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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview K-0841, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Angela Brightfeather was born Jim Sheedy and grew up in Syracuse, New York, during the late 1940s and 1950s. At the age of twenty-one, Brightfeather first met another transgender person and subsequently became involved in a small but thriving transgender community. Brightfeather had known from an early age that she was transgender. She speaks in great detail about being transgender and describes variations of transgenderism, including cross-dressing, fetishism, transsexuality, and intersexuality. In so doing, she argues emphatically that gender, not sexuality, is the primary issue for transgender people. In order to illustrate that point, Brightfeather explains that she does not necessarily feel that she is male or female, but rather that she is a third gender. Brightfeather describes how her transgender identity operated in her personal life, explaining how her first marriage eventually ended after she came out to her wife as a cross-dresser. In describing that relationship, Brightfeather also discusses what it was like to be a single parent and how her experiences in parenting allowed her to better understand her feminine side. Brightfeather eventually remarried and explains that her second wife was supportive of her transgender identity. Much of Brightfeather's discussion focuses on her experiences as a transgender person living in Syracuse, where she lived until 1999, when she moved to North Carolina to pursue better opportunities for her commercial plumbing business. Before moving south, Brightfeather became a vocal activist for transgender issues, helping to found Expressing Our Nature (EON), a transgender group. Shortly before she left New York, Brightfeather and EON were disappointed when the Stonewall Committee in their county refused to include transgender people in their proposed Human Rights Law. Brightfeather uses that experience as evidence of what she sees as divisions and tensions within the GLBT community, particularly between transgender people and gays and lesbians. Brightfeather strongly believes that the GLBT community must work closely to attain political and social equality for GLBT people. She explains how she has worked toward that end, especially after moving to North Carolina, where the need for transgender activism seemed especially strong to her. After drawing comparisons between the experiences of transgender people and their role within the GLBT communities in the North and the South, Brightfeather discusses her activist work in the state, focusing on her interactions with Equality North Carolina and the Human Rights Committee. Finally, Brightfeather's interview addresses the longer history of transgender people, particularly as it touches Native American history and spirituality.
Before moving to North Carolina in 1999, Angela Brightfeather spent most of her life in Syracuse, New York, where she was actively involved in the transgender community. In this interview, Brightfeather describes her own transgender experience, variations in transgenderism, the history of transgender people, the relationship of transgender people to the GLBT community, and her activist work for transgender rights in North Carolina.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Hello, today is January twenty forth two thousand two and I am interviewing Ms. Angela Brightfeather in my home in Garner, North Carolina. This tape is a continuing series of interviews that will contribute to the Gay and Lesbian Southern Historical Project, which is part of the Southern Oral History Program at UNC Chapel Hill. This Project is currently focusing on Gay Men, Lesbians, Bisexual and Transgender history in Chapel Hill and the triangle over the twentieth century. This tape will be stored in the Southern Historical Collection, which is located in Wilson Library on the Campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The number for this tape is 01.24.02-AB.1.
Okay, here we go. Well, Angela, generally how I start out these
Okay, I was born in London, England in 1945, which makes me 56. I have
been involved with the transgender community for 35 years since I was
21, when I met my first transgender person that I could identify with. I
lived in Syracuse, New York—I came over to America with my parents after
my mother—after the war—World War II that is—
Would it have been a bad thing for you to go down and see the boats?
Well, oh for a 3 or 4-year-old child, just to go out the front door and run down the street.
Oh, 3 or 4 okay.
You know
So, when you met your first transgender person at the age of 21, did you have any idea, initially, how did you identify yourself? Did you consider yourself—I know transgender and orientation are different things, so that is probably something that we are going to want to clarify for our listeners.
Well, I was aware that I had to find out more about what was driving my instincts, because I started dressing at 4, my first inclination towards dressing as I knew it was at my baptismal at two months old. Now, I know that it is kind of hard for people to believe that that could be true, but circumstances about what happened that day indicate to me and going back and really digging deeply, I can point to the fact that the first time that I was hit with a difference that something was different was at approximately two months old at my baptism. Where, where—
This is something that you remember?
Yes, this is definitely something that I remember, because I was
actually—The reaction to being taken out of the baptismal dress that I
was baptized in, which was the tradition in the Catholic Church, back
then, with all of the silk and the flouncy and everything else was to
cry for a straight 18 hours until my parents took me to the hospital. My
mother confirmed the fact that the moment I started crying was when she
started to undress me. She swore that up and down. But before that, I
was—all day I had not wept a tear or made a cry and was the happiest
baby that they had ever seen. So, going back on that and trying to find
that in my memory was a key point, I focused in on that and since I
practice shamanism and journeying which is a tradition of transgender
people, I was able to touch it with my spirit, remember it in my mind
and put two and two together. The feelings—you do not lose the feelings,
you may lose all of the details, but
So, you are a woman trapped in a man's body, is that how you—
No—
Does that need to be clarified?
I may be, I am not up to this point. It is a constantly evolving thing. And, like anything in life, your experiences and the circumstances of your life lead you to the next steps. So, I have always kept a door open in front of me.
As a possibility, but that is not how you identify yet.
To some degree, yeah. I certainly feel that way, that there is at least part of a woman trapped inside my body, that wants to get out.
Do you feel more like a hybrid between the two?
I feel like a third gender. I feel like a third gender. Right now I do. But that has grown—that has changed over the years, too. You know, sometimes that becomes more concentrated and sometimes it becomes less concentrated depending on the circumstances of your life. It becomes less concentrated when you get married. Because now you've got a wife, so—
So have you always considered yourself, before you addressed the transgender issue, did you consider yourself straight if you don't mind that label?
Well, back then there wasn't any straight.
Right.
There was gay and lesbian, but I don't remember anybody saying straight.
Oh really? Okay.
I was paying attention to this when I was probably—really before most children were, I was paying attention to all of this at eight or nine years old, because feeling that you are in a minority at four and doing something that you shouldn't be doing puts you into a minority, and that feeling right away made me pay closer attention to what happened, the news, what people said about other minorities, or people that were considered minorities to include blacks and a whole lot of other things. Color and people with different jobs and backgrounds and other things. I think that we all do. If we have cognizant ability at that age to feel as though we are GLBT people.
You certainly did not feel as a gay man, definitely not.
No, I never—I questioned my sexuality far less than I question my gender
in my life. There have been incidences where I have questioned my
sexuality. I have certainly have had plenty of opportunities as a
transgender person that goes to a lot of gay bars to be able to question
my sexuality.
Do you go to gay bars here?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I didn't know that.
I am tending to go towards lesbian bars more now.
Oh, okay.
Because there seems to be a—going on that cycle where macho is a big
deal and the culture is beginning to isolate genders even more. Women
are encouraged even more now to be thin and pretty and made up and men
are encouraged more to be
Oh, I was going to say, did you not get along with the lesbians before?
You [a transgender person] are more welcome in a lesbian bar than a gay bar.
Dressed as a transgender. Dressed as a woman.
Yeah, yeah, right. Well, I don't know if that is true for females to males that go to gay bars, and a few of them are more comfortable. It may be.
Butch lesbians.
I mean females to males.
Oh, okay, you mean female to male transgender people.
And transsexuals who have had the operations and had breast reduction and, you know and the surgery to add a scrotum and a penis, it is an interesting question, do they feel more interested or more at home in a gay men's bar than in a lesbian woman's bar now?
The transgender people that I know in that scenario, seem to prefer, or to be more comfortable around lesbians. But, there is a wide array obviously.
On the other hand, we see a lot of abuse from lesbians too. Because, it is not the feeling of abandonment of their female selves or anything like that. I think that it is more the case that they now have a penis.
So how would you define transgender? Transgender obviously has to do with gender identity more than it does with sexuality, what I personally get from you.
Well, it is easier to start off by trying to qualify the different areas
of that of gender, and then saying this is transgender. There is the
fetishistic cross dresser. And to me a fetishistic cross dresser is
somebody that they have to wear stockings all of the time. Something
like that, or they have to wear panties all of the time, or they have to
wear a bra all of the time, or a combination of something else. And, if
you were to take them away from all of that, they become very anxious,
even if they went on a business trip or something like that. If they
were a male and went on a business trip, if they had to sleep in a room
with a person that didn't have any qualities like that, and didn't know
about them, they would have to find a stocking somewhere in their bag
and pack it and put it underneath their pillow just to be close to it.
That is, to me, a fetish and a fetishistic cross dresser. Or somebody
that goes out and spends a million dollars on fetishistic clothes and
things like that. Now that is one person, another one is the good old
transvestite.
Is this the sex archive in Berlin that you are talking about?
Pardon?
Is this the sex archive in Berlin?
Well, yeah, yeah, they burned it down; they burned all of the books and burned it all down.
All of the statistics.
Yeah, so a lot of our history, a tremendous amount of that as far as I know it was all in regards to people who were called transvestites and there was a lot of linkages there and a lot of linkages were made between the gays and the lesbians and the transvestites at that time during the study, because people considered transvestites as gay upon site.
Right, right, I understand. And that is that way still today.
Yeah, without asking, the automatic stereotype is that that they are gay, so a lot of that information, a lot of that preliminary information that was never taken before about our history and studies was burned up after the war, or during the war, just before the war [World War II]. So, we have as big chunk missing there, and that is a shame, because it put us back light years as far as research goes with gays and lesbians. The next hop that you come after that to any time of any time of history—any known history about what would be transvestites, or cross dressers is the Native American tribes. And what they called back then the Berdach that were found by the French missionaries when they came to America.
