for a small and reasonable fee, of course.
Carmen is very popular behind bars. She gets a prison tattoo, sort of her trademark beauty
mark on her right cheek and the prisoners that give her this tattoo call her their Maori princess.
Now, Carmen, legally at this point, Trevor, is sentenced to six months in prison, but she is
released early because the prison system had gotten overcrowded at that point and everyone
loved her.
(03:52):
Years later, after Carmen had established herself as a, you know, public person and successful
proprietor of this, you know, fantastic coffee shop, which we’ll get into, a number of her fellow
inmates from the Mount Crawford prison, took the time to come and visit her, which I think really
speaks to her popularity and the kind of impact that she has on people.
Right before Carmen goes to the Mount Crawford prison, her mother unfortunately died. Her
mother was very young. She was only 44 years old. She suffered from chronic asthma for her
entire life. But Carmen and her mother and really her entire extended family are very close. But
after her mother's death, when she emerges from prison, she realizes that there's this not
insignificant inheritance waiting for Carmen. And again, having, you know, gone to prison for
prostitution-related issues and having all of these run-ins with the police in both New Zealand
and Australia because of her gender identity, Carmen makes it a priority to create a life where
she can be herself 100% of the time and actually uses the inheritance from her mother to set up
her first boarding house, which she opens and runs as Carmen.
Now, I want our listeners to understand that it was very challenging for even the most
respectable cis woman to get a loan or open a line of credit during this time. And under normal
circumstances, right, a trans woman like Carmen would use their identity as Trevor to open up
these loans, but because Trevor has a criminal record, Carmen presents herself to the bank
officer as a mourning, widowed woman and actually gets a loan, which is incredible.
Years later, when this guy was interviewed, he says plainly that he did not realize that he was
talking to the soon to be famous Carmen Rupe. Rather, he thought that he was talking to a lady.
That's how good she was.
(04:13):
Eventually, Carmen gets the necessary permits and paperwork, bank loan, uses her mother's
inheritance, and opens up her first boarding house. She has ten rooms. She does all of the
renting, cooking, cleaning, general maintenance, and is described by all of her tenants as a
warm and welcoming personality, just a natural born hostess, just like her mother.
Carmen is transparent about the economics of this period of her life. Every penny that she is
paid as a drag performer is reinvested into her character. We're talking electrolysis, we're talking
shoes, we're talking clothing, manicures, pedicures, the thousand and one expenses of being
not just a woman but a fabulous woman with an increasingly public profile.
One of the incidents that puts Carmen on the map nationally is when she was arrested for being
a trans woman and actually wins her right in court to be herself.
Here's what happened. So again, at this point in her life, Carmen is running a boarding house as
Carmen. She is working as a drag performer as Carmen, and she is transporting herself from
point A to point B as Carmen. Now, she has an aversion to public transportation, probably
because of the transphobia and also it's New Zealand, like there's not a lot of public
transportation. And she's not driving for whatever reason.
So one night after one of her gigs, she's waiting for a taxi that she had called and it starts to
rain. As I mentioned earlier, every penny that she makes is being reinvested into her wardrobe.
So getting rained on is a little bit of a micro-emergency in Carmen's life. So when a car that isn't
a taxi pulls over and offers her a ride, she doesn't hesitate to get it.
So she gets in the car. She's dressed as Carmen. She says hello to the driver. She's very polite,
charismatic, glittery, lovely person to be around. But her driver makes an illegal U-turn and gets
(04:34):
pulled over by the police, who immediately recognize Carmen as a locally famous person. And
they take it upon themselves to let the driver know that Carmen isn't a cis lady.
This, of course, offends the driver who actually pursues charges against Carmen for ruining his
night by being herself. So Carmen hires a lawyer who brilliantly suggests that Carmen go to
court as Carmen. She makes a Mae West-style entrance decked to the nines in absolutely
perfect form, waltzing into the courtroom, introducing herself to the judge. All eyes are on
Carmen when the judge insists that she go back at home and come back to court as Trevor.
At this point, Carmen hasn't really been Trevor in a couple of years, so Trevor comes back in an
ill-fitted suit that just looks wrong on them. Their hair is like pulled back into a ponytail, which
also looks wrong. Their face without the makeup, like, it's all just wrong. And so the judge is like,
“Oh yeah, I see what you mean. You look way better as Carmen, this is fine.” And writes a ruling
that establishes not just Carmen's right to move through the world as themselves, but every
trans person in New Zealand.
