Texas, USA. I’m currently reading Chris Bull’s anthology Come Out Fighting: A Century of Essential Writing on Gay and Lesbian Liberation. [N1] It was published in 2001 so you would think it would include at least one passage by either someone transsexual or transgender. Think again, because in spite of the attempts to graft a “T” on to gay and lesbian we are still ignored.

But one of the essays that brought back memories was Rita Mae Brown’s “Take a Lesbian to Lunch.” (I wish I had a link but I don’t so you should check different anthologies for it. It has been published a half dozen times in different anthologies.) [N2]

Rita Mae’s involvement started around the period of time when mine did. She talks about the difficulty she had in finding a place where she belonged and how none of the places she looked in feminism or the gay liberation movement really fit.

The title and my modification of it are also commentary regarding my time at the NTCU when journalists and writers would spring for a nice dinner if they interviewed you but how by the mid-1970s you were lucky to get a fast food lunch. [N3]

All these years, all these movements. You would think there would be a real place for us and that place would be along side other women.

So if you ever meet me at a conference or on a book tour. Take me to lunch or dinner and I will tell you stories about the history.After the demonstration at the Pentagon in 1967 I went to San Francisco and hooked up with a cadre that was as much anarchist as Marxist. We fought with the cops.

I became attached to a guy named Morey. We went everywhere together. I didn’t much think about it at that point, but part of my attachment to him was that I used him as a sort of protector. When he wasn’t around I used a deserter in our collective in much the same way.

While we didn’t necessarily see the Haight as being unsafe for women it was, largely because of it taking the Hell’s Angels as a role model for relationships between men and women. In biker culture women were either old ladies belonging to one biker, or mamas meaning communal property of the whole gang. In hippie culture as well as radical culture women who didn’t pair off were considered sluttish.

When I came out in 1969 it was as though I donned the cloak of silence and invisibility. Radical guys no longer heard even my squeaky sissy voice. Granted people had known me before and perhaps they didn’t know respond to me now that I was out and living as a woman, yet I perceived the new form of silencing as more intense.

This made me an instant convert to feminism, yet when I tried to join feminist groups, I was told I didn’t belong. That didn’t drive me away from feminism but instead drove me to books and study. I didn’t need a group to tell me that feminism was necessary, nor did I need a group to be a feminist.

Some of the women in the Berkeley Women’s Liberation Movement suggested I become involved with Gay Liberation. While gay men put on fun events and all, they were gay men and there was no place for someone who was becoming female to fit in. Yes, they adored campy drag queens, but, they expected the drag to come off. Being too serious about becoming female was seen as anti-gay and an attempt to both get rid of one’s gayness via SRS and presumed assimilation into straight society.

I also noticed while Gay Liberation was supposed to include lesbians, outside of Gay Liberation conferences, lesbian participation was rare.

As for me… Gay men couldn’t have been nicer. I was treated like a pet, a cute little mascot. Some suggested I hook up with the Cockettes, a drag group in San Francisco. [N4]

The Cockettes were great fun and satirized gender long before post-modernism decided gender needed deconstructing. But they too were not a place for me.

I continued my involvement with SDS, which was becoming Weatherman until the wheels came off with the Townhouse explosion in early 1970. [N5]

After that I hooked up with, Jerry, a Marine, who deserted after coming back from 'Nam. I hung out with some hippie friends and a couple of friends who would be considered transgender today.

I became his old lady. Even though I earned the money and supported him including taking the risks of sheltering him I became his appendage.

I started working at the National Transsexual Counseling Unit. I actually found a home helping my sisters through the process of their getting SRS. I tried to impart some feminist wisdom along the way. If some accepted, it was because feminism was trendy in the early 1970s.

After SRS I came out again. This time as a lesbian. I became more feminist even though much of heterosexual feminism was centered around reproductive issues, and the ideas of employment equality seemed often to be as classist and racist as any I encountered in the job place.

By the later part of the 1970s, I thought I had found a place within the lesbian feminist community. I was a photographer for The Lesbian Tide. [N6] I wasn’t stealth. Jeanne Cordova and the others in the Tide collective had interviewed me about my medical history and they decided to give me a try even though it was the start of the “Transwars”. I was a token WBT, accepted within the lesbian community.

The Transwars got nasty and turned into the Sexwars between those lesbians who were Sex Positive and those who were pro-censorship.

I sank into depression as the reactionary 1980s washed over us. No ERA and the resurgence of the patriarchy. What was there to love about the Reagan/Bush’s brand of neo-fascist conservatism?

In the 1990s transgenderism burst forth on the scene, confronting things that needed confronting like the ugly women born women only policies of the Michigan Women’s Music Festival. [N7] Add in the need for hate crimes laws and anti-discrimination laws and you have someplace where I should feel right at home.

All I had to do was leave a life time of living with transsexualism at the door and embrace this new identity called transgender. At first I thought it was no big deal and then I realized that if there was no place for my history, my understanding of myself as transsexual, that meant I was erased.

Now I’ve never been big on erasing my history. I do not sacrifice it on the altar of stealth and I wasn’t about to sacrifice it to the cause of Transgender.

Tina, my life partner and I came up with “Women Born Transsexual”. Our initial demands were rather mild. Start using transsexual and transgender instead of just transgender. Recognize transsexuals and transgenders have different histories and aspirations.

Now some people made WBT into something far harsher than it was. In addition, some of us became very pissed off with all of the TG anger our small demands caused.

Lately I have been building bridges because I am tired of fighting with people I care a lot about when the real enemies are the right wing and Christo-fascism.

I look around and I see piles of issues that should have been resolved over these last 40 years but that haven’t.

Gays and lesbians reject reparative therapy for gay and lesbian people yet think it is okay for TS/TG folks. They got homosexuality removed from the DSM and said nothing when GID was added.

Feminists said nothing when non-discrimination laws had addenda that excluded WBTs from protection against sexual harassment or employment discrimination. They side with the exclusion of WBTs from some women’s clinics causing me to ask the Sojourner Truth question, “Ain’t I a woman?”

All these years, all these movements. You would think there would be a real place for us and that place would be along side other women.

So if you ever meet me at a conference or on a book tour. Take me to lunch or dinner and I will tell you stories about the history.

Suzan Cooke was one of the last patients treated by Harry Benjamin, M.D. (1969 and 1971). Benjamin wrote Ms. Cooke's recommendation letter and she had Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) in 1972.

 

Ms. Cooke maintains her personal blog, Women Born Transsexual (WBT), and is writing a book titled Outside the Gates of Eden. An excerpt from her book is available on this site. You can see a complete list of Suzy's articles here at TS-Si.org by following this link.

The TS-Si News Service is a collaborative effort by TS-Si.org editors, contributors, and corresponding institutions. Sources can include the cited individuals and organizations, as well as TS-Si.org staff contributions. Articles and news reports do not necessarily convey official positions of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates. We welcome your comments. Use the form below to leave a public comment or send private correspondence via the TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.


TS-Si is dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, and legal protection of individuals correcting the misalignment of their brains and their anatomical sex, while supporting their transition into society as hormonally reconstituted and surgically corrected citizens.

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