Episodes
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This week, we’re covering Leelah Alcorn who was an American transgender girl whose suicide attracted international attention. She was born on November 15th, 1997. Alcorn had posted a suicide note to her Tumblr blog, writing about societal standards affecting transgender people and expressing the hope in that blog posting that her death would create a dialogue about discrimination, abuse and lack of support for transgender people. I distinctly remembered this post when it hit social media, and was deeply moved by how expressive and eloquent Leelah was in her plea.
Assigned male at birth, she was given the name Joshua Alcorn and raised in Ohio by a family affiliated with the Churches of Christ movement. At age 14, she came out as transgender to her parents, Carla and Doug Alcorn, who refused to accept her female gender identity and expression. When she was 16, they denied her request to undergo transition treatment, instead sending her to a Christian-based conversion therapy camp with the intention of convincing her to reject her gender identity and accept her gender as assigned at birth. After she revealed her attraction toward males to her classmates, her parents removed her from school and revoked her access to social media. In her suicide note, Alcorn cited loneliness and alienation as key reasons for her decision to end her life and blamed her parents for causing these feelings. She committed suicide by walking out in front of oncoming traffic on the Interstate 71 highway.
Alcorn arranged for her suicide note to be posted online several hours after her death, and it soon attracted international attention across mainstream and social media outlets. LGBT rights activists called attention to the incident as evidence of the problems faced by transgender youth, while vigils were held in her memory in the United States and United Kingdom. Petitions were formed calling for the establishment of "Leelah's Law", a ban on conversion therapy in the U.S., which received a supportive response from United States 44th President Barack Obama. Within a year, the city of Cincinnati had criminalised conversion therapy. Alcorn's parents were criticized for misgendering Leelah in comments that they made to the media, while LGBT rights activist Dan Savage blamed them for their child's death with social media users subjecting them to harassment online. Ultimately, they defended their refusal to accept their own child's identity, and their use of conversion therapy, by pointing to their Christian values.
LifeWhen Alcorn was announced male at birth, she was given the name Joshua Ryan Alcorn. She eventually rejected this forename, and in her suicide note signed herself "(Leelah) Josh Alcorn". She had several siblings in her family. Describing herself as being raised in a conservative Christian environment, she and her family attended the Northeast Church of Christ in Cincinnati, and had been featured in a profile of that church published in a 2011 article in The Christian Chronicle. As of 2014, the year Leelah took her own life, the family resided in Kings Mills, Ohio.
What follows is from Leelah’s suicide note:
“When I was 14, I learned what transgender meant and cried of happiness. After 10 years of confusion I finally understood who I was. I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn't make mistakes, that I am wrong. If you are reading this, parents, please don't tell this to your kids. Even if you are Christian or are against transgender people don't ever say that to someone, especially your kid. That won't do anything but make them hate themselves. That's exactly what it did to me."
According to that note, Alcorn had felt "like a girl trapped in a boy's body" since she was four, and came to identify as a transgender girl from the age of fourteen, when she became aware of the term. After revealing her identity to her mother, she was sent to Christian conversion therapists, but Alcorn later related that here she only encountered "more Christians" telling her that she was "selfish and wrong" and "should look to God for help." Aged sixteen, she requested that she be allowed to undergo transition treatment, but was denied permission without further discussion: in her words, quote: "I felt hopeless, that I was just going to look like a man in drag for the rest of my life. On my 16th birthday, when I didn't receive consent from my parents to start transitioning, I cried myself to sleep."
That same year, Alcorn publicly revealed her attraction to males, as she believed that identifying as a gay male at that point would be a stepping stone to coming out as transgender at a later date. According to a childhood friend, Alcorn received a positive reception from many at Kings High School, although her parents were appalled. In Alcorn's words, quote: "They felt like I was attacking their image, and that I was an embarrassment to them. They wanted me to be their perfect little straight Christian boy, and that's obviously not what I wanted." They removed her from the school, and enrolled her as an eleventh grader at an online school, Ohio Virtual Academy.
According to Alcorn, her parents cut her off from the outside world for five months as they denied her access to social media and many forms of communication. She described this as a significant contributing factor towards her suicide. At the end of the school year, they returned her phone to her and allowed her to regain contact with her friends, although by this time – according to Alcorn – her relationship with many of them had become strained and she continued to feel isolated.
Two months prior to her death, Alcorn sought out help on the social media site Reddit, asking users whether the treatment perpetrated by her parents was considered child abuse. There, she revealed that while her parents had never physically assaulted her, they quote: “always talked to me in a very derogatory tone" and "would say things like 'You'll never be a real girl' or 'What're you going to do, fuck boys?' or 'God's going to send you straight to hell'. These all made me feel awful about myself, I was Christian at the time so I thought that God hated me and that I didn't deserve to be alive." Further, she explained, quote: "I tried my absolute hardest to live up to their standards and be a straight male, but eventually I realized that I hated religion and my parents." On Reddit, Alcorn also disclosed that she was prescribed increasing dosages of the anti-depressant Prozac. In concluding her Reddit post, she wrote, quote: "Please help me, I don't know what I should do and I can't take much more of this."
Alcorn's computer was recovered near the site of her suicide. It contained conversations showing that she had planned to jump off the bridge that crosses Interstate 71, days before the incident, but then contacted a crisis hotline and, as told to a friend, quote: "basically cried my eyes out for a couple of hours talking to a lady there". Everything leading up to the day she took her own life illustrates that this was a young person in a lot of pain, desperately seeking a path to relief.