Are you of Native American descent?
Part.
What tribe?"
Onondaga, part of the Iroquois Nation in upstate New York. I have a touch of Mohawk, and they would never forgive me if I didn't say.
How do you spell Onondaga?
O-N-O-N-D-A-G-A and it's pronounced and said as (a-na-da-ga) but it is pronounced in the native as (a-na-da-de-ga).
Ah, okay, (a-na-da-de-ga)
Yes, but if you said that to most people, they would not know what you are talking about.
So, um—
But, my first incidence of meeting another transgender person was in
Syracuse, New York, a person named Cathy and I am not quite sure how—I
think that it was a magazine called—well, I am not quite sure what the
magazine was to tell you the truth, but somebody had put an ad in a
magazine that they were a cross dresser in upstate New York in the
Syracuse area, and so she was my first introduction to another cross
dresser and being able to talk to somebody, and she belonged to one of
the first cross dressing groups in America in Albany, New York of all
places, run by a person, two people, a married coupled named Wilma and
Helen. And one Saturday out of every month, they'd have a party in their
home and they would cook a huge meal and anywhere from 15 to 35 cross
dressers would come from all over the Northeast and party there. So that
was my first big, big meeting with—it was wonderful, it was just
remarkable. Here I had been keeping this in the closet all of my life
and I went to a hotel and I got dressed and I went to the party and my
knees were just shaking. Standing on an ottoman in the middle of the
living room was a person named Ariadne Kane. And Ariadne Kane is a
How do you spell Ariadne Kane? Can you do that?
A-R-I-A-D-N-E and it is K-A-N-E.
Okay.
And she started up this research institute and she was trying to get
money for people to contribute—to get money for it. A week before, I had
been arrested for demonstrating against the Vietnam War on the steps of
the Syracuse University Administration Building where I went to school
You had mentioned in the transgender community, I think that there was, I think in all of the different levels, there was fetish, there was transvestite—
Yes, we have to get back to that—
What was the other—
Okay, there was cross dresser, which with the cross dresser, you have
somebody that pretty much lives in their—in the gender of their born
sex. But, they have feelings of gender dysphoria, if you will that makes
them feel as if they have to express themselves in the opposite gender.
And, if that isn't done, if they can't do that, you get pretty
frustrated, you begin to feel very alone, you isolate yourself, it can
cause depression, and probably there is more depressed cross dressers
than anything else that probably causes them to commit suicide. The
children that you hear about that commit suicide and there is no reason
for it, none what so ever. Everybody probably thinks that it is their
own community, and they could be a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender
because they have the highest number of suicides among youth. So, it
really stumps people when they might be able to find—they might find a
boy who has killed himself and he's gay, everybody goes, "Oh well" But
if they find somebody that isn't gay, it really stumps them, it's like,
"What else could they be?" You know. The way that I look at that is that
all of those people that don't know what they were, I consider them to
be transgender.
Transgender, you are claiming them.
Gender dysphoric, yeah.
And probably not all of them entirely are—
I am claiming them, that is it.
I wouldn't be surprised.
You just never, ever hear about it.
It is a lot harder to pinpoint, especially at that age now, I am sure that there are families who would frown upon it, but I know certainly in my family, my brother dressed in dresses all of the time as a kid, and as far as I know doesn't identify as transgender or gay now, it was just accepted, it was play time. Perhaps that was just a more healthy.
Some people just have a much more open feeling about it being fun, and they are able to express that. But, really, the people that I know and myself included, we all took it very, very seriously. I mean, it was a concerted effort before the age of ten to know how to do your own makeup. There was always a dream of being able to go out with your nails polished. There was always a desire to do it just right, with the object of eventually passing—
Emulating—
Passing, no, passing. Being able to go out and live like that. Being able to go out and walk the streets without any fear. Being able to not be recognized as what you aren't and being able to get away with that, because that is the way that you want to live. Or at least you wanted the ability to be able to live that way without being discriminated against, so—
But, in some ways for a cross dresser that may be to be able to pass, if you are a male, to pass as a woman in public, but you still may still continue to want to have sex with someone of the opposite sex.
Right, there is a definite advantage for being both. Otherwise, what the
hell would bisexuals be? The consider it a definite advantage to be
attracted to both sexes and
Well, what would the advantage, what would the advantages be?
Oh, there are countless.
Name five.
Five, okay. It bridges so many areas. First of all, it levels the playing field.
In what way?
If we could do that, if we were free to dress in anyway that we wanted to in a gender that we wanted to, and live that way without discrimination, don't you think that equality for women would happen a lot quicker? Nobody is going to lift up your skirt and ask you what's underneath there. So, everybody would sort of be left guessing. And that being the case, that would certainly enhance the opportunity for people to be much more wrong if they think that somebody is as a man when they aren't or think that somebody is a woman when they aren't. So, it would get people to treat each other a whole lot more equally in the workplace, in schools, everywhere. If people could just get used to that.
That idea. So that's one.
That's one. Okay, what was the number? What am I answering?
These were the distinct advantages to having your options open.
As a male, I have to get away from it sometimes. There are so many
pressures on men. It's terrible. The gender discrimination against males
is different than
What would the discrimination be?
Now, don't cry; don't show your feelings; bury everything, you know. You know what I mean.
Well, yeah. As a gay man, I feel that I can just act out and I never pay attention to any of those norms, so I guess I am liberated in that sense. Because, if I cry, I am like, "Damn right I will cry, I am a gay man, I will do whatever the hell I want."
But, hasn't there ever been one of those times in your life when—
When I was younger and before I came out there were those things, and I am a pretty aggressive person anyway, but I feel much more free to do that and definitely separate or segregate myself from the straight community.
Well, there is no doubt about the fact that anybody that is out, has an easier time of it than anybody that is in!
Exactly, they are much more emotionally free. I do understand what you are saying.
But there's—that is probably one of the big problems, is that there are so many transgender people in, and for such a longer time, because they have been so unaccepted and that act of cross dressing has been so unaccepted in our society and condemned that they ramifications of it being out can be a real problem in your life. You can lose your job, you can lose, there are no guarantees of any freedom what so ever. Any security or any harm from violence—I mean, people have been killed—I remember when people were killed for just being gay.
Well, I remember it too.
Well, what I mean, is not like Matthew Shepherd, when everybody got up in arms and really pressed the issue, and really did what had to be done. I remember when it was like, "Well, the guy was gay, so what?"
Right.
And whoever the killer was, that was taken into consideration and a lesser sentence or no sentence was given to the person. Well, we are in that position [transgender people] now, today, right today, we are in that position, that is how much, and it is not like it didn't have the opportunity to come around at the same time that it came around for gays and lesbians, it did have the opportunity. People were transgender then and they are transgender now—
It is becoming more obvious because more people are being out.
Well, I think that more people are questioning their gender and their gender roles in society now. I think that they may be in part, and in large part to gay males and lesbian females. They have confronted that situation.
And a lot of androgyny that comes from that.
Exactly, and they have a lot of friends, that have come across those situations where they question their gender.
So equality, personal relief of tension by being able to express yourself, safer society in general. What would another one be? Sorry to put you on the spot.
No, no that's okay. I find that it's—there's things and privileges that
women have, and that there are privileges that men have. Some of the
privileges are obvious like having a door held open for you in an old
fashioned way. Another more
Somewhere from the extreme to where they are at—
It is like cutting to the quick. We are like, okay, we are going to cut
to the quick, we are going to give you the extreme, now you are probably
somewhere in there as far as male talents and male feelings go, but, you
know, if you want to fit into the male society, you have got to at least
know. You have got to know the language and you have got to know enough
about Los Angeles or the Saint Louis Rams, and where they stand in the
NFL right now. So, those are the type of things that help them. And
being able to go
To relate to people in another way than gauging if you are sexually compatible.
Actually, it makes me a lot more—an awful lot more—empathetic towards
women's issues. It makes me a lot more empathetic towards what they go
through and, you know, there aren't many men that are afraid to go many
places in this world. Whether it is Casablanca or up the side of an
alley of a gay bar on the street in a dark corner. Men are a lot freer
in this society, so it has taught me how caged women have been in
society and how much freedom they have yet to attain. When I am dressed
and feeling attractive—and this has happened a lot of times—and walked
outside of a bar, or from a meeting and gone into a dark parking lot
where I left my car, I feel the same fear that every woman feels in a
dark spot. I feel that I should be looking over my shoulder all of the
time and be careful because somebody might make a mistake and think that
I am a genetic female and try to come after me because women are
supposed to be the weaker sex, unless they have taken karate.
Right—
They are bridges in society, and it is my feeling that that is my purpose for existing.
Transgender people.
Well, gays and lesbians, they have an old saying, whenever the religious right comes at them, "God didn't make mistakes." Well, that's—what they are saying is that there is a reason why we are here. We are justifiably here. We don't have to give you a reason. If you believe in God, then you know as well as we do that we are not a mistake this is, this is our destiny. We have something in this life that we are fulfilling. We have a niche and are placed in here to remind people and do good things and to change things. Well, it is the same thing with transgender people. Transgender people are exactly the same, and I believe that of all of the communities in the rainbow coalition, if I can call it that, going back in time, of all of the communities, I believe that the transgender people are here to form bridges between them. Because transgender people have their feet in all of those other communities—whereas all of those other communities don't necessarily have their feet—
Right.