This case, of course, makes headlines and establishes Carmen as a nationally famous figure,
and this accomplishment alone would make her a trans rights activist hero. But this is just the
beginning.
[break]
After winning her landmark court case, Carmen never appears as Trevor ever again. She legally
changes her name and eventually pursues the full surgical transition. And it's at this point in her
life where she really transitions to creating spaces and opportunities for trans folks, queer folks,
and sex workers throughout New Zealand. And this is when she opens Carmen's International
(04:55):
Coffee Lounge.
So even though Carmen has successfully been running a boarding house for years at this point,
it's a stretch for her creditors to give her the kind of capital required to open up this decadently
decorated brick and mortar lounge/brothel. This is a period in Carmen's life where she describes
having to resort to survival sex work really for the first time in her life.
Now she's worked as a male escort. She's worked as a trans sex worker, subsidizing her
performance career in Sydney. But this is the first time where she needs sex work to eat, waiting
for construction and permits and loans to come through in the immediate weeks leading up to
opening up her business.
Now, Carmen describes this period of her life as single-mindedly bulldozing her way past
street-based sex work culture. She has no respect for territories or seniority or any of the other
community-based survival strategies that sex workers sometimes engage in. Carmen is trying to
eat until she can open up the doors of her establishment.
Now, once she gets Carmen's International Coffee Lounge open, she always creates space for
some of the street-based sex workers that she effectively bullied in her past.
But, like, this is not a go-along-to-get-a-long period of Carmen's life. She is playing to win or at
least survive. Now, Carmen had a clear vision for the kind of establishment that she wanted to
open and executed it beautifully. Here she is in her own words:
So what I did was I painted the whole place red, red carpets, red walls, fabulous
paintings on the wall,and flat leather furniture. We didn't open at daytime. We weren't
interested, so we can sleep in. Anyway, you wouldn't believe it. 5000 American sailors
(05:16):
from the enterprise ship came sailing in the night I opened up, and they saw my ads in
their houses to entertain you because I ran a brothel upstairs. They’re gorgeous too,
beautiful. And I had half a dozen. There was tea and coffee downstairs. The suites are
all upstairs.
So the way that Carmen's worked is that, you know, it opened up after hours, which again was 6
p.m. and served coffee, sandwiches, and beer, if you knew who to ask. And all of the servers
that she hired were sex workers. She called them hostesses, and she was very clear about
codes of conduct, expectations of behavior, as were many of the brothel owners that we've
covered on this podcast. And she created an environment and an atmosphere where young
queer folks, trans folks and a few cis women could safely and securely trade sexual services for
money while creating a scene that drew all kinds of people to it. Here is Georgina Beyer talking
about the magic of Carmen's charisma and what she created at her international coffee lounge:
She became a Wellington icon just locally because of some of the scandalous things that
she would be involved with. But I can tell you this much, that the high brows and the low
brows all came together in her establishments.
Now, of course, Carmen employed people of all sexualities and gender expressions. She
outfitted four or five bedrooms upstairs for entertaining. And the way that the business model
worked was that all of her hostesses could decide for themselves whether or not or which
specific sexual services were available and Carmen's first priority was making sure that the
restaurant part of her business operated smoothly.
So if one of her hostesses wanted to do some private entertaining, they would first check in with
(05:37):
Carmen. Carmen would make sure that they didn't have more pressing obligations, and then her
hostess would go upstairs. The patron would leave through the front door and then reenter the
brothel part of her business through a side door. And whatever happened between consenting
adults happened. Because Carmen's hostesses offered a variety of services for a variety of
different tastes, Carmen invented a system of communication that helped navigate some of the
awkwardness of gender preferences with sexual hookups, specifically her teacups. So if
somebody was looking for a cis girl, then a patron would turn their teacup upside down. If they
were looking for a trans person, then they would set their teacup on the side, and if they were
looking for a young man, then they would simply put their saucer on top of their teacup.
And in this way, you could affirmatively consent to the kind of entertainment that you were
looking for and leave it in the capable hands of Carmen's fantastic hostesses. So in this way,
Carmen is creating opportunities for the next generation of queer folks in her community to do
this work safely and to build a financially sustainable life in community with one another.
This is one of the many folks speaking at Carmen's memorial about not just the scene, but also
the safety that she created for them.