DeathPrior to her death on December 28, 2014, Alcorn had scheduled for her suicide note to be automatically posted on her Tumblr account at 5.30pm. In the note, she stated her intention to end her life, commenting:
“I have decided I've had enough. I'm never going to transition successfully, even when I move out. I'm never going to be happy with the way I look or sound. I'm never going to have enough friends to satisfy me. I'm never going to have enough love to satisfy me. I'm never going to find a man who loves me. I'm never going to be happy. Either I live the rest of my life as a lonely man who wishes he were a woman or I live my life as a lonelier woman who hates herself. There's no winning. There's no way out. I'm sad enough already, I don't need my life to get any worse. People say "it gets better" but that isn't true in my case. It gets worse. Each day I get worse. That's the gist of it, that's why I feel like killing myself. Sorry if that's not a good enough reason for you, it's good enough for me.”
She expressed her wish that all of her possessions and money be donated to a transgender advocacy charity, and called for issues surrounding gender identity to be taught in schools, in the hopes of providing an easier path through education, to relief. The note ended with the statement:
Quote: "My death needs to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look at that number and say "that's fucked up" and fix it. Fix society. Please."
A second post appeared shortly after; titled "Sorry", it featured an apology to her close friends and siblings for the trauma that her suicide would put them through, but also contained a message to her parents: quote: "Fuck you. You can't just control other people like that. That's messed up." An additional, handwritten suicide note reading quote "I've had enough" was found on her bed, but then thrown away by her mother after Ohio State Highway Patrol made a copy, as part of their investigation, opened immediately after her death.
In the early morning of December 28, police informed news sources that she had been walking southbound on Interstate 71 near Union Township when she was struck by a semi-trailer just before 2:30 am near the South Lebanon exit. She died at the scene. It is believed that Alcorn walked three to four miles from her parent’s house in Kings Mill, before being struck. Alcorn's body was transported to the Montgomery County coroner, where an autopsy was scheduled. The truck driver was uninjured in the incident.
Within 48 hours of the posting of her suicide note,
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This week, we’ll be taking a look at the esteemed Daughters of Bilitis. In concert with the Mattachine Society, this group led the birth of the modern queer rights movement.
The Daughters of Bilitis, also called the DOB or the Daughters, was the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the United States. The organization, formed in San Francisco in 1955, was conceived as a social alternative to lesbian bars, which were subject to frequent raids and ongoing police harassment. As the DOB gained members, their focus shifted to providing support to women who were afraid to come out. The DOB educated them about their rights, and about gay history, in general. Historian Lillian Faderman declared, "Its very establishment in the midst of witch-hunts and police harassment was an act of courage, since members always had to fear that they were under attack, not because of what they did, but merely because of who they were." Overall, the Daughters of Bilitis thrived for 14 years, becoming an educational resource for lesbians, gay men, researchers and mental health professionals.
BackgroundThe years after the end of World War II were some of the most morally strict in US history. Postwar anti-communist feelings quickly became associated with the personal secrets of people who worked for the US government. Congress began to require the registration of members of "subversive groups," which of course they alone were able to define, giving them a dangerous power in helping define morality of the day. In 1950, the State Department identified homosexuals as security risks, and what followed was a succession of more repressive acts that included the dismissal of federal, state and local government employees suspected of being homosexual; politically motivated police raids on gay bars all over the US and Canada; and even the enactment of laws prohibiting cross-dressing for men and women.
HistoryIn 1955, two women named Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon had been together as lovers for about three years when they complained to a gay male couple they knew that they did not know any other lesbians. The gay couple introduced Martin and Lyon to another lesbian couple, one of whom suggested they create a social club. In October 1955, eight women — four couples — met to provide each other with a social outlet. One of their priorities was to have a place to dance, as dancing with the same sex in a public place was illegal. Martin and Lyon recalled later, "Women needed privacy...not only from the watchful eye of the police, but from gaping tourists in the bars and from inquisitive parents and families." Although unsure of how exactly to proceed with the group, they began to meet regularly, quickly realized they should be organized, and swiftly elected Martin as president of the group. From the start, they had a clear focus to educate other women about lesbians, and reduce their self-loathing brought on by the socially repressive times.
The name of the newfound club was chosen in its second meeting. Bilitis is the name given to a fictional lesbian contemporary of Sappho, by the French poet Pierre Louÿs in his 1894 work The Songs of Bilitis in which Bilitis lived on the Isle of Lesbos alongside Sappho. The name was chosen for its relative obscurity--even Martin and Lyon did not know what it meant. "Daughters" was meant to evoke an association with other American social associations such as the Daughters of the American Revolution. Early DOB members felt they had to follow two seemingly contradictory approaches: trying to recruit interested potential members and at the same time, being secretive. Martin and Lyon justified the name, writing later, "If anyone asked us, we could always say we belong to a poetry club." They also designed a pin to wear to be able to identify with others, chose club colors and voted on a motto "Qui vive", French for "on alert". The organization ultimately filed a charter for non-profit corporation status in 1957, writing a description so vague, Phyllis Lyon wittily quipped, "it could have been a charter for a cat-raising club."
MissionWithin a year of its creation, most of the original eight participants were no longer part of the group, but their numbers had grown to 16, and they decided they wanted to be more than only a social alternative to bars. Historian Marcia Gallo writes "They recognized that many women felt shame about their sexual desires and were afraid to admit them. They knew that...without support to develop the self-confidence necessary to advocate for one's rights, no social change would be possible for lesbians."
By 1959, there were chapters of the DOB in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Rhode Island along with the original chapter in San Francisco. Upon arrival at a meeting, attendees would be greeted at the door. In a show of good faith, the greeter would say, "I'm so and so. Who are you? You don't have to give me your real name, not even your real first name."
