_
There's a difference between transsexual and homosexual.
There have been trans and gender-non-conforming people
as long as there have been people.
I put on the clothes I usually wear, which is girls' clothes.
In retrospect, I can see
the beginning of a sexual revolution.
It wasn't too many years ago I got thrown into jail
for being a female impersonator.
Now, I've never felt as though I were impersonating a female.
I'm... I am a female.
Throughout history and around the world,
some of us have always pushed the boundaries of gender.
Didn't take long before everyone in town
knew who Lucy was.
I defy any doctor in the world to tell me that I'm not a woman.
I've worked in the harvest fields of the Midwest,
dealt blackjack in Tijuana,
and run bootleg liquor across the Canadian border.
-Are you a man or a woman? -Well, dear, first one
has to determine what is a man and what is a woman.
Meet three trans pioneers...
Lucy Hicks Anderson, Jack Starr, and Christine Jorgensen.
We're bringing them out of the shadows to shine.
CREDITS
The streets of San Francisco's Tenderloin District
didn't look much different in 1966.
It was a tough neighborhood then, too.
But if you got kicked out of your home
for being gay or trans,
this was one of the only places you could be yourself,
find any work, and sometimes find a new family.
This neighborhood was for people messing with gender,
the transsexuals, the drag queens.
Different names were used back then.
Some people called themselves hair fairies.
Calling someone "queer" was an insult,
and "transgender" wasn't in use yet.
So don't get it twisted if you hear some outdated terms, okay?
Over here in the Tenderloin, gender-non-conforming folks
were constantly harassed by the cops,
very often arrested...
Until one night in 1966,
when they got sick and tired of all this bullshit.
This is where it happened...
on the corner of Turk and Taylor.
The place used to be called Compton's Cafeteria.
Ohh, Compton's was our home.
Cheap place to eat, open 24/7.
This used to be the spot you would check in on your friends
and make sure they made it through the night alive.
Y'all probably heard about the Stonewall Riots.
But that won't happen for another three years.
Even still, the anger at injustice here tonight
at Compton's is simmering.
The whole Tenderloin is simmering.
The police come into Compton's and start harassing us,
like they always do.
With the permission of management, of course.
A cop grabbed Holly and tried to haul her to the paddy wagon
they had parked outside.
But that queen is finally fed up.
They're all fed up.
We are all fed up.
It's 1966.
A war is raging in Vietnam.
People are protesting in the streets.
Can you feel it?
Race riots, Stokely Carmichael's preaching "black power"...
And we gonna say to the whole damn government...
I said can you feel it?
We come for what's ours.
The cops are here to clean up the neighborhoods,
but we are about to do the cleaning.
Folks like us, we ain't supposed to fight back
against the police.
But tonight it's gonna happen for the first time...
the first violent uprising by trans
and gay people against the police, right here, tonight.
Hold up, sweetie!
Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
As my sister said,
Stonewall isn't where queer liberation started.
Trans and gender-non-conforming people appear
in our oldest stories from all over the world
but have been consistently erased.
We either passed invisibly among society
or were forced to live in the shadows when discovered.
Gender ambiguity has always
and will forever be a part of humanity.
Sonia, you were born a male.
When did you first notice these female tendencies?
I was 13 years old.
Each one of them is breaking the law.
For its entire history,
the US government has used masquerade laws
to morally police strict gender binary roles,
arresting people wearing clothing
that didn't conform to the sex assigned at birth.
These laws often became known as 3 article rules...
the commonly held belief that wearing three articles
of appropriately gendered clothing
could protect you from arrest
because dressing inappropriately made you a criminal.
We define anything that's different as deviant.
I was arrested approximately 20 times on the 650.5 block.
_
These individuals are condemned by most people in our society.
They're made fun of. They're rejected.
They're harassed because they're different.
Though society keeps trying to tell us what our gender is,
there's no stopping us from being who we truly are.
_
By 1940, Lucy Hicks Anderson was one of the best known
and most respected women in Oxnard, California.
They didn't know everything about Lucy, though.
You see, Lucy was just being Lucy,
but she was forced to keep a secret.
_
Waddy, Kentucky.
Born here in 1886.
Almost looks the same as ever.
Down that way in that grove of trees
is where the doctor's office used to be.
Mama took me to the doctor
because I dressed like the girl I was.
Guess she thought something might have been wrong with me.
But the doctor said, "You're more of a girl than a boy.
There's nothing to do about it."
And that was that.
From then on, I dressed like the girl I was,
went to school as the girl I was, lived as the girl I was.