And one of the crucial parts of that formula is that they are masculine ad feminine. That is the most crucial part, is that they are both masculine and feminine. They bridge that gap that the other minorities don't bridge.
So do you find sometimes—
—There are gays. You can find gays that are transgender, you can find lesbians who are transgender, you can find bisexuals who are transgender.
I was going to say [ask] if there are groups.
Absolutely.
Every transgender person might have one area that happens to be kind of a pole, whether they identify for instance Miss Lily De Vee who I interviewed, she identified as a gay male and then realized in her early 50s that she was transgender, but still really relates very strongly with the gay male community, but also recognizes that she is an transgender individual.
Well, that has happened to a lot of transgender people that I know, especially around my age, because remember, back then—
You were either gay or straight—
No, it wasn't that, if you—wow, well let's get down to the quick of
that. If you are 14-16 years old and you don't know what you are. You
just know that you want to cross dress and you may want to go all of the
way, but you don't know. And they called it transvestite and you try to
look it up in the dictionary, but it wasn't a term that was very
complimentary and everything that you found about it is negative, and
then you come across maybe—You get to be about 15 and 16 and you might
be able to do some research on the computer, well before the computer,
you find an article on Christine
In drag—
In drag, yes—It says to yourself, "Well, at least people can laugh at this," you know. So you get sort of a feeling in the long run that you have to figure out what it is. And if you are really bold and you are really aggressive, 15, 16, 17, 18 years old you might wonder into a gay bar.
Because it is the closest thing that—
Because you are certainly not going to have any success in associating with anybody in the sports bar.
Right
So, the feeling is that you will be drawn and quartered so you go to the gay bar.
So, is that why there has always been this alliance historically, at least in Western Society, with gays and transgender males?
No, no—
You don't think so?
I think that that may be a part of it, but not. What I am talking about is the transgender male or female that goes into a bar like that and for the first time finds any type of acceptance—let alone a drag show going on and "Help!" And "Oh my God!" "Wow, you mean I could do this?" [Angela feigns excitement laced with anxiety]
You find more acceptance there than you would anywhere else in society.
And advice, drag queens are notorious for taking young boys underneath their wings—that are pretty young boys and good looking young boys and showing them what the possibilities are of them cross-dressing. And at that point, they become a part of the scene. Now, they become indoctrinated to gay life or lesbian life. And, because their friends are gay, or lesbian and they spend the next two or three years like that—
But, do you not think that a general attraction to the opposite sex wouldn't override that?
Well, I think that there are—I think—
Or do you think that those lines are blurred because they are transgender anyway?
I think that at that point in their life they are just so thrilled about
being able to do what they wanted to do and express themselves, that
they would do just about anything to be able to do that. And most people
don't—see being transgender is the act of growing up knowing that until
the age of thirteen and then discovering sex and puberty and then
coupling the two of the most favorite things in your life together.
Cross dressing and masturbation.
Oh yeah, the same exact story with Ms. Lily.
Well, I like this and I like this, and if I do them together—
They are a good accoutrement to each other.
—I am really going to get off.
I can see it, I guess some gay men would be a little, I don't know, that is interesting to me.
But, see what happens at 21 is that you turn around and say, "Wait a minute, I was cross dressing when I was 8, and I was cross dressing when I was 4 and I didn't know how to spell sex." I had not the slightest idea of what it was. It is something beyond that, and I have coupled that together in why is that I cross dress and I masturbate and feel guilty and get all dressed and put all of my mother's clothes back in the same spot again exactly as she left them, and why am I so scared? Why am I living in fear? And that happens between 21 and 22, when you get other freedoms. You get the freedom to vote, you get the freedom to die in a war, you get the freedom to do this and that, you get the freedom to do this and do that, but this is the one freedom that you don't get, so you begin to question that, and that's when you begin to have the opportunity to separate them, the sex and the gender. And you begin to look at them separately. And you can actually determine based upon the fact that you were doing this before you had sex, what it is to you and you start to question it deeply, and that is when people really start going out and look for people like themselves.
Do you think that transgender people are more likely to dabble in sexual activity with both genders because of who they are as transgender?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
You mean sexual activity with both sexes?
Yeah.
Absolutely, yeah, both sexes. You can't say both genders, because you don't know what sex the genders are. So, you know, it's sort of like yeah what do you call a transition female to male that gets married to a genetic female? Do you call that a heterosexual couple or do you call that a lesbian couple?
The first time that that was really underlined to me was when I met a male to female, a transgender who was attracted purely to women and so he was basically a heterosexual perceived by society before the operation, but afterwards would be considered a lesbian.
Yeah.
Which, that really underlined to me the difference, there is a difference between—there is orientation and there is gender identity and that really is—
But there really are so many areas that we do bridge. You know, it is
just amazing to me. Because if you have your foot in the heterosexual
community and you've got your foot in the gay community because it feels
safe, now isn't that strange. A heterosexual that only feels safe in the
gay or lesbian community, because they are transgender. That creates a
very unusual bridge. That creates a group of heterosexuals that actually
are affiliated to the gay and lesbian movement by way of contact,
osmosis and everything else. Conversation, making friends, being
respected and respecting others, learning all of the things about all of
those other two minorities and learning all of those things about those
other two minority communities. And yet, being in the one community that
those minority communities thinks is totally against it. In many ways,
shapes and forms. It is like having 'homies' in the neighborhood.
So, were you always just kind of accepted in your family growing up, at least as somebody who was transgender? Did you come out as a transgender person?
Oh, no, no, I was a—
Well, eventually you did come out as a transgender person. When did that happen? I have got that question and—to your parents, to the world—
My parents knew. They knew the first time they found a catch of clothes in the house that I had stuffed up a chimney, an old chimney in the basement.
Did they just silently accept it? Or—
No, they never accepted it. They were very disappointed and thought that it was their fault because of the actions that happened after the war and my father coming over here for six months on his own when I was born, leaving my mother there in England—
Oh, so they attributed it to the lack of a paternal influence that made you—
Exactly, yes, which I really don't know if that's true, but as I said, I
think that it is obnoxious that psychiatrists put that on people as an
excuse for that, for being transgender, because it not only puts more
guilt on the transgender person, but it puts more guilt on his family,
and the transgender person doesn't need his family to feel guilty about
who he is, or she is, all they want is just a little acceptance and to
be allowed to live their life. Yeah, it was a tough time, because they
knew, I couldn't talk to them about it, I tried, it didn't work. My
father was in—he worked in Syracuse at the Syracuse
Because he had access.
Oh yeah, he had free access.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Okay, we are on the second side of the interview with Angela Brightfeather the number for this side is 01.24.02-AB.2. So your father threatened you with that information.
Sure, yeah, yeah, and he used it to try to make me fearful, my mother—
What kind of—what did he say?
Oh, "We are going to take you to the doctor's"—
And at the time, the doctors—
Well, I didn't like doctors to begin with, you know. Here I am, 7, 8 years old, you go to the doctors, you know what you are going to get.
This was the 60s, the 50s, when was this?
It was, well, they knew when I was 6 years old—
So that was right in the middle of McCarthyism and the conservative 1950s.
—two years after I first started to cross dress, by myself, so it was about 52, and then right for the rest of my life, so, and right up to both of my parent's deaths, I tried to talk to my mother about it when she had cancer and was dying and she did not want to talk about it. [sad pause] And my father, actually my father—it was just enough to know that both of my parents loved me, you know. I felt really bad, because I felt that they thought that it was their fault in some way, and I never had the opportunity to explain to them, "No, you are not going to the grave thinking that this is your fault. It isn't your fault, this is me. This is the way that I am made, and this is the way that I am. There is nothing to be ashamed of."
So, did your wife always know that you were a cross dresser, or a cross dresser?—
Yes, my first wife didn't, I got married when I was 21 years old, because I thought—
"This is a way to prove that I am straight."
No, I associated cross-dressing with masturbation so much in my teen years that I thought, "Well, this is a sexual thing,
Right, I see.
—And now I am going to get married, I will have all of the sex that I
want.
I think that it is interesting because if somebody met you on the
street, and today, I have seen you dressed as a woman, and also as a
man. Talking to you on the phone today, when I called you, I presumed
you used your male name when you answered the phone, that is why I was
at first thrown I guess I had this vision of you dressing as a
transgender in the workplace.
In construction I just about do—
You come across as a very masculine man, in a lot of ways. Your demeanor and your voice and your build
Yeah—
You are very gregarious, and your personality, and you have this thing in your hair, a barrette, I guess if that is a correct word, it has like a mother of pearl, you know covering so that is a little feminine, your glasses may be slightly, but generally, nobody would think that you were a [transgender man]—most people would just think that you were an alternative, slightly kind of hippie kind of guy.
Yeah, right, there are times that that goes more towards androgyny, and
there's times when in an airport, when like in an airport when, I
remember I dropped something once, and someone saw me and said, "Ma'am,
ma'am you dropped something and when you turn around, they are making
profuse apologies for."
You're like, hey no problem—
I was like, "Hey, no problem, don't worry about it, there is nothing bad
about being a woman."
You had to pay your wife alimony, your ex-wife.
No, no, she just left.
What was the one-third that went out the door?