Soon after forming, the DOB wrote a mission statement that addressed the most significant problem Martin and Lyon had faced as a couple: the complete lack of information about female homosexuality in what historian Martin Meeker termed, "the most fundamental journey a lesbian has to make." When the club realized they were not allowed to advertise their meetings in the local newspaper, Lyon and Martin, who both had backgrounds in journalism, began to print a newsletter to distribute to as many women as the group knew. In October 1956 it became The Ladder, the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the U.S. and one of the first to publish statistics on lesbians, when they mailed surveys to their readers in 1958 and 1964. Martin was the first president and Lyon became the editor of The Ladder.
The DOB advertised itself as "A Women's Organization for the purpose of Promoting the Integration of the Homosexual into Society." The statement was composed of four key parts that prioritized the purpose of the organization, and it was printed on the inside of the cover of every issue of The Ladder until 1970:
First, education of the variant...to enable her to understand herself and make her adjustment to society...this to be accomplished by establishing...a library...on the sex deviant theme; by sponsoring public discussions...to be conducted by leading members of the legal psychiatric, religious and other professions; by advocating a mode of behavior and dress acceptable to society.
Secondly, education of the public...leading to an eventual breakdown of erroneous taboos and prejudices...
Thirdly, participation in research projects by duly authorized and responsible psychologists, sociologists, and other such experts directed towards further knowledge of the homosexual.
And lastly, investigation of the penal code as it pertain to the homosexual, proposal of changes,...and promotion of these changes through the due process of law in the state legislatures."
New York chapter president Barbara Gittings noted that the word "variant" was used instead of "lesbian" in the mission statement, because "lesbian" was a word that had a very negative meaning in 1956.
Methods
The early gay rights movement, then called the Homophile Movement, was developed by the Mattachine Society, formed in 1950, as previously covered by this podcast. Although the Mattachine Society began as a provocative organization with roots in its founders' communist activism, leadership of the Mattachine thought it more prudent and productive to convince heterosexual society at large that gays were not different from themselves, rather than agitate for change. As discussed, they changed their tactics in 1953. The Daughters of Bilitis followed this model by encouraging its members to assimilate as much as possible into the prevailing heterosexual culture.
This was reflected in ongoing debate over the propriety of butch and femme dress and role play among its members. As early as 1955, a rule was made that women who attended meetings, if wearing pants, should be wearing women's slacks. However, many women remember it being a rule that went unfollowed as attendees at many meetings were wearing jeans, and the only jeans available in the 1950s were men's. Barbara Gittings recalled years later of an instance when, in preparation for a national convention, members of the DOB persuaded a woman who had worn men's clothing all her life, "to deck herself out in as 'feminine' a manner as she could... Everyone rejoiced over this as though some great victory had been accomplished... Today we would be horrified at anyone who thought this kind of evangelism had a legitimate purpose."
The Daughters of Bilitis were used as political fodder in the 1959 mayoral race in San Francisco. Russell Wolden, challenging incumbent George Christopher, distributed information implying that Christopher was making the city safe for "sex deviants". Wolden was responsible for materials that stated, "You parents of daughters — do not sit back complacently feeling that because you have no boys in your family everything is alright... To enlighten you as to the existence of a Lesbian organization composed of homosexual women, make yourself acquainted with the name Daughters of Bilitis." There were only two copies of the subscription list of The Ladder, a deliberate attempt to discourage its getting into the hands of anyone who might use it against the subscribers. DOB leaders moved the list from its headquarters to find later San Francisco police had searched the office after its removal. Even the FBI was curious enough to attend meetings to report and confirm in 1959
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Memorial plaque outside of Matlovich's former apartment building.
Hi guys; welcome to the podcast. This week, we’ll be covering Technical Sergeant Leonard P. Matlovich who was born on July 6, 1943. He was a Vietnam War veteran in the Air Force, race relations instructor, and recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star.
Matlovich was the first gay service member to purposely out himself to the military to fight their ban on gays, and perhaps the best-known gay man in America in the 1970s next to Harvey Milk, who we’ll be detailing in a forthcoming episode. His fight to stay in the United States Air Force after coming out of the closet became a media sensation, around which the gay community rallied. His case resulted in articles in newspapers and magazines throughout the country, numerous television interviews, and a television movie on NBC. His photograph appeared on the cover of the September 8, 1975, issue of Time magazine, making him a symbol for thousands of gay and lesbian servicemembers and gay people generally. It also mad him the first openly gay person to appear on the cover of a U.S. news magazine. I’ve placed that cover on the blog entry over at mattachinepodcast.com, so I encourage you to check it out there.
According to author and San Francisco Chronicle reporter Randy Shilts, who went on to pen “And the Band Played On, a seminal dissection of the early days of the AIDS crisis, quote: "It marked the first time the young gay movement had made the cover of a major newsweekly. To a movement still struggling for legitimacy, the event was a major turning point." In October 2006, Matlovich was honored by LGBT History Month as a leader in the history of the LGBT community.
Early life and early careerBorn in Savannah, Georgia, he was the only son of a career Air Force sergeant. I will share with you that I’m actually the son of a career Air Force man, so I paid attention to his story, growing up. He spent his childhood living on military bases, primarily throughout the Southern United States. Matlovich and his sister were raised in the Roman Catholic Church. Not long after he enlisted at 19, the United States increased military action in Vietnam, about ten years after the French had abandoned active colonial rule there. Matlovich volunteered for service in Vietnam and served three tours of duty. He was seriously wounded when he stepped on a landmine in Đà Nẵng.
While stationed in Florida near Fort Walton Beach, he began frequenting gay bars in nearby Pensacola. In a later interview, Matlovich lamented: "I met a bank president, a gas station attendant - they were all homosexual", seemingly noting on the significance of the encounters as something rare. When he was 30, he slept with another man for the first time. He "came out" to his friends, but continued to conceal the fact from his commanding officer. Having realized that the racism he'd grown up around was wrong, he volunteered to teach Air Force Race Relations classes, which had been created after several racial incidents in the military in the late 60s and early 70s. He became so successful that the Air Force sent him around the country to coach other instructors. Matlovich gradually came to believe that the discrimination faced by gays was similar to that faced by African Americans, and this remained his position until his death.