And of course in the old days when the destroyer closed, in those days it was 10 p.m.
closing. We had a girl go, so we were at Carmen's Coffee Lounge. It was truly fantastic.
It was the place where we all felt safe and secure. And Carmen looked after us. She took
us all under her wing.
Carmen gives up her boarding house and fully devotes herself into turning this coffee
lounge/brothel into the scene that it became. She, of course, dresses the part every night fully in
(05:58):
drag, not just as a drag queen, but as a drag star. Carmen, decked out to the nines, like any
respectable madam, would be creating a draw unto herself.
And this place becomes hugely popular not only among sex workers and their clients and
members of the queer community, but she also introduces, like, straight, moneyed New Zealand
to gay and cool New Zealand, which is a very important bridge in any community. And this place
becomes a tourist destination. Like, I believe the maximum capacity was 80 legally. And Carmen
got 150 people in that establishment every night with a line around the block. This was the place
to see and be seen in addition to being a place to sometimes do some illicit entertaining.
Now, no one would describe Carmen as being shy about her achievements, but she does have
a great relationship with other madams in the community. She specifically making
recommendations and keeping a finger on the pulse of what's happening in sexy New Zealand.
And when one of her contemporaries, the famous Flora MacKenzie, passed away, Carmen took
it upon herself to declare herself the number one madam in New Zealand. And you know what?
I believe it.
Because Carmen's International Coffee Lounge is so successful, Carmen expands. She opens
The Balcony, which is this fabulous theater that hosts Carmen and also a ton of other renowned
performers. She also opens up The Peacock as a kind of, like, run-off space for the people
waiting in line to get into Carmen's original coffee lounge. And this spot evolves into a hub of the
lesbian community in Wellington. She opens up Cleopatra's Coffee Lounge and a couple of
other sort of, like, knock-off spaces and a couple of massage parlors.
And her success in opening and running this series of beloved establishments and meeting
(06:19):
houses, she creates the conditions for sex workers and queer folks all over Wellington to come
together to get to know one another, to develop this real sense of solidarity and community that I
am arguing created the conditions for decriminalization just a few decades later.
Another thing that Carmen does to strengthen her community is that when she gets bored of
running a place, which happens pretty quickly because she's obviously a creative genius, she
passes on the already operating, successful business to another member of her community.
Now, sometimes these are blood or tribal family, and sometimes this is chosen family.
Carmen, of course, at this point has become a very successful media personality, and all kinds
of journalists are asking her to talk about all kinds of things. And so, I don't know, I think, like,
the 60 Minutes of New Zealand or whatever sat Carmen down in her famous International
Coffee Lounge and did kind of a broad range interview about lots of things.
And during this interview, Carmen very casually let it slip that a few members of Parliament were
regulars at her establishment and she says, basically, that there are absolutely gay people in
Parliament in New Zealand. Of course, Carmen thinks nothing of this, right, because she's been
living her life the whole time. But politicians are like a different breed of people and so this
becomes a media scandal. The papers run with this and this makes Parliament really nervous.
So Parliament actually calls Carmen to testify on this subject with real potential legal
consequences. I'm not an expert on New Zealand politics, so I'll let you hear it from Grant
Robertson, who was New Zealand's first openly gay deputy prime minister:
She was actually called before Parliament's Privileges Committee. And now that I'm in
Parliament, I realize just what it means. The Privileges Committee almost never meets.
(06:40):
It's very hard to actually get it to meet, but she was brought there because allegedly, well
not allegedly because she had actually said that some members of Parliament might
have actually been gay or lesbian. Absolutely shocking thought at the time.
Now, obviously, this was the worst possible way for Parliament to handle this particular PR
crisis, because obviously Carmen showed up decked out to the nines and was way wittier than
anyone involved in her questioning.
So Carmen just runs absolute circles around all of these officials by simply being herself
unashamed and unafraid of the private sexual behaviors of adults, even if those adults
happened to be elected to public office. And this thrust Carmen into the political spotlight, right,
so she's not just a successful drag performer who's nationally famous. She's not just a media
personality, a successful entrepreneur, and a literally groundbreaking trans advocate, but she is
also somebody who is making waves in Parliament. And so at one point, a journalist asks her,
“Hey, Carmen, would you like to run for office?”