That was the money that she made.
Oh, I see.
When we were a couple. One third of the money went out the door and now I am doing it all. So, I didn't ask for any money from her. I said, "I will have to work harder." The typical male thing, which is what I did. It didn't seem to matter that much. The money didn't seem to matter that much. It was more than made up for being closer to my children.
Were you, if you did not have those extra expenses at the time, would you—did you allude to the fact that you would have had the transition, the change?
Yeah, yeah, I might have gone through the transition at the time. I certainly had the opportunity to do it.
So you would have considered yourself at the time, would you have considered yourself more allied with the lesbian community, if that would have happened?
Well, what stopped me from doing it wasn't so much the fact that I didn't want to do it, it was the fact that now I was supporting two children.
Oh, of course, of course.
—And I would have lost my job
Totally understandable.
So, it was like, here you are free to do it, but you can't do it.
You really don't like those labels do you?
No.
When I say lesbian, you run.
Well, no, I consider myself exactly that, a male lesbian in many respects, yeah, yeah.
Well, that's all right to say. Are you worried that people will discriminate against you if you say that?
What, what?
From the moment that I have met you, the moment I ask you a pinpoint question you like change the subject, or say something else.
About sex reassignment surgery?
Sex reassignment surgery, or you would identify as a lesbian in a way.
Oh, yeah, yeah. That would be my.
It seems almost like a defense mechanism.
There is no doubt about the fact that—Well, you see the strange thing about it is that a year later, my wife came to me and said that she was living with another woman in a lesbian relationship. So, strangely enough everybody goes—
You see the connection.
No, everybody goes, "Well, that's strange, it should have worked out for
you." You know what I mean?
It depends on the relationship of the individuals, rather than the gender.
Yeah, it doesn't work that way. I don't think it works that way. Just
because I am a cross dresser and a transgender person and my wife was
a—or had deep lesbian tendencies a lot made sense when she told me that,
because there was a lot of things that I wanted to do sexually when we
were married that she wouldn't do, you know, and she didn't want to do
them to the point almost desperate hate and desperate
Or the ideal fantasy would be to have two lesbians, two women—
To make love with them at the same time. Good point.
So, when did your children discover that you were a transgender person?
Two weeks after my wife left.
Did you sit down and tell them?
Yeah.
So at that age could they pretty much roll with the punches, or were they angry?
Well, 7 and 10. My daughter was 7 and my daughter was glad that there was somebody there that might have a chance of understanding her.
Okay.
Okay, because she was living with two men as far as she was concerned,
two males, and she was afraid that the things that she wanted as a girl
or a female were not going to be obtainable, it was going to change a
lot into a male, you know, type of family, where she did not have
anybody that she could identify with. So, that helped a lot with my
daughter. She felt that, "Okay, there is a lot that we can share dad,
and maybe we can
Right.
Well, my son, unknowing to me, now has the four copies of X men #1 and a bunch of other stuff that make his comic book collection over thirty to forty thousand dollars.
Wow.
Yeah, so this is a hobby that he wanted to have, just like I wanted to
be transgender. So, I said, "Look, I'll tell you what." Well, actually
he brought up the deal. He said, "Look dad, I don't care. Just not
around friends and stuff like that. Don't let anybody know because—and
don't let anybody on the block know because the guys will make fun of
me, but that's okay with me if you like that. But why can't you be more
like that when it comes to my comic books and get off my back and stop
bugging me about that." And I said, "Deal!"
And this is when you were open about your—
Within two weeks of meeting her, I said, "Look, before we get serious, understand, you may—this is what I really like doing, and if you really want to—Food is not the way to my heart, this is the way to my heart. Acceptance of this." She said—being the intelligent person that she is, and a wonderful person, she said, "Okay, I think I can go along with that. I want to know more about it though." And that is when we started to really get deeply involved in the transgender activism part of it. And, where we started a group in Syracuse.
Did she ever come to Pride, or anything? I am not sure if I have ever met your wife.
No. She doesn't come to Pride, or a lot of those things, she does on
occasion, but I don't really force that on her. What she is worried
about—she is still worried about somebody recognizing her and by
association with her. In other words, if they know her and they see her,
and I am with her, I am dressed and they will know that I cross dress
and she does not want to be responsible for that and she doesn't
also—where she works, which is hospital and like a rumor mill—she
doesn't want people talking behind her back. Because nobody will come
right out and say, "Your husband is a cross dresser, or your husband is
a transsexual."
Right, that is the bizarre result of political correctness, it is never out in the open, it is always—
Socially, my wife is a very shy person. So, if she was more gregarious and outgoing, she would probably confront it, but she is not that way, so I accept that, in her. And those are the limitations. She has been to a lot of transgender things, but she always asks me, "Who is going to be there."
And you started something in Syracuse together, did you host it in your home, is this your own?
Yes, we started off in our home and it started as a group called Friends, people that we met, we put advertisements in the paper just like Helen and Wilma in Albany and all of a sudden, people started to call and before you knew it, within a year or two, we had people coming to our house and they were parking up and down the road in the Syracuse University District. People were getting out of their cars dressed and coming into the house, and so the neighborhood began to know it and I said, "Well, wait a minute, before it comes down on the children." So we started this group and it was called EON .
EON?
EON, it is a dual title, it is Expressing Our Nature and it is also
named after Chevalier D'Eon, who was a member of the French aristocracy
and a spy in Catherine's court for the French king and dressed as a
female and cross dressed and no one ever
Do you think that that individual was actually a transgender person?
I think that that person was probably transgender enough that if they had had the operation back then, then he might have lived that way and been even a greater spy. Because then, they could have had sex with a male and could have done things as a woman like married and all and all of that. It would have been even more interesting. Who knows, maybe somebody around here does that today after the operation, who knows.
Right.
Running around Afghanistan in a—all covered up.
With a burka.
Yeah, with a burka.
With a burka, I guess that it would make it all the easier, I guess.
Yeah, absolutely. But that was 25 years ago and it grew rapidly, and we had to find another place to put it, so we decided to go and try some restaurants and we did that.
Now, would you go and meet, or would people actually dress?
People would dress.
And go to those restaurants, you would have to case them out and—
Yeah, exactly—
And make sure that they were happy.
And talk to them, and so it as an outing process for me, in my home too. And then I started getting involved in the national community a lot more. There is a group called IFGE—The International Foundation for Gender Education—and Marissa Cheryl Lynn, the founder of that, this was in the beginning of the—the very beginning of the activist part of the transgender community coming of it's own, notifying gays and lesbians that, "Hey, we are one of you, we are here!" You know, it was probably back in the—
It was the International Foundation—
For Gender Education, so it was probably back around 75 to 80 somewhere
around in there, about 75 and Marissa started the International
Foundation of Gender Education in Walton, Massachusetts, which is now
one of the larger national organizations and also publishes the Tapestry
Magazine. The have a convention every year. They are on their sixteenth
convention now. They have a massive convention for transgender and where
all the leaders, the movers and the shakers go. They have the Virginia
Prince Award, which is the highest award you can get in the transgender
community and the Trinity Award. In order to get the Virginia Prince
Award you have got to have the Trinity Award, and in order to get the
Trinity Award you've got to be involved in activism in the transgender
community for no less than ten years. So, it's that type of an
organization, it has grown into that type of a thing for that community.
She
Do you think that there has been a very big evolution from, in terms of the relationship between the gay and lesbian community and the transgender community before you mentioned that there was definitely a place for transgender male to females within the drag community of the gay community, and I know several drag queens that often characterize themselves some as 'transy' some as whatever, because they look more realistic, and sometimes because they identify—
Well, that is because they are beginning to understand that they are transgender. That you can be gay and transgender, see before, it was like, well, you are transgender, right? Or you are a cross dresser? And they would go no, no, no, no I am gay.
Right, right.
See, "No! I am gay!" And you would go, "Yeah, but you still cross dress." It does not make any difference, "I am gay, I am gay, you understand, I am gay." You wonder why the with young transgender people who go into the gay community as we were mentioning earlier. This is a—
It is interesting to see that kind of tension in the gay community even with myself, because you see men that are very much like "Thurston Howell Fags" like myself, we are sitting there. And then we have these folks that are transgender and everybody is confused.
Yeah.
You are talking and you don't understand each other, and I guess the evolution that I am talking about is that there used to be just one lump. You lump people as drag queens within the gay community and now it is kind of more like we have two separate communities.
Drag queens in the gay community never really got—Drag queens in the gay community before there was an open gay community and before there were a lot of gay clubs which goes back a long ways were female impersonators. And female impersonators worked in regular theaters. Like Lillian Gish and people like that. They played in plays. They were flocked to, to see by heterosexual people.
And there is more and more documentation that shows that drag queens were actually female impersonators. In textile mills, I have actually got it in a book one of these up on the shelf and they dressed as a woman up in the textile mill.
What about the women during the war, in order to support their families.
Rosie the Riveter.
Yeah, well, actually transitioned to male, some famous artists transitioned to male.
All the men came back home and they posed as a male to fit in.
Right, so they could make as much money as a male to support their family, that is why.
Right, I love these examples. So, before they were just part of the community and there was a little bit of discord and I was wondering if the evolution now is we are getting more and more of two distinct communities that are very intertwined.