ActivismIn March 1974, previously unaware of the organized gay movement, he read an interview in the Air Force Times with gay activist Frank Kameny, who had counseled several gays in the military over the years and would emerge as one of the gay rights early pioneers. He contacted Kameny, who told him he had long been looking for a gay service member with a perfect record to create a test case to challenge the military's ban on gays. Four months later, he met with Kameny at the longtime activist's Washington, D.C. home. After several months of discussion with Kameny and ACLU attorney David Addlestone during which they formulated a plan, he hand-delivered a letter to his Langley Air Force Base commanding officer on March 6, 1975. When his commander asked, "What does this mean?" Matlovich replied, "It means Brown versus the Board of Education" - a reference to the 1954 landmark Supreme Court case outlawing racial segregation in public schools.
Perhaps the most painful aspect of the whole experience for Matlovich was his revelation to his parents. He had told his mother by telephone, dialing her one evening after much debate. She was so stunned she refused to tell Matlovich's father. Her first reaction was that God was punishing her for something she had done, even if her Roman Catholic faith would not have sanctioned that notion. Then, she imagined that her son had not prayed enough or had not seen enough psychiatrists. His father finally found out by reading it in the newspaper, after his challenge became public knowledge on Memorial Day 1975 through an article on the front page of The New York Times and that evening's CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Matlovich recalled, "He cried for about two hours." After that, he told his wife that, "If he can take it, I can take it."
Discharge and lawsuitAt that time, the Air Force had a fairly ill-defined exception clause that could allow gays to continue to serve if there were extenuating circumstances. These circumstances might include being immature or drunk, exemplary service, or a one-time experimentation (known sarcastically as the "Queen for a day" rule). During Matlovich's September 1975 administrative discharge hearing, an Air Force attorney asked him if he would sign a document pledging to quote: "never practice homosexuality again" in exchange for being allowed to remain in the Air Force. Matlovich refused on the spot. Despite his exemplary military record, tours of duty in Vietnam, and high performance evaluations, the panel ruled Matlovich unfit for service, and he was recommended for a General (yet under Honorable Conditions) discharge. The base commander, Alton J. Thogersen, citing Matlovich's service record, recommended that it be upgraded to Honorable. The Secretary of the Air Force agreed, confirming Matlovich's discharge in October 1975. He sued for reinstatement, but the legal process was a long one, with the case moving back and forth between United States District and Circuit Courts. When, by September 1980, the Air Force had failed to provide U.S. District Court Judge Gerhard Gesell an explanation of why Matlovich did not meet its criteria for exception (which by then had been eliminated but still could have applied to him), Gesell ordered him reinstated into the Air Force and promoted. The Air Force offered Matlovich a financial settlement instead. Convinced that the military would find some other reason to discharge him if he reentered the service, or that the conservative Supreme Court would rule against him should the Air Force appeal, Matlovich accepted the settlement. The figure, based on back pay, future pay, and pension, was $160,000, or roughly half a million in today’s money.
ExcommunicationSometime in the early 70s, Matlovich abandoned his Roman Catholic faith, and converted to Mormonism. He eventually found himself at odds with the Latter-day Saints and their opposition to homosexual behavior. He was twice excommunicated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for homosexual acts, first being excommunicated on October 7, 1975, in Norfolk, Virginia, and then again January 17, 1979, after his appearance on the The Phil Donahue Show in 1978. But, by this time, Matlovich had stopped being a believer at all.
Settlement, later life and illnessFrom the moment his case was revealed to the public, Matlovich was repeatedly called upon by gay groups to help them with fundraising and advocating against anti-gay discrimination, helping lead campaigns against Anita Bryant's efforts in Miami, Florida, to overturn a gay nondiscrimination ordinance (which we’ll be covering, in detail, on a forthcoming episode) and John Briggs' attempt to ban gay teachers in California. Sometimes he was criticized by individuals more to the left than he had become. "I think many gays are forced into liberal camps only because that's where they can find the kind of support they need to function in society," Matlovich once noted. After being discharged, he moved from Virginia to Washington, D.C., and, in 1978, to San Francisco. In 1981, he moved to the Russian River town of Guerneville, where he used the proceeds of his settlement to open a pizza restaurant.
With the outbreak of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. in the late 1970s, Leonard's personal life was caught up in the hysteria about the virus that peaked in the 1980s. He sold his Guerneville restaurant in 1984, moving to Europe for a few months where, during a visit to the joint grave of lovers Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and the grave of gay writer Oscar Wilde in Paris, France, he got the idea for a gay memorial in the United States. He returned briefly to Washington, D.C., in 1985 and, then, to San Francisco where he sold Ford cars and once again became heavily involved in gay rights causes and the fight for adequate HIV-AIDS education and treatment.
In 1986, Matlovich felt fatigued, then contracted a prolonged chest cold he seemed unable to shake. When he finally saw a physician in September of that year, he was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. Too weak to continue his work at the Ford dealership, he was among the first to receive AZT treatments, but his prognosis was not encouraging. He went on disability benefits and became a champion for HIV/AIDS research for the dise
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This week, we’ll be investigating a documentary released in 1990 called Paris Is Burning, directed by Jennie Livingston. Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, it chronicles the ball culture of New York City and the African-American, Latino, gay, and transgender communities involved in it. Some critics consider the film to be an invaluable documentary of the end of the "Golden Age" of New York City drag balls, and a thoughtful exploration of race, class, gender, and sexuality in America.