[break]
When Carmen is asked whether or not she is interested in running for office. She gives a
non-committal response. This non-committed response is published somewhere, and after that,
a group of community members from Wellington, many of them with deep pockets, wrote
Carmen a letter, basically saying, “We would like you to run for mayor and we would relish the
opportunity to both fund and support you during that process.”
People come out of the woodwork to support Carmen's mayoral run. Now, some of those folks
had mixed motives. I think one of her largest backers was pretty transparent about his wanting
(07:01):
to make a mockery out of the stuffiness of New Zealand politics. But the campaign that they ran
was very effective. It was so effective, actually, that it made some folks in Parliament really
nervous.
They got so nervous that there was a moment during the campaign where they tried to force
Carmen to run as Trevor Rupe on the ballot. But because Carmen had legally changed her
name and was a lady, they lost, so she ran as Carmen.
Now, just because a lot of folks in Carmen's campaign, including Carmen herself, treated it like
a publicity stunt, didn't mean that they didn't take it very seriously. And in fact, Carmen's
incredibly reasonable platform not only holds up today, but many of her suggestions actually
became law in later decades.
First, she humbly suggests that bars should obviously be allowed to be open after 6 p.m.. She
further suggests that the drinking age should be lowered to 18 and that prostitution, abortion,
and homosexuality should all be decriminalized. She brings a ton of awareness to these issues,
and so even though she doesn't win her case, she moves the needle on all of this.
Now, Carmen describes the election night as a nail-biter. And, in fact, polls showed Carmen
winning until pretty late in the evening when the tide turns and one of her more boring
opponents ends up seizing the day.
But Carmen had a huge impact on the political discourse in New Zealand and certainly the way
that trans folks, queer folks, and sex workers were perceived not just by the general public but
by people in Parliament.
Carmen's run for mayor completes her transition into a well-known, much-sought-after national
(07:22):
figure, right. She becomes a public speaker. She is a celebrity about town. And she spends an
increasing amount of her time doing various appearances, supporting charities, being invited to
this, like, endless parade of ribbon cutting events and, you know, being photographed in front of
things and with people.
In 1979, then in her early forties, Carmen begins winding down her affairs in Wellington and
decides that she would like to live out the rest of her days in Sydney, Australia and the entire
country of New Zealand comes together to throw her a farewell party. This, like so many things,
is a practically civic affair. Politicians, celebrities, the media, everyone comes together to
celebrate Carmen.
Carmen did move to Sydney, where she set up a wonderful life for herself, enjoying her status
as a grande dame in the queer community and spending a lot of time with family. And in 2003,
Carmen was inducted into the Variety Hall of Fame. And in 2008, she made headlines by riding
her mobility scooter at the front of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade, which is Australian
Pride, topless.
Carmen died at the ripe age of 75 years old at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, Australia, on
December 15th, 2011 from kidney failure. And her funeral, like so much of her life, was a grand
affair. Prominent figures, TV personalities all came to show their respect for the life and legacy
of Carmen Rupe.
This is Grant Robertson, again, speaking about Carmen's impact:
Overall, I mean the main thing I think of Carmen is of somebody who broke ground and
there always has to be someone who is someone who is prepared to put the end and
(07:43):
stand up for who they are and a person who had to constantly battle discrimination
throughout their life, but never, ever took a single step backwards, even when she was in
the mobility scooters, even took a single step backwards in later years. And that's the
kind of spirit that she brought to the city.
I'll give the last word to Georgina Beyer, New Zealand's first trans sex worker elected to
Parliament, whose story will be telling later this season:
And what a fabulous, fantastic, interesting life she led that had a social change element
to it. She was a force, a tour de force, frankly, that existed here as a business person,
who not only had a coffee lounge, strip club, tea rooms, brothels. Which, truly, she was a
self-promoter of the greatest degree, a fantastic entrepreneur.
She had a niche. And within that niche that encompassed her love of entertainment, her
love of her showgirl lifestyle, her brushes with the law, legendary.
So. I'm pleased to be the next generation after her who has benefited from the legacy of
what she's done. I'm just but one. There are many. But politically…to actually…she sort
of put the hairline fracture in the pink ceiling. And then I went ahead and smashed it, and
got it.
And if it wasn't for figures like her at that time, who were visible out there being who she
was and happy to live in her skin to then pass that on to all of us in the diversity of the
rainbow community as an inspiration for us to sort of go, well…and we loved her. And
New Zealand loved her. And as it's turned out, so does Australia. [laughter]
[closing]
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