Well, I think they are maturing. I think that they are maturing. It depends on where you are. In upstate New York the gay and lesbian community keep the transgender community out. They keep them out of their legislation, they don't keep them out of their activities, but they say we must grow very slowly together because there is a lot things that we don't want to be coupled with you as doing. We don't want to be associated with you as doing, because heterosexuals still look upon you as being deviant. And, of course, the transgender people are going, which are eighty percent heterosexual are going, "What do you think that the heterosexuals are thinking of you!" It is the same thing. So, isn't that why we should be together? And, the gays and lesbians are still very 'Republicanized' in upstate New York and saying, "No, that is not the case. We have been doing this for a long time."
'Republicanized', meaning conservative?
Yeah, take it slow; take it by the numbers, little steps. A little piece of legislation here, take a poll here. Do this, do that, add it all up.
So, they are actively trying to make sure that the transgender agenda is not connected with the gay agenda?
Right, because they feel that it is tainted, and that they have not done enough education, they keep on saying that. You have not educated people enough. You have not—
They are two separate struggles is what they are saying.
Right.
And you are saying, "Well, we have really been intertwined from the very beginning."
Well, it is like when I came here and I met the publisher of the paper here.
Jim Baxter.
Yeah, Jim Baxter. When I came into town and I immediately said, "If I can help you, I have read your paper, it is great. But, there are no articles there on transgender people." And, he said—
I have his recorded response to that. He said something to the effect of, "It is not all about gender."—
No, what he specifically said that stuck out in that conversation all
boiled down was that, "Gay and Lesbian issues are diametrically opposed
to transgender issues." Which is a very sophisticated—a very
sophisticated argument that we could use miles of tape on. But, he has
never given me the opportunity to meet one on one and debate him on that
in front of the gay and lesbian community, which I would more than love
to do. Because, I think that that is the type of discourse where the
person that needs to be had in order for people to understand and make
up their minds, one way or the other. I feel as though the majority of
the gay and lesbian community, the vast majority of the gay and lesbian
community believe that we are not the same, but we are linked together
in many, many areas because of the oppression that we live through and
are living through, because of the issues that we share. Everything from
custody of your children to serving in the military and all points in
between. Treatment in jails and other institutions. I would go right on
down the line. Our issues are so much the same, and they are for the
same reasons, because people just don't understand or agree with the way
that we live. That, it just all makes so much sense, and we have been
together for so long to
Oh yeah.
I really do. And I think—
I think sometimes politically they are scared that transgender people will make it that much harder, to bring on the issue I think the—
So what we are talking about is legal legislation and laws, and it all boils down to the fact that gays and lesbians say that, "We have been working on this a lot longer than you have and we have vested interests and we are not willing to give up those vested interests." And that is very true, very true. They have been out longer than transgender people because they have been able to be out longer than transgender people, most people consider it less of a crime or distinction to go and do something in your own bedroom than to put on another genders clothes another sexes clothes and go walking outside and try to use a restroom. So, they don't think it is impinging upon your freedom as much. So yeah, they have been out, they have enjoyed their freedoms a lot longer than we have, because we are more persecuted, that doesn't mean in any way, shape or form that we should not be part of the movement, a large part of the movement, or now that things are happening for us, that they should forget the fact that we were there all along.
How is that different from the South. This is the Northeastern gay political structure.
Yeah, when I moved down here in the South, I found that coming down
here, I found cliques of people; gays, lesbians, bisexual, fetish
people, straight people—
Right.
It is that type of discrimination that has been left over; I think in the South that I noticed right away. And then I started to get involved in the gay and lesbian community down here. I found an abysmal absence in the transgender community, but did find a lot of people in the transgender community down here that were starving for information, eager to come out, wanting do something, wanting to participate but not knowing how. They had no idea.
Why would you come to—was it just snow? Why would you—If I were a transgender living in the Northeast where I knew it was somewhat progressive, I sure as hell wouldn't come into the Southeast just to avoid snow. I might go to San Francisco.
The point is, is that it was business for me.
It was purely business?
This is the fateful thing, it was purely business for me. And sometimes one thing leads to another, but business has been terrible in upstate New York, in my profession, I do contracting as a plumbing contractor. So, I moved down here, I moved the entire business down here. Because I saw more work.
Do you do residential?
No, no residential, only commercial, big commercial jobs. So schools and
things like that. So, there was just no work up there, so I moved down
here. And brought the whole company down after twenty five years in
business and all of my superintendents came down and everybody came
down. We were happy to move down
How big, you many contractors, or whatever do you have? How many supervisors.
I have six supervisors and they are all capable of running at least one job. Some of them, a couple of them two or three jobs.
And they just took their families and everything and came on down?
Yeah, yeah. One of them is so good; I still fly him back and forth every weekend from Syracuse to here.
Really?
He lives in Syracuse. He has been with me for so long.
And are you out in the workplace as a transgender individual?
Yeah, everybody at work knows, I have a very liberal [pause] Liberal, ha
ha. [said with tongue in cheek sarcasm] I have a very honest employment
policy
You just said goodbye, or they just left?
Well, I explain it to all of my people when they come in. When they come up and ask me about it, I say, "This is the situation, we have been through situations up north where we have had people who have been working for us and they were of color. And, they didn't work out, so we have had to let them go, or lay them off, or we didn't have any work and we had to lay them off. And, we were sued because somebody, one of the supervisors in the field, or one of the people under him were cracking black jokes on a job site while they were putting in pipe. Or they were casting aspersions or saying the word 'Nigger' or calling them 'Chief' if he was Native American or something like that, and they took that back to the fair practices department in the New York State Labor Department and we found ourselves in a conference room with the state labor department explaining as an owner that I didn't have the slightest idea what they were talking about. And after finding out that my people did something like that, that I am responsible for, I would have to go in and say, 'look this is the situation, I understand exactly what you mean, if you think that we have to add to our policy, we will do it, whatever you think will help, this was an unfortunate incident that I will try not to allow to happen, and I tell everybody in the company that discrimination does not fly, but I can't be there every moment on every job.'"
You can't watch every body.
Right, so "I myself am in a minority and I understand the way that that is and in two of those incidences, the only two that I have gone through fortunately, because of my policy, both of those times I was exonerated, the company was exonerated and actually, it was applauded for it's policy." And that was fine. And I tell the people, "That was great, but I had to hire a lawyer and that lawyer had to sit there in the meeting room."
While you did all of the work it sounds like!
"And that costs $5,000.00 and when the lawyer called me up and said we won, I didn't feel as though I won, because I had lost $5,000.00 and to put it in your terms, $5,000.00—if we make 5% profit on a job that we do that is a school that costs $4 million then I am satisfied. But, 5% of the work that we do is $100,000.00 worth of plumbing. Now that is at least four-luxury homes worth of plumbing from top to bottom. If you are willing to go out and do four luxury homes, fixtures, piping plumbing, inspections and all the things that are included in that for free, for me. Then I will let you discriminate on the job. But if you aren't willing to do that, then you are taking money out of my pocket, you are taking money out the company's pocket, and therefore taking it out of the pocket of the people that you work with, and that doesn't make sense, and I won't tolerate that."
You break it down in a financial way and it encourages diversity.
It puts it down in a way that they can understand.
Right
If you are willing to do this for me, and watch your tongue, then we will progress and you'll be better for it, and so will your buddy next to you.
And so that is how you encourage—
Right, right.
Okay, okay, cool. I didn't realize how large the company that you work for was. Or the one that you own, excuse me. Let me see here. So, we have kind of spoken about this and it always this way when your write. What would you say, and I am sure that something like this has probably happened. What would you say when you are in a crowd or maybe—well you get discrimination in the gay community and a gay person or a lesbian person comes up and says something like this saying, "Transgender people are simply gay men or lesbian women who are ashamed of their orientation and therefore feel that they must be the opposite gender to be legitimate and validated in the mainstream."
I would tell them that transgender people are gay men and lesbian.
Sometimes
And straight and bisexual and intersex and who they have sex with has nothing to do with them being transgender. That's—to them—that's secondary a point in their persona and their spirit as it is to a gay or lesbian about how they dress and how they express themselves. I think in the gay and lesbian community, their first persona non grata and concern is who their sexual partner is and the sex of that sexual partner and that is justified because that is how they feel, that is how—
Yeah, and this entire interview has basically been answering that question.
Yeah, yeah—
But, it is impossible to go up to every ass and explain that entire thing.
Right, right.
You would be sitting at a table forever.
There you go, it comes up again. I just think that we have a lot of education to do in the gay and lesbian community too, to some degree because there is a lot of acceptance there.
We know a lot more than the average person in society [concerning human sexuality] and yet we are pretty ignorant. I know that I am still learning myself.
I wouldn't call it ignorant. I would just call it an opportunity to learn. You know.
I am not offended by the term ignorant. It just means that you need to be educated on an issue.
Yeah, okay.
So, you were involved with organizations in the ones you founded, I guess EON in New York State. Did you keep that Acronym when you came down here? Did you start and EON Chapter in North Carolina?
Nope, nope.
Have you started anything like that, or have you just—
That is a one of a kind. I never finished with EON, what I should have
done was tell you that we grew into a group that has now been around for
25 years, we went into a situation about ten years ago with a
Presbyterian Parrish that allowed us to take over the third floor of
their parish house. It was an old, it was a very historic building in
downtown Syracuse and we completely renovated it. It was something that
anybody would have been totally proud of and we had our meetings there,
and then we went out to dinner, because we had a wonderful restaurant
that we went out to in Syracuse that was call Tu Tu Venue that was rated
number three in Out Magazine as a top Gay and Lesbian
Is Lesley Feinburg a well-known transgender activist?