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This week, we’ll be taking a look at Brandon Teena, including his life, his death, and his overall cultural and legal significance. Brandon Teena was born Teena Renae Brandon on December 12, 1972. Brandon was born a genetic female, and later became a trans man, so for the purposes of this story, we’ll be referring to him by his preferred pronoun, and his chosen name Brandon. Brandon’s life and death, including his eventual rape and murder, was the subject of the Academy Award-winning 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry, written and directed by Kimberly Peirce, and starring Hilary Swank, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Brandon. Brandon’s violent death, along with the murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998, led to increased lobbying for hate crime laws in the United States.
LifeBrandon was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, the younger of two children to Patrick and JoAnn Brandon. His father died in a car accident eight months before he was born, and he was raised by his mother. JoAnn named him, her second child, after their German shepherd dog, Tina Marie. Brandon and his older sister Tammy lived with their maternal grandmother in Lincoln, before they were reclaimed by their mother when Brandon was three years old and Tammy was six. The family resided in the Pine Acre Mobile Home Park in northeast Lincoln, and JoAnn worked as a clerk in a women's retail store in Lincoln to support the family. As young children, Brandon and Tammy were sexually abused by their uncle for several years, with Brandon seeking counseling for this in 1991. JoAnn remarried once from 1975 to 1980, with the marriage failing due to her husband's alcoholism. Brandon’s family described him as being a tomboy since early childhood. He began identifying as male during adolescence and dated a female student during this period. His mother rejected his male identity and continued referring to him as her daughter. On several occasions, Brandon claimed to be intersex, or not fitting the typical binary notions of male or female bodies, though this assertion was later disproved.
Brandon and his sister attended St. Mary's Elementary School and Pius X High School in Lincoln, where Teena was remembered by some as being socially awkward. During his second year, he rejected Christianity after he protested to a priest at Pius X regarding Christian views on abstinence and homosexuality. He also began rebelling at school by violating the school dress-code policy to dress in a more masculine fashion. During the first semester of his senior year, a U.S. Army recruiter visited the high school, encouraging students to enlist in the armed forces. Brandon then enlisted in the United States Army shortly after his eighteenth birthday, and hoped to serve a tour of duty in Operation Desert Shield. However, he failed the written entrance exam by listing his sex as male.
In December 1990, Brandon went to a skate park with his friends, binding his breasts to pass as a boy. The 18-year-old Brandon then went on a date with a 13-year-old girl. He also began regularly dressing as a male. In the months nearing his high school graduation, he became unusually outgoing and was remembered by classmates as a "class clown". He seemingly began coming into his own. Brandon also began skipping school and receiving failing grades, and ultimately was expelled from Pius X High School in June 1991, a mere three days before high school graduation.
In the summer of 1991, Brandon began his first major relationship, with a girl named Heather. Shortly after, he began his first job as a gas station attendant in an attempt to purchase a trailer home for himself and Heather. His mother, however, did not approve of the relationship, and convinced his sister Tammy to follow Brandon in order to know if the relationship was platonic or of a sexual nature.
In January 1992, Brandon underwent a psychiatric evaluation, which concluded that he was suffering from a severe "sexual identity crisis". He was later taken to the Lancaster County Crisis Center to ensure that he was not suicidal. He was released from the center three days later and began attending therapy sessions, sometimes accompanied by his mother or sister. He was reluctant to discuss his sexuality during these sessions but eventually revealed that he had been raped. The counselling sessions ended two weeks later.
In 1993, after some legal trouble, Brandon moved to the Falls City region of Richardson County, Nebraska, where he identified solely as a man. He became friends with several local residents there, and seemed to be settling into his life more. After moving into the home of roommate Lisa Lambert, Brandon began dating Lambert's friend, 19-year-old Lana Tisdel, and began associating with ex-convicts John Lotter and Marvin Nissen.
On December 19, 1993, Brandon was arrested for forging checks and Tisdel paid his bail to get him out. Because Brandon was assigned to the female section of the jail, this is how Tisdel learned that he was transgender. When Tisdel later questioned Brandon about his gender, he told her he was a hermaphrodite pursuing a sex change operation, and they continued dating. In a lawsuit regarding the film adaptation Boys Don't Cry, this was disputed by Tisdel. Brandon’s arrest was ultimately posted in the local paper under his birth name and his acquaintances subsequently learned that he was assigned female at birth…
Sexual assault and murderAround this time immediately after the arrest and the discovery of his birth sex, Brandon attended a Christmas Eve party. At that party, Nissen and Lotter grabbed Teena and forced him to remove his pants, proving to Tisdel that Brandon was anatomically female. Tisdel said nothing and looked only when they forced her to. Lotter and Nissen later assaulted Brandon, and forced him into a car. They drove to an area by a meat-packing plant in Richardson County, where they assaulted and raped him. They then returned to Nissen's home where the two men ordered Brandon to take a shower. He escaped from Nissen's bathroom by climbing out the window, and then went to Tisdel's house. He was convinced by Tisdel to file a police report, though Nissen and Lotter had warned him not to tell the police about the rape or they would "silence him permanently". He also went to the emergency room where a standard rape kit was assembled, but later lost. Sheriff Charles B. Laux questioned him about the rape; reportedly, he seemed especially interested in Brandon’s transsexuality, to the point that Brandon found his questions rude and unnecessary, and refused to answer. Nissen and Lotter learned of the report, and they began to search for him, presumably to make good on their threat to him. They didn’t find him, and three days later, the police found the two, and questioned them. The sheriff declined to have them arrested due to lack of evidence.