Yep, I lived like the woman I was,
made my way from Kentucky to Texas to Oklahoma,
kept on going west till I couldn't go west no more
and stopped in Oxnard, ight here by the sea,
next to the Navy base on what they call the Silk Strand.
Ah, them boys kept us busy.
And they kept us in some silver, too.
So did the sugar beet factory workers.
It all started with my cooking.
Got more and more popular, and, well,
it just made more sense to open up shop.
Yeah, I'd figure I'd supply the men
with what they really wanted.
We had the girls lined up at the top of the stairs,
cop cars lined up outside for their morning coffee.
Didn't take long before everyone in town knew who Lucy was.
And if I do say so myself, they respected Lucy.
I'd look after a couple of homes, you know,
the fancy ones across town,
and I admit business is good.
It's good.
And I return the favor. I do. I do.
I'm donating to all the local charities.
Just don't ask where the money come from.
I bought the police department their very first airplane.
Now, think about that for a moment.
I bought the police an airplane.
I racked up $50,000 worth of war bonds.
And when the new parish priest came to town,
I threw a big barbecue for the whole town.
When FDR died, who did the paper come to for quotation?
Me.
I sure did love my community.
And my community sure did love me.
Only one person in town knew my secret,
and that was my second husband, Reuben Anderson.
In 1944, my secret could get you killed.
I kept with a pretty rough crowd,
so when Reuben wasn't in town, I had to be careful.
Even if she don't admit it, every woman
probably watches out not to get raped.
But if you're like me, getting raped means getting killed.
At the very least, getting your head bashed in.
Oh, I'd get tossed in the big house
every now and then for the business upstairs.
You know, prohibition, prostitution.
But that never did last too long.
One time I got bailed out by the richest guy in town.
Know why?
'Cause he was throwing a party that night,
and I was cooking.
_
No Lucy, no party.
Every five minutes, five new cases of syphilis
are contracted in the United States.
Syphilis is spread by intimate contact, usually sexual.
The cause of syphilis can be seen.
Then one day, my life ran into a wall.
If it hadn't been for that goddamn syphilis outbreak,
I'd still be making coffee for the police every morning.
And it had to start in our house, my home.
Inspected my girls, then they inspected me.
No!
I knew from that moment on,
the whole world would know my secret.
No Lucy.
No party.
They arrested me after the syphilis examination.
This time, I wasn't getting out.
Said I committed perjury for saying
I was female on my marriage license.
And if that ain't bad enough, then the FBI comes down on me
because I got Reuben's military pay allotments,
just like any other wife.
Any other wife.
Said it was a federal fraud case.
After the war, Reuben and me
were gonna open up a bar and grill.
But now all I got is perjury and fraud.
Uh, Mr. John Doe,
let us stop this masquerade.
Tell us, are you a man or a woman?
You can call me Lucy.
I am a woman.
- In what way are you a woman? -I am a woman internally.
Thank you.
Your Honor, as I was saying, the state will prove that
Hicks has all the external organs of a male
and cannot be termed "woman"
either physically or by common sense.
I defy any doctor in the world to tell me that I'm not a woman.
I have lived, dressed, acted just what I am, a woman.
It is only petty maliciousness
that is trying to cause me heartache and harm.
If they would devote the same amount of energies
to the local problems that are hurting the community,
that would be much better.
I have lived as a good citizen for many years in this town,
and I'm gonna die a good citizen,
but I'm gonna die a woman.
At the trial, Lucy was found guilty of impersonation
and perjury for falsifying her marriage certificate.
She was sentenced to 10 years probation.
But federal courts were even worse.
Both Lucy and her husband, Reuben,
were charged with felony fraud
and then imprisoned for identifying
as a heterosexual couple
and receiving military spouse benefits.
Lucy was sentenced to the all-male Leavenworth Prison.
Her parole specified that she never return to Oxnard
and no longer dress as a woman,
which, of course, she continued to do.
She and Reuben relocated to Los Angeles
and lived a quiet life until she passed in 1954.
She died a woman.
Lucy might have thought she was the only one in her situation,
but there were plenty of others like her.
If only she had heard the story of Jack Starr.
_
Jack Starr... born in the South Seas,
moonshiner, rum runner,
virtuoso piano player, detective.
I've worked in the harvest fields of the Midwest,
bartended in San Francisco, dealt blackjack in Tijuana,
and run bootleg liquor across the Canadian border.
It's illegal to be me.
They call me a gender deviant.
But I have to make a living, legal or otherwise,
in order to survive.