Oh, yeah, Lesley is a tremendous—he was the author of Stone Butch Blues, the author of Transgender Warriors, I mean, a really old, old activist that had been around for a long time. Lived in Buffalo, lived through the hard times, gotten beaten up, thrown in jail a number of times, just a wonderful person and still a model activist in many ways.
Feinburg. F-E-I-N-B-U-R-G?
Yeah, That was the first Marshall. The first Transgender Marshall of any
Pride Parade in American. Any of them. All of them. Those are the type
of gains that we main with EON in such a short period of time. The most
depressing thing about EON was that we ended up after leaving the third
floor, we ended up not only having meetings at the Gay and Lesbian
Community Center, the GLBT Community Center, Syracuse Pride GLBT Center,
but we helped found it. We were a group that went in there and paid
That sounds very familiar, when we were in the Kerr/Lee Community Center, that is exactly what you asked for.
And the transition, girls going out and the guys going out after the meetings, after the support sessions and going and hitting the clubs in Syracuse, the gay and lesbian clubs, the amount of interweaving for the first time, was really, really taking hold, it was great to see. People were getting to know people so well. People that were Heterosexual were not afraid to go where gay and lesbians went and were not afraid to participate in a Pride Parade. They were not afraid to march with them and were not—Heterosexual men that had been cross dressers all of their lives, never even cried, they broke down and cried at Pride Events and they weren't afraid to go and hug a gay man. They did not have those inhibitions and gay men and lesbians begin to understand transgender people and what they were about and it was probably super rewarding.
The most disappointing part of the whole thing was that just before I
left Syracuse, they had a Human Rights Law for Onondaga County, they had
already achieved a non-discrimination policy in the city of Syracuse,
but that was well before EON became active enough to be included, and
the Stonewall Committee of Syracuse in Onondaga Country decided to go
for a Human Rights Law in Onondaga County. And we petitioned and we
petitioned and we petitioned with the lesbians who were in charge of the
Stonewall group and the major political activism group in that county
and had very much connection. There were a lot
When did this happen? Was this in the—
Oh, this was no more than five years ago.
Okay, so this was very recently—
Yeah, very recently. So, here we had been working all of this time up to this point, only to be rejected by the Stonewall Committee up in Syracuse from being included. And it was seriously considered and we went to the legislators, and we went to the reading and the voting and we had twenty five transgender people there from EON and other groups to speak to the county legislators and to give testimony and it didn't win. It didn't go. So, it is okay to be gay and lesbian in Syracuse, and Onondaga County, but it is not okay to be transgender.
So you saw that that was very applicable when you came down here? You recognized that the groundwork had to be laid if you had the opportunity—
Yeah, yeah.
To be more integrated from the beginning.
I saw all of this discrimination down here against gays and lesbians and I went back and did a comparison in my own mind. This discrimination that they have experienced, or not so much discrimination, but their ability to be able to
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
We are back; this is the third side of the interview with Angela Brightfeather. The number for this tape is 01.24.02-AB.3.
So, when I came down here, I saw this road that I had traveled before,
and I said, "How fortuitous"
You had a chance to intervene.
Here, I have actually done this, I have been through it, I know this road, I know what can happen, it is like being able to see into the future, and I can have the ability to be able to bring out the celebration of everybody coming out together and enjoy that for the first time as I did—it was always a fight in upstate New York to try to get and gain credibility, it's like coming down here and everybody's trying to gain credibility, well great.
We can do it together.
We can do it together; we can show everybody else in the whole dog gone country what it's all about. That yeah, if you do it together, it is more effective and things can happen quicker, we have that ability here to be able to do that and work together as the GLBT community. Unlike many states, I see a little bit in Georgia and Atlanta and the City of Atlanta. I see that. A bastion that is surrounded by what would be considered redneck territory, but a bastion where the gay, GLBT community is working together. And there are actually transgender people running for, for—
Offices
Political offices there.
Wow, how many transgender politicians do you know of?
Well, last year, a good friend of mine, Dallas Denny, she ran for a council person in Atlanta, and this year, I know someone who is going to be running for another position on the board of education in one of the Atlanta district area schools and I have known Karen Karin in New Hampshire, who ran for Congress on the Republican ticket, because it was the only one available at the time, it was empty, a strong Democratic area, and no one wanted to oppose a Democrat, so she joined the Republican Party, just to get on the ticket, and put up a bit of a fight. Dawn Wilson in Kentucky, Louisville. She is going to be running for Congress in a couple of years and there's plenty of active transgender people out there and transsexuals, we have not covered them yet either.
Well, transsexuals are like today—
They are the forth or fifth group then?
Well, they are the group that—
That is transvestite, cross dresser, transsexuals—
Well, there is a group in there in between that—between the cross dressers and the transsexuals called the transgenderists—
Okay,
And transgenderists are people that live full time in the opposite gender of their sexual birth—
Without having the physical change—
Well, they can have all the physical changes accept sex reassignment surgery.
Okay, many hormones.
Hormones, beard removal, breast implants, the estrogen changes their body shape. You know sometimes dramatically. Plastic surgery, facial plastic surgery, hair implants, anything that they need.
Don't hormones often pose a health risk to many people?
Yes, they do. Some studies have been done on that. The incorrect use of hormones, which happens with a lot of street people now, that are working on the street. Street workers that are transsexual, tend to OD on hormones a lot. I don't mean killing themselves or taking too many hormones until they die. What they do is that they take hormones to get dramatic results and the dosages are so high that it plays all kinds of fun with their lymph nodes and things like that. Before you know it, you've got cancers here and cancers there and unless it is medically supervised under a program it can be extremely dangerous.
I have heard that female to males also experience an increased rate of heart disease—
That's right, yeah, yeah. Well, they have to undergo the stress that
males historically have had to undergo for all of those years.
You've talked about, you've talked about with me personally, you have mentioned to me a little bit about having bridges between the different communities and so forth another thing that you have touched on slightly, I know, that you feel pretty strongly about is the role of the members of the transgender community is spirituality.
Yeah. Historically, it is in every religion. It goes back to, it goes back to the first records of being gay, and the first records of being lesbian, and maybe before that.
Well, then what example would you see of transgender people being involved in Christianity. You said, they were involved in every religion, how about Christianity.
Let's see, Christianity. That is only two thousand and ten years old or
something, that's kind of a new thing.
But it has obviously been around, I am thinking of a transgender figure within Christianity.
Well, shamanism was invented as far as I know, on the steppes of Russia, thousands and thousands of years ago. Thousands of years ago.
Okay. I am not very familiar with religion in general, but I mean, when I think of shamanism, I think of Native American Tribes.
I think Christianity is coming about that way. There are churches that I can go to like the MCC church today.
Oh, sure.
I can enjoy praying and being spiritually out as much as I am being transgender out. I really, really do appreciate.
So, you are saying that transgender people have found acceptance in all of the major religions?
Well, before that I think that we were found in Native American Spiritual beliefs as Winkte –
Well, you were seen as special people from what I understand.
Yeah, yeah. I think that what happened is that gays have confiscated that, I will tell you
Okay
I really do, and I get that from a book called The Spirit in the Flesh and if you have ever read that book. It is a book by a gay man—
Now, what have gay men taken again?
It's a book by a gay man talking about, talking about. It is a book by a gay man who is trying to assess what life was like for people who lived in a different gender in Native American tribes.
Okay, and society is now thinking that these were gay men.
Right, right.
When in reality, they were transgender men, or transgender people.
Right, right what he is doing is he is saying that these people were gay before they were transgender.
Okay.
But that is not the case.
This is so funny, because as a gay man, he may be more educated, I never made a distinction, I always thought that it was a transgender issue more than a gay issue.
It is natural to think, it is natural to think that if I grew up today, and maybe this is partisan on my part. But, it is natural for me to think as I grew up today, it going to be the same way as when somebody grew up 2000 years ago in many respects. So, you know, intellectually and physically and mentally.
It is called a bad historian, but yes
Yeah, so it—culture proves that—in that culture has always had and civilizations, has always had their issuances into manhood and womanhood. And at those indoctrinations, at those periods in their life where they become fertile human beings and able to produce other human beings, there is usually that step and that step in many, many civilizations had a choice, you had a choice. In the Lakota and the Navaho—
This choice was to identify as a man or a woman?
Yeah, in the Navaho belief, if a child was believed to be Nadle which is a transgender person in that religion, or in that spiritual belief, the parents knew about it just as much as my parents knew when they found a catch of clothes.
They had an outlet.
They could tell by the way the child was—how he wanted to dress, how the
child expressed themselves at the age of 4,5,6,7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and
right up to 13 when the child became sexually developed and was able to
produce and then they had to make that choice. And they did not want to
force the child. They didn't even have names for children back then.
They didn't call them Bob and Joe, they called them the second born or
the first-born or the oldest or the youngest. They didn't want to lay
labels on them back then. They gave them titles in accordance to the
status that they were in the family.
And the arrow would be male, the bow would be female.
No, the bow and arrow would be female and the bowl would—
Oh, bowl! I see.