Around 1:00 a.m. on December 31, 1993, Nissen and Lotter drove to Lambert's house and broke in. They found Lambert in bed and demanded to know where Brandon was. Lambert refused to tell them. Nissen searched and found him under the bed. The men asked Lambert if there was anyone else in the house, and she replied that Phillip DeVine, who at the time was dating Tisdel's sister, was staying with her. They then shot and killed DeVine, Lambert and Brandon in front of Lambert's toddler. Nissen later testified in court that he noticed that Brandon was twitching after having been shot, and asked Lotter for a knife, with which Nissen stabbed Brandon in the chest, to ensure that he was dead. Nissen and Lotter then left. The two were later tracked down, and arrested and charged with murder.
As the details of the murder surfaced after police questioning, Nissen accused Lotter of committing the murders. In exchange for a reduced sentence, Nissen admitted to being an accessory to the rape and murder. He testified against Lotter and was ultimately sentenced to life in prison. Lotter denied the veracity of Nissen's testimony, and his testimony was discredited. The jury found Lotter guilty of murder and he received the death penalty. Lotter and Nissen both appealed their convictions. In September 2007, Nissen recanted his testimony against Lotter. He claimed that he was the only one to shoot Teena and that Lotter had not committed the murders. In 2009, Lotter's appeal, which used Nissen's new testimony to assert a claim of innocence, was rejected by the Nebraska Supreme Court, which held that since—even under Nissen's revised testimony—both Lotter and Nissen were involved in the murder, the specific identity of the shooter was legally irrelevant. Both were there; both were culpable. In August 2011, a three-judge panel of the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected John Lotter's appeal in a split decision. In October 2011, the Eighth Circuit rejected Lotter's request for a rehearing by the panel or the full Eighth Circuit. Lotter then petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States for a review of his case. The Supreme Court declined to review Lotter's case, denying his petition for writ of certiorari on March 19, 2012, and a further petition for rehearing on April 23, 2012, leaving his conviction to stand, permanently.
Cultural and legal legacyBecause Brandon had neither commenced hormone replacement therapy nor had sex reassignment surgery, he has sometimes been identified as a lesbian by media reporters. However, some reported that he had stated that he planned to have sex reassignment surgery.
Brandon’s mom, JoAnn Brandon, sued R
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Montgomery Clift's Performance as Tom in the Glass MenagerieEarly Life
In this week’s episode, we’ll explore the life and times of one of Hollywood’s earliest gay stars—Montgomery Clift. Edward Montgomery "Monty" Clift was born on October 17, 1920 in Omaha, Nebraska. His father was William Clift and his mother was Ethel, nicknamed "Sunny". They had married in 1914. Clift actually had a twin sister, also named Ethel, and a brother, William. Clift’s ancestry was English, Dutch and Scottish. He had a relatively normal upbringing, but the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s ruined his family financially. Unemployed and without money, his father was forced to move the family to New York. Montgomery, who never fully took to formal schooling, instead took to stage acting, beginning in a summer production which led, by 1935, to his debut on Broadway.
In the next ten years, he built a successful stage career working with luminaries such as Tallulah Bankhead, appearing in plays written by Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams and Thornton Wilder. In 1939, as a member of the cast of the Broadway production of Noël Coward's Hay Fever, Clift participated in one of the very first television broadcasts in the United States. At that point in his life, he was residing in Jackson Heights, Queens, until he got his big break on Broadway.
CareerClift first acted on Broadway when, at just 15-years-of-age, he appeared as Prince Peter in the Cole Porter musical "Jubilee" at the Imperial Theater. At 20, he played the son in the Broadway production of There Shall Be No Night, which won the 1941 Pulitzer Prize.
At 25, after having some modicum of success on Broadway, he decided that to further his career, he would need to make the move to Hollywood. He very quickly secured his first movie role opposite none other than John Wayne in Red River. His second movie was called The Search, on which, Clift was unhappy with the quality of the script, so he decided to edit it himself. The movie ultimately was awarded a screenwriting Academy Award for the credited writers. His performance in the film gained him a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Actor. His naturalistic performance led to the director of that film being asked, "Where did you find a soldier who can act so well?"
Clift's next movie in 1949 was The Heiress. He signed on for the movie in order to avoid being typecast, as the role was quite different from what he was usually cast. Again unhappy with the script, Clift told friends that he wanted to change his co-star Olivia de Havilland's lines because "she isn't giving me enough to respond [to]." Clift also was unable to get along with most of the cast; he criticized de Havilland, saying that she let the director shape her entire performance.
The studio marketed Clift as a sex symbol prior to the movie's release, and by that point, Clift already had a large female following. Olivia De Havilland was actually flooded with angry fan letters because her character in the film rejects Clift's character in the final scene of the movie. Clift ended up unhappy with his performance in The Heiress and left early during the movie's premiere.
Coming into the fifties, Clift was notoriously picky with his projects. According to Elizabeth Taylor, who by then had become a wonderful friend to him, "Monty could've been the biggest star in the world if he did more movies." By this point in his career, Montgomery had fully embraced Method Acting, a technique of acting in which an actor aspires to complete emotional identification with a part, often immersing oneself in their part, even when the cameras weren’t rolling. His performance in A Place in the Sun—arguably his most regarded project--to this day is regarded as one of his most signature method acting performances. He worked extensively on his character in that film, and was again nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. For his character's scenes in jail, Clift spent a night in a real state prison. He also refused to go along with director George Stevens' suggestion that he do "something amazing" on his character's walk to the electric chair. Instead, he walked to his death with a natural, depressed facial expression. His main acting rival (and fellow Omaha, Nebraska native), Marlon Brando, was so moved by Clift's performance that he voted for Clift to win the Academy Award for Best Actor and was sure that he would win. That same year, Clift voted for Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. A Place in the Sun was critically acclaimed with Charlie Chaplin calling it "the greatest movie made about America." The film received added media attention due to the rumors that Clift and Taylor were dating at the time in real lifewith the press billing them as "the most beautiful couple in Hollywood." Many critics still call Clift and Taylor "the most beautiful Hollywood movie couple of all time."