_
To get busted for bootlegging, dangerous.
But to get busted not living as the sex listed
on my birth certificate, even worse.
Remember those masquerade laws?
In the early 1900s,
police started using them to target queer people.
The laws originated in the 1800s to prohibit farmers from
dressing like Native Americans to avoid paying taxes.
It was a crime to have your face painted, discolored,
covered, or concealed or be otherwise disguised
while on the road or public highway.
These deliberately vague laws were re-purposed
by local officials to target gender fraud,
gender deviants, and sexual deviants.
So, the government was morally policing
cross dressing and homosexuality.
On top of that, they were punishing self-identifying women
who lived as men in order to gain
more legal rights or opportunities for work.
Jack may not be the biggest mover and shaker
in the movement towards LGBTQ equality,
but maverick masqueraders were juicy tabloid fodder back then,
outlawed by society and sensationalized in the press.
Read on.
"Guests at a Central Avenue hotel,
who, for the last month have listened
to strains of Chopin and Wagner coming from the room
of a slim, nattily dressed, retiring young man did not know
until Friday morning that their entertainer
was not a young man at all,
and then only when she came under suspicion
with Sheriff Bob Gordon
because of her habit of never leaving her room.
She was taken into custody
and is held at the county jail for investigation.
Further than describing some of her...
his wanderings, he declined outright
to say anything concerning himself.
The girl who refuses to give any name other
than Jacques Moret was arrested last week and fined $50.
The fine was suspended on condition
that he doff the male attire and put on skirts.
He refused to comply and was re-arrested Sunday
in his room in a downtown hotel,
in company with a 19-year-old girl..."
"Pearl."
If it weren't for Pearl, I'd be all alone.
At times, it feels like I'm the only person like me,
but I... there's just no way I'm the only one like me.
Alice Lovejoy, arrested in Toledo, dressed as a boy.
Barbara Ann Malpass, 20, who has been masquerading
for several months as a homeless boy.
Police found her in Times Square.
Richard Orlando, masqueraded as a man for 14 years
working as a film studio carpenter.
They just wanted to be together.
Pearl, you know me.
I'm tired of hiding.
I'm sick of only seeing you in hotel rooms like this one.
The world wants to trap me.
I won't let it.
Not this time.
And I will do as I please until the day I die.
Just try and stop me.
Jack lived as he pleased,
with fewer appearances in the headlines as time went on.
But decades later, he was arrested again
for not having a draft card.
Just like so many other people like Jack,
when your life is criminalized,
sometimes a criminal life is the only option you have.
The only way he could survive
was by drifting back into anonymity.
Nobody knows what happened to him at the end of his life.
History may have forgotten Jack Starr, but we won't.
There's some growing medical opinion,
particularly in recent years,
that the body can and in some cases
should be changed to conform to the demands of the mind
and perhaps the emotions.
Such operations are called sex change or sex reassignment.
When did you first discover that you were effeminate?
Well, I think we ought to clear up what's feminine
and what's gay.
- Well, what's the difference? - Well, a gay person is a boy
that is attracted to another boy
or a girl that's attracted to another girl.
And feminine... anybody can be feminine.
Before you were reassigned,
did you used to frequent these gay bars?
Uh, no, I never, uh, actually,
uh, considered myself homosexual.
My body was a man, but my mind was that of a woman.
And now you feel complete as a woman?
Oh, yes, definitely. Yes.
- Are you happy? - Oh, yes, I am.
What would make you even more happy?
If I'd be able to have a change.
The first, the best-known of sex change operations
was one performed on a young ex-GI
named George Jorgensen,
who went to Copenhagen and came back as Christine.
Hello, I'm Christine Jorgensen.
_
A 26-year-old ex-GI arrives home from Denmark
where doctors converted him into a woman.
Two years ago, the name was George Jorgensen.
Today it's Christine.
By 1953, everyone had read about Christine Jorgensen.
There's no place for people who've been suddenly made,
uh, very famous in the eyes of the world.
My dearest Mom, Dad, Dolly, and Bill,
I am now faced with the problem of writing a letter,
one which for two years has been on my mind.
The task is a great one,
and the two years of thought haven't made it any easier.
To begin with, I want you to know that I am happier
and healthier than ever before in my life.
I have changed, changed very much,
as my photos will show.
Even as I write these words, I have not yet told you
the final outcome of the tests and an operation last September.
At the time, I had no idea what the future held,
but when I walked down the steps on the plane,
I was descending into an alien world.
My life would change forever.
Over the years, Christine Jorgensen has been
one of the most talked-about personalities
on the public scene.