The bowl would be feminine. If it was a bowl, they would take the child
out, if the child wasn't dressed as a female already, they child would
be dressed as a female and be introduced as the entire family and the
tribe with a new name. The Naming Ceremony. And the people that gives
the names to all children in the Lakota Sioux tribes and the sub tribes
and any other tribes and sometimes other tribes are transgender people,
people that are transgender, and that is a special thing that they do,
they give a holy name to every child that is born. The parents bring the
child to a Lakota Winkte and the child spends some time with the Winkte
gives them their name that only three people know about, themselves, the
child and the creator. And that is the direct link between the creator
and the child. When the child prays, he invokes that name
And that includes sexually?
Yeah, because they were just—
Because of the passive appearance.
Well, yeah, you would not think that in a civilized society, but this was not a civilized society. This was where the males usually slept all together in a long house or a tepee, the single males of birthing age, who were being able to give birth, at sexual maturity, would sleep together in the same general area. Where they were separated from women—
Which would encourage sexual activity anyway.
Right, so it would encourage sexual activity. So, actually, the ones that were female, or looked female, were more attractive to them. It was more less filled with guilt [translation for future readers, "There was less guilt"]. So they got really, really horny they had an out. And not only that, they [the transgender people] served a special purpose. People who were transgender and had the ability to be able to have all of the physical characteristics of the male, because there were no hormones or sex reassignment surgery.
A lot of the gay community would not say that they would have to be
really, really horny.
You are right, you are right. It could just be.
We are telling this too a straight audience and in any kind of sexually segregated community, gay men are very well aware of the fact that there are plenty of ambiguous men or men who don't mind having same sex sexual encounters. I am putting my own perspective in, but—
No, that is true, that is very true. When the—one of the advantages that transgender people had early, early on—and I am talking about thousands and thousands and thousands of years ago at the beginning of civilization, when people, didn't have horses and they didn't ride horses to make war or capture slaves or to do things like that, they had to travel on foot. But men were always taught to go out and hunt. To bring in the food like that and kill. Women were the gatherers. They knew all of the flowers and the plants and how to raise them, and the herbal remedies. So now you had men, who were raised as women, and knew all of the herbal remedies and how to take care of illness and sickness and knew all of those secrets that men didn't know. Yet, you had someone who was able to run and had the physical ability to keep up with men and even fight if necessary to defend themselves. This was a very valuable person. This was a person that after a battle was allowed to go into the battlefield and pick up the wounded and drag them back and take care of them. This was somebody that was invaluable, and they knew the medicines and they were men biologically. So now they became the witch doctors, they became the doctors of the tribes.
The shamans —
The shamans, right. They got into it deeper and deeper and deeper and when shamanism evolved, a great many of the shamans were transgender in nature.
So, you notice this kind of spirituality in a lot of transgender people?
It seems that almost transgender I talk with—I am not a very spiritual
person—but a lot of transgender people seem to have a lot of
spirituality around them, or a belief system related to spirituality. I
think that they are in touch with the fact that they are special, but a
lot of them don't know how special. They don't know how much they—how
powerful that they are. I think that they gay and lesbian community in
many respects has learned—and the bisexual community—has learned how
powerful they are, over the last 15 to 20 years. Both politically and
otherwise, with gaining their rights they know their way a little bit
better. Transgender people are just not aware of how powerful they are
and how far back those roots grow to having power. I can empty a men's
bathroom faster than anybody has ever seen, when I am cross dressed
Right, which brings me back to the idea, you know, talking about some day when you were talking about one of your first transgender parties or whatever, you were out, you were going to conquer the world, and so forth. So what do you see now that you have passed a half a century, where do you see the transgender community in the United States or the south east maybe even ten years from now, twenty years from now. Now that you are more in the position of the person that you were speaking to.
Well, I see the southeast and the central part of America being the ones
that are, the areas that are the last to come out. I think that it is
similar to all of the other movements before this—
Right, right.
So, we are at the point where we are talking about having our own March on Washington.
A transgender March on Washington
Yeah, or having at least a Transgender veterans march to the wall. [Angela is presumably talking about the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, DC] Now how long ago did they do that with gays and lesbians?
They might have had that as part of the Millennium March or the other marches, but I don't know, because I didn't participate in that.
But we are that far behind. In all other respects, I think that we are as mature as gays and lesbians in our thoughts and our actions. The problem is being able to be together as much as we should be. Being able to consort.
You mean transgender people?
Being able to consort.
I think that you were doing that at those Marches on Washington, but you were doing it with the GLB—the Gays and Lesbians and Bisexuals.
I think we are doing it more now, because—
Independently—
How long have you lived here?
In North Carolina?
Yeah.
Twenty-Seven Years.
So, how many times did you ever see at a Pride March, and they had Pride Marches before I got here in North Carolina, I started living here three years ago. They had them in Charlotte, and I think one in Asheville—
All over, in Wilmington.
And, of course, Holly Boswell marched in Asheville with the pride group there. But—
How many have I seen?
How many have you seen? How many Pride Parades have you seen around here that actually have had a transgender group march in a parade, or be in the parade, or have a booth?
I was not always watching the transgender floats, but I know that this year [2001] that there was one.
Right, right.
But, I don't, I really don't know.
And the year before there was one.
Right.
And then when they had Pride Charlotte [Charlotte Pride] we were speaking down there too. So,—
You are having a more and more defined presence within the community.
Exactly, and that's the whole secret. That is the whole reason for me
being down here. That's the alternative reason besides business. Where
there is a vacuum, nature will fill it up. I am the biggest damn plug
you have ever seen in terms of transgender people go. I am incessant; I
am devoted to the transgender community and what it stands for, and what
it can do, and how it can change the world. I am totally in love with
the fact that I have been born this way and that it is a gift and that
it goes back to when time was never recorded and that it is special. I
feel very gifted and I feel very powerful at times, and I have to get
rid of that, so it comes out in energy that makes me
It is causing a change in the community I think. I remember that I was
sitting around with some other gay men and I was sitting back and I
said, "Are you increasingly getting the realization that we are becoming
the status quo?"
Yeah!
Good old-fashioned sodomy is becoming the mainstream, and all of these other groups—
When I cam down here, my first contact in the gay community was Jim Baxter. I had that—now a lot of people—
That would probably be, that is a very negative thing for a transgender—
Well, a lot of people. Well, that is an indication of who I am. A lot of
people would have just folded up their tent and said, "Well, I am going
to go and do my own thing." But, instead, I am very honest about it. I
am very honest about what was
Right.
And I am not going to slip back for you and I am not going to take two steps back and I am just as good as you are and I want the same laws that you have got. And that is what I brought down with me. The defeat in Syracuse and the ability to not make it happen here, not have it happen here and work towards that goal, by bringing people closer together, and it's going to be a hard job. It's always been a hard job, it has never been easy, but the rewards are phenomenal. It isn't like somebody is going to recognize you at a dinner and say, "Thank you very much." Because you don't get that.
An activist never gets that.
Right, it's in the faces of the people that begin to understand each other when they are introduced together by the actions that you start.
The second [group of people] that I met was Equality North Carolina. Having so much experience with the gays and the lesbians in Syracuse—
You knew where to go—
I knew exactly where to go. I went right to ENC where the other supposed
activists are in the Gay and Lesbian Community and, I said, "What are
you doing? Can I
Yeah, because a lot of the folks there are not very in your face.
Nope, no and I understand that—
Oh, yeah—
There is a need for everybody.
Well, I have had the same problem as a gay activist by being "in your face".
There is a need for everybody to do whatever they can. The fight is on all fronts; it is not just in one on one relationships, and meeting people and convincing them. So, I am one of those people who right from the beginning of time in my community, I was a shaker and a mover. And, I still am, and I told them, I said, "Well, how many board members do you have?" The said, "Sixteen"
Wow, that's a big board!
I said, "Wow, that's great, how many transgender people do you got on it?" Well, first of all, I asked them, "Do you have a transgender inclusive policy or mission statement?" And they said, "Yes, we just passed it four months ago. And I said, "Great!"
Was this Ian Palmquist that you were speaking to?
It was Ian and the person before Jo Wyrick, and I forgot here name now.
But, I said, "How many board members?" They said, "Sixteen" and I said,
"How many TG [transgender] people are board members?" And they said,
"Well, nobody, we do not know anybody and we have not found anybody."
And I said, "Well, now you have." Just like that, I said, "Well, now you
have. You've got no
Okay, I as going to ask you that, I was on the net today and I was like, what in the world is intersex? That is a new group.
It is not a new group. It is people that. It's evidence that sexually there is something, something equal to gender. There is a third sex. There is a sex that is ambiguous at times, that nobody knows what it is because it has XXX or XXY chromosomes instead of XX or XY. It has an extra chromosome in there on one side or the other. And there are millions of people in America like that.
That is a true hermaphrodite?
Yeah, well, there's true hermaphrodites and then there's non-true hermaphrodites indisputably cases born where—
Of both genders—
No, of both sexes. Indisputable cases of where males are born with
totally, totally hardly any—almost inverted penises and mistaken for as
females at
I was like, whoa!
No, I am sorry, one out of every 2,000 are born with ambiguous genitalia and we call that infant mutilation. Happening today.
So, the solution with the transgender community would be just to let it go, let that individual develop as they will. Don' reassign—
Let them make up their own mind, there is plenty of time.
Which makes plenty of sense.
But they don't do that.
A young, twenty year old parent would think, "Oh, we have to make this decision?"