In the summer of 1952, Clift committed himself to three more films: I Confess, to be directed by Alfred Hitchcock; Vittorio De Sica's Terminal Station, and Fred Zinnemann's From Here to Eternity. For From Here to Eternity, Clift would gain his third Academy Award. Clift reportedly also turned down the starring role in East of Eden just as he had for Sunset Boulevard, feeling that both projects weren’t right for his canon.
On the evening of May 12, 1956, while filming Raintree County, Clift was involved in a serious auto accident when he apparently fell asleep while driving. He smashed his car into a telephone pole minutes after leaving a dinner party at the Beverly Hills home of his Raintree County co-star and close friend, Elizabeth Taylor and her second husband, Michael Wilding. Moments after the accident, actor Kevin McCarthy who had witnessed the accident, ran to check on him, seeing that “his face was torn away—a bloody pulp. I thought he was dead.” McCarthy ran to fetch Taylor, Wilding, and Rock Hudson and Hudson’s wife, Phyllis Gates, who all raced to the site of the accident.
What happened next is somewhat fuzzy: one version has Hudson pulling Clift from the car and Taylor cradling him in her arms, at which point Clift started choking and motioning to his throat, where, it soon became clear, two of his teeth had lodged themselves after coming loose during the accident. Taylor opened his mouth, put her hand down his throat, and pulled out the teeth. True or not, the resilience of the story is a testimony to what people wanted to believe about the bond between the two stars. According to this version of the story, when photographers arrived, Taylor announced that she knew each and every one of them personally-- and if they took pictures of Clift, who was still very much alive, she’d make sure they never worked in Hollywood again. Regardless of the veracity of this story, one thing remains true: there’s not a single picture of Clift’s broken face.
Clift suffered a broken jaw and nose, a fractured sinus area, and several facial lacerations which required plastic surgery. His nose had to be snapped back into place, after leaving the scene. According to Clift’s doctors, it was “amazing” that he was even alive. But after an initial flurry of coverage, he retreated from public view entirely. Months of surgeries, rebuilding, and physical therapy followed. Production resumed on Raintree County, which the studio feared would fail following Clift’s accident. But Clift knew the film would be a smash, if only because audiences would want to compare his long unseen face from before and after the accident. In truth, his face wasn’t truly disfigured. It was, however, much older—by the time Raintree County made its way to theaters, he’d been off the screen for four and a half years. But the facial reconstruction, heavy painkiller use, and rampant alcohol abuse made it look like he’d aged a decade.
And thus began what Robert Lewis, Clift’s teacher at the Actors Studio, called “the longest suicide in Hollywood history.” Even before Raintree, the decline had been visible. Author Christopher Isherwood tracked Clift’s decline in his journals, and by August 1955, he was “drinking himself out of a career”; on the set of Raintree, the crew had designated words to communicate how drunk Clift was: bad was Georgia, very bad was Florida, and worst of all was Zanzibar. “Nearly all his good looks are gone,” Isherwood wrote. “He has a ghastly, shattered expression.” And it wasn’t just in private record: in October 1956, Louella Parsons reported on Clift’s “very bad health” and Holman’s attempts to clean him up. His decline was never explicitly evoked, but with his visage in Raintree County, it was there for all to see.
While filming his next picture, Lonelyhearts (1958), Clift lashed out, proclaiming, “I am not—repeat not—a member of the Beat Generation. I am not one of America’s Angry Young Men. I do not count myself as a member of the ripped-sweatshirt fraternity.” He wasn’t a “young rebel, an old rebel, a tired rebel, or a rebellious rebel”—all he cared about was re-creating a “slice of life” on the screen. He was sick of being a symbol, a symptom, a testament to something.
In The Young Lions (1958), released just two years after the accident, the pain and resentment seem almost visible. It’d be his only film with Brando, even though the two barely shared the screen. Taylor, at last free from her long-standing contract with MGM, next used her power as the biggest star in Hollywood to insist that Clift be cast in her new project, Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). It was a
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In this episode of the Mattachine Podcast, we’ll be looking at the Compton’s Cafeteria riot, which occurred in San Francisco, in the late summer of 1966. We’ll investigate the riot’s significance, and how it set the tone for gay rights moving forward—particularly within the scope of rapid social civil rights advancements in the tumultuous 60s.
The Compton's Cafeteria Riot occurred in August 1966 in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. This incident was one of the first recorded transgender riots in United States history, actually preceding the more famous 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City.
BackgroundCompton's Cafeteria was one of a chain of cafeterias, owned by a gentleman named Gene Compton, in San Francisco from the 1940s to the 1970s. The Tenderloin location of Compton's at 101 Taylor Street—was open from 1954 to 1972 and was one of the few places where transgender people could congregate publicly in the city, because they were heretofore unwelcome in gay bars in the city. The cafeteria was open 24 hours until the riots occurred. Because cross-dressing was illegal at the time, police could use the presence of transgender people in a bar as a pretext for making a raid and closing the bar.
Many of the militant hustlers in the neighborhood, and street queens involved in the riot were members of Vanguard, the first known gay youth organization in the United States—we’ll be covering that organization in a later podcast. Vanguard had been organized earlier that year with the help of radical ministers working with Glide Memorial Church, a center for progressive social activism in the Tenderloin for many years. A lesbian group of street people was also formed called the Street Orphans.