She's helped to write a new chapter
in the history of medical science.
And that's a considerable burden for a shy youngster
from the Bronx to carry.
What kind of a child were you, Christine?
How did you think of yourself... as a boy or as a girl?
How did I think of myself? I don't really know.
All I knew is that I was unhappy.
I wasn't like other children.
As a child, I was often asked
if I was a girl in boy's clothing and called a "sissy."
As a little boy, did you ever envy the little girls
because of their clothes and their way of life?
I wouldn't say envied.
I just didn't understand why I wasn't that way, too, you see.
Did you prefer dolls and rolling hoops to...
to electric trains or playing baseball?
Well, I always... I liked to, of course, to play with dolls.
I still have a big collection now.
Too many things in my mind were confused.
For example, certain things were for little boys
and certain things were for little girls,
and I never understood why they should be.
I knew I was different and the best way to protect myself
was to stay under the radar, to be invisible.
I could never do the things other people could do.
When I went into the service, I weighed 98 pounds.
I was very, very shy. I sat in corners.
I didn't mix and join.
- You never dated? - Never dated, no.
I knew something was wrong.
And I knew something had to be done,
otherwise I could not continue to exist as I was.
The military garb only underscored my feelings
of otherness,
and for years, I looked for a solution,
a step toward living the life my heart and mind had intended,
and made the decision, out of desperation,
to experiment with the female hormone estrogen
using falsified pharmacy prescriptions.
I prayed and took the estrogen pills.
I asked God for forgiveness if I had done wrong.
I hadn't taken the pills with any hope of death,
but rather hoped this would be the start of a life of freedom.
You were still quite young when you went to Denmark,
and it must have been a tremendous decision.
I was 26.
On the 1st of May 1950,
I sailed for Europe on the Stockholm.
When I said I was going to Denmark,
I knew I was going to a new horizon.
I mean, the... the fates were with me.
And the first doctor I encountered in Europe
ended up being the right doctor for me.
And that began a three-year research.
People always refer to the surgery.
The surgery is sort of an anti-climax.
It's done after all the other things.
That's the hard part is finding out who the other person is.
The surgery's easy.
I had no fear of dying, and I-I strongly believed
that I would have committed suicide.
I don't say it tragically. I think at that time,
I-I felt that it was my only escape, my only out,
and that seems a tragic out for anyone at 26 years old.
- Indeed. - Now that I look back.
And then, as you might say, all hell broke loose.
Christine Jorgensen, who used to answer to George,
creates quite a stir as she returns home
to New York from Copenhagen.
Christine hit the headlines.
The story of my life became the world.
They owned it. They began to own me.
And all of these intimate details of my life
suddenly were spread across the newspapers of the world.
_
Yes, of course.
My first reaction in December was,
of course, great, great shock and surprise that, actually,
any one was very much interested in what had happened in my life.
I don't have any plans at the moment,
and I thank you all for coming.
But I think it's too much.
Fine. Thank you very much.
But as time went on, I realized that this was sort of
an important step in the eyes of the world.
Christine, do you think the time will ever come
when your complete past,
or at least this episode in your life, will disappear,
and people will think of you as Christine Jorgensen,
photographer, or Christine Jorgensen, actress,
or whatever your pursuit might be at that time
and not as Christine Jorgensen, woman, formerly man?
No, Mr. Russell,
I don't think the time will ever really come,
when the past, as I... as you say, Christine Jorgensen,
formerly a man, will ever be forgotten.
After enduring a nightmarish onslaught of press,
I quickly learned how to make use of the media
to tell my story in the most accurate way,
starting with a $20,000 deal
with American Weekly Sunday Magazine,
that would offer me financial stability
and eventually led to a career as an entertainer.
I like performing from the stage and going through the room,
but I don't like sitting and just having people press...
- I don't like to be handled. - You like performing.
Yes, very much.
There's a sense of exhibition of yourself.
It's an exhibition of what you feel and what you think,
and I do and say things which I think are important
to be said by me or by someone else.
It's only my feelings and my opinions.
People say, "Why did you go into nightclubs?"
Well, for a very pure, economic reason.
What does one live on?
Fame is not satisfactory.
I couldn't go anywhere or do anything.
But at a considerable price in... in exhibition of yourself.
-I think every human being is, in a form,
exhibition of themselves. -Mm-hmm.
Also, the question comes up whether it's...
what one would call morbid curiosity.
I think curiosity is healthy.
And for years, I continued to capture national headlines.
But audiences were more drawn to