Well, they are forced into it by the doctors—the doctors want to give more care, they have to go in deeper this and that, it's too much trouble.
That is truly insane.
Yeah, but this is what is happening every single day in America, see.
So, when you hear about things like that, it's not over. When you hear
about about the Peter Oiler case it is far fro over. When you hear about
my friend getting killed in Jacksonville, shot in the back of the head
when she gets out of her car, it's not over. There is still so much to
do than just educate gays and lesbians, to accept transgender people.
The gays and lesbians have got to do a little bit of the work
themselves, and it is really disheartening to see groups like the Human
Rights Campaign keeping us out of legislation like ENDA. It is critical
for us to be about us to be able to come out. It is critical for us to
be able to live our lives
They were killed.
They were murdered. They were slaughtered by the thousands. Well, that is exactly what would happen to transgender people too. If they tried that, they would be losing their jobs by the thousands. Families would be starving by the thousands, you know. There are all kinds of ramifications.
It is easy to say, but much harder to put into practice.
They need help, they need help to come out. It can't be just one on one
and people like Angela Brightfeather starting groups. It has to be gays
and lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people, intersex people, people of
color, people of other national origins and naturalized citizens and
citizens by earning it and by immigration. They have to join together,
and they have to understand that the
Maybe even a majority of the gay—
I don't know. It's hard for me to say.
It is hard for me to say as a gay man.
It is hard to say as a gay man. I know, it is hard to—nobody has every really ever done.
Because there is a lot of—
I know, it is hard to put it—nobody has ever really done—
Because there is a lot of—
How do you really quantify yourself in terms of—
Exactly
In terms of gender, are you 50/50 are you 60/40 or are you 70/30?
So, in terms of masculine and feminine traits within ones personality, I mean as a gay man, I have accepted that a certain part of me that is feminine, but I don't think about it, because I just know that it is—
Well, there is a certain part of everybody that is feminine—
Of course—
But to what degree?
Queer people are just more likely to come to grips with that.
Right
And say—we just take it for granted—
And might even express it occasionally.
Oh sure
And make fun of it and have a good time with it and enjoy it, see. You know what I am talking about, you know. The big problem is that we haven't in the gay and lesbian community today and in the straight community, people that don't want to let transgender people to be free because they feel as though they are threatened by them. And, in that, the heterosexual community and the gay and lesbian community in at least in the form of the Human Rights Campaign are one in the same to us. They are one in the same. We associate more, politically with bisexuals—
I can see that too.
Who are constantly blamed for sitting on the fence. Historically blamed for sitting on the fence by heterosexuals, gays and lesbians and not making the decision as to what they are and what sex that they prefer to have sex with. We sit with them closer and—
That is totally understandable.
Well, what is not understandable is that groups like the Human Rights Campaign don't understand that. But, they will allow bisexuals to fraternize and be in their legislation, because it has to do with sex, but not gender identity—
Do you thing that the Human Rights Campaign, that it is not that they don't understand it, but it is that they are trying too, you know I am not saying this is good or bad, they understand the concept of transgender and how it is tied in, but they are more worried and trying to be politically savvy and seeing transgender people as a liability to potential passage?
They are not on board the boat—
That is just kind of what they say.
They are not on board the boat. The boat contains all of us, and they
have always pledged that and they have always met it, I think. And
taking the political aspects out of it and putting them to one side for
a second—just for a moment—there are plenty of people in the human
rights campaign that I know personally, locally that you know, that are
all for transgender inclusion. But, there are certain people—maybe they
are old guys from New York Mattachine Society
I know one of the Washington, DC folks. Frank Kameny is still alive.
Personally, I think that Elizabeth Birch is one of those people. As much
as she professes to be open, as much as she could do, she doesn't take a
stand and do it. If I were the president or director, national director
of the HRC, I would turn around to the board of directors and say,
"Look, we have enough support here and we have enough support here, and
[we have] most of the board of directors, but we have got this big
pocket of money here that is contributed to us and if we include
transgender people and fight for them also, and together with them, for
inclusion, we are going to lose this money, and that is going to cut
down on our lobbying activity and that is going to hurt us as an
organization, and I don't know if transgender people are rich enough or
[if] there are enough of them to be able to make up that difference.
Because if we include them, we would expect them to join and be a part
of it, you know. And she doesn't have the courage to take that stand,
and I blame her for that. I blame her for not having that courage when I
have to go out in front of people that I don't know and I have to accept
them and so do you, every single day. Why can't she? Is it for political
reality? Is it for the ability to pass a law that frees only part of the
gay and lesbian community and not all of it, especially the gender
diverse part of it? Is it because
Right.
And that was after we picketed their banquets, we called Barney Frank a
total asshole in front of gays and lesbians, which they didn't like,
because there is their hero and here are these transgender people
telling Barney Frank that he is everything accept a racist and, you
know. And that was more embarrassing than losing the legislation, I
think
They let them agitate—
Yeah, so it didn't hurt to, it didn't cost them any money, it didn't
take them any work to mention this in their mission statement, but them
when I went to them this last summer, and I met with the HRC at the
national level, and I said, "Look, I've got an idea, I am the head of
the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition I am on the board of
directors and I am also the head of their National
Do you see this as a continual ploy to exclude transgender people—
Of course it is, she knows that it is an impossible thing for people to do without—
You can always say educate more.
Right, so we said, "Well, okay" Well, I said, I told these two people from HRC, I said, "When she said that, that hit me right in the heart, because I have been dedicated to this movement for a long time and I have been educating a lot of people out there and I have seen a lot of progress, but she was right. If she wants us to educate more, then let's go to where we began with as far as acceptance, and let's go to the gay and lesbian community and let's start educating them first. Let's get them, as far as I am concerned, there are a lot of gays and lesbians and bisexuals that need to be educated about transgender lives, and what their issues are, and what it's all about." And they said, "Well, okay." And I said, "Starting with the gays and lesbians in that community and bisexuals, why don't you allow us to be able to take transgender people that are the pillar of our community and speak at the HRC dinners as keynote speakers? And you could see both—
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
All right, we are on the forth side of the interview with Angela Brightfeather the number for this side is 01.24.02-AB.4 and so we are back to the HRC thing and you were asking for a place at the table—
Yeah, and I laid it right out in front of them. I went to the national
board of the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition at the meeting
where we were lobbying
They considered—
They considered their dinners to be—to having to have the elements of entertainment and the keynote speakers had to be famous, they had to be notables in the community, that were recognized so people would come to the dinners.
I have been to a few HRC dinners and they weren't that entertaining.
They wanted recognition of the speaker, and they wanted it to be entertaining. Well, you know, Barney Frank was here in Raleigh this year, and he got booed by a few of us, but none the less, and called names, but none the less I fully agree with the fact that Barney Frank is entertaining. Because many of his views are very entertaining to me. Especially when he talks about the age old discourse of transgender people wanting to be—and to have the same rights as to be able to go into the shower with genetic females, that remark. [Chris gasps] Yeah, I find that very entertaining, because I hear the same, I heard the same language twenty years ago about gay males in the military or who were showering in high schools and why they could not come out, because nobody could bend over and grab the soap. That old joke.
Right, right, it is still around, but dying.
Yeah, but now we have got a gay male, the head gay male of America, saying the same old shit about us. I was sitting there and was just going, "Well, there just shows you the progress we have made, you know"
They exact same kind of discrimination.
But, so, he is entertaining at the same time. He is very notable and can draw a lot of people into a banquet and he did.
And make a lot of money.
And make money that is right, for the cause. So, I think that there is famous and entertaining transgender people out there, I just don't think that the Human Rights Campaign knows who they are. I think that there are plenty of famous transgender people out there. I think that the person, I thought and it would have been wonderful if he hadn't died. I thought that the head of the FBI at one time—
Oh, Hoover—
J. Edgar Hoover would have—and everybody knows that he was a cross dresser.
Was he a transgender, or was he gay?
He was a cross dresser—
But didn't his lover, wasn't he a part of that?
He was cross-dressing before he was having sex with men. I guarantee he was cross-dressing like me at four years old. I guarantee it. So, if he decided to have sex with men, then that was an afterthought coming from being transgender as far as I am concerned and he would have been an extremely effective speaker.
He probably would have never come to speak. [said with teasing sarcasm] But he would have been a good speaker.
No, but there you go. There are people that are transgender—
Who could be very good speakers.
Who have notable interest—
Just because they are transgender, doesn't exclude them from being—
—And could be very entertaining too.
Of course.
How about the person who invented LOTUS ? She is a transsexual transitioned; she used to work for IBM and actually invented LOTUS.
Is that a guy to girl or girl to guy?
Guy to girl, male to female. And, there is somebody that every computer geek, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender person knows about, she literally invented the science of LOTUS and the language that is used in computers. She is famous for this, she had a patent for it, she retired. She is like the Bill Gates of Transsexuals.
But instead of exploring the idea of transgender people who could be notable, they just gave you a flat no, which was so frustrating, because you were like, "You could have at least given me a chance to give you someone who was notable." Well, Angela, this has been a great interview. Do you have any closing arguments—well, no arguments, but do you have any closing ideas to finish out the process?
Well, I think, okay. Activism—I was watching Max Bickford the other
night, and they were relating to the Vietnam war and activism back there
and he came up
Angela Thank you very much.
You are welcome.
END OF INTERVIEW