Cause of the riotStarting in the 1960s the Compton’s Cafeteria staff began to call the police to crack down on transgender and transsexual individuals, who would often frequent the restaurant in the neighborhood. In response to police arrests, the transgender and transsexual community launched a picket of Compton’s Cafeteria. Although the picket was ultimately unsuccessful, it was one of the first demonstrations against transgender and transsexual violence in San Francisco. On the first night of the riot, the management of Compton's called the police when some transgender customers became loud and unruly. In the 50's and 60's police officers were known to mistreat transgender people—often their behavior was sanctioned. When one of these officers attempted to arrest one of the trans women, she got angry and threw her coffee in his face. That was the flashpoint for the riot to begin. Dishes and and even furniture were thrown, and the restaurant's plate-glass windows were smashed. Police called for reinforcements as the fighting spilled out into the street, where a police car had all its windows broken out and a sidewalk newsstand was burned down. It escalated very quickly. The exact date of the riot is unknown because 1960 police records no longer exist and the riot was not covered by newspapers, which was another societal signal of how this group was ignored.
The next night, more transgender people, hustlers, Tenderloin street people, and other members of the LGBT community joined in picketing the cafeteria, the owners of which would not allow transgender people back in. The demonstration ended with the newly installed plate-glass windows being smashed yet again.
Effects of the riotThe riot definitely marked a turning point in the local LGBT movement.
In the aftermath of the riot at Compton's, a network of transgender social, psychological, and medical support services was established, which culminated in 1968 with the creation of the National Transsexual Counseling Unit [the NTCU], the first such peer-run support and advocacy organization in the world.
Serving as an overseer to the NTCU was Sergeant Elliott Blackstone, designated in 1962 as the first San Francisco Police Department liaison to what was then called the "homophile community." According to Susan Stryker, the local historian and transgender activist who spent nine years uncovering the Compton's Cafeteria saga and making it into a documentary called Screaming Queens, Compton’s Cafeteria riot was “the first known incident of collective militant queer resistance to police harassment in U.S. history." Transgender people finally stood up to the abuse and discrimination by police officers. Following the riot, transgender and transsexual individuals were allowed to live their lives more freely and openly because police brutality towards them subsided—a direct result of the riots. For example, they had much less fear of being heckled by the police department for dressing how they chose to during the daytime, in the neighborhood.
The tired transvestites who clashed with police at an all-night greasy spoon here in 1966 never would have expected the city's political elite to show up for a dedication ceremony honoring their struggle as a civil rights milestone.
Yet there, at the site of the Compton's Cafeteria riot, among a crowd of unusually tall women and noticeably short men were a pair of city supervisors, the district attorney, the police chief, and a transsexual police sergeant. The California Assembly and the mayor sent proclamations that
"Trans has become part of polite society," said Susan Stryker, "You can't be openly anti-trans the way you could before."
Until Stryker teased it out, the story of the Compton's Cafeteria riot remained as hidden as its main characters' true identities and carefully concealed razor stubble. Now the event is quietly challenging New York's 1969 Stonewall Riots as the dawn of the modern gay rights era.
While not every city is ready to celebrate the contributions of its cross-dressing citizens, San Francisco — which in 2001 extended its health insurance to cover sex reassignment surgeries for municipal employees — is no longer alone in the landscape. Across the nation, transgender residents are quickly winning rights and recognition they began to demand only recently.
In the last three years alone, New Mexico, Illinois and California have updated their anti-discrimination laws to protect transgender home buyers and renters; colleges in Vermont and Iowa have dedicated "gender neutral" dorm rooms; and corporations have adopted policies for helping employees stay on the job during sex changes. "When we are getting phone calls from people who have lost their jobs, and e-mails from people who are facing violence, it's sometimes easy to think everything is still really bad," said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality in Washington, D.C. "But to see that people were able to stand up for themselves 40 years ago is a very wonderful reminder to us of how far we've come."
The sea change is especially obvious this month as cities in the United States and Europe observe gay pride events.
Although so-called "drag queens" have been a visible part of pride marches since the 1970s, gay and lesbian groups were long afraid to embrace transgender causes for fear of being tainted by the more extreme prejudice they provoked, said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "There was a time when nobody wanted to even mention transgender issues or have transgender people accompany you on lobbying visits to members of your state assembly because that was pushing the envelope too far," Foreman said. "There was a myth in our community, and frankly I was part of that myth, that including transgender people would set our cause back."
"The history of transgender civil rights and Pride was that it was OK as long as it was gay men in dresses and it was about spectacle," said Chris Daley, director of the National Transgender Law Center in San Francisco. "The shift we are seeing is that the broader LGBT community has been able to embrace not only the more comfortable parts of the community, but everybody."
Observing the range of lawyers, entertainers and openly transgender professionals who were on hand as the sidewalk plaque marking the Compton's Cafeteria riot was installed, Stryker was struck by how much had changed in the last 40 years. "Back then, you couldn't be out as trans without huge costs," she said. "To see all these people honoring a bunch of drag queens who rioted against the cops is amazing."
Today, a granite historical marker installed in San Francisco's seedy Tenderloin District would be unremarkable if it didn't honor men who dressed in women's clothes and once walked the streets selling sex.
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Thank you for listening to the Mattachine Podcast. This episode was researched, written, narrated, and produced by Brad Dunshee—yours truly. Our logo was designed by Matt Smith.
If you want to support this podcast, including costs associated with producing it, please visit patreon.com/mattachine. Any amount is extremely appreciated, to keep this thing going.
In an ongoing effort to bring you fresh LGBT stories week after week, please email us at [email protected] with episode suggestions. We’ll do our best to get these into the editorial calendar. If you like the show, please tell your friends, and please subscribe to us in your favorite podcast app. We love reviews, so please feel free to leave one of those, as well—it really helps get the word out. We’ll be back next week with another episode about our LGBT history, so until then, please be good to one another.
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In this inaugural episode of the Mattachine podcast, we’ll be exploring the podcast’s namesake origin: the Mattachine Society. We’ll explore the rise, social acceptance, and eventual downfall of the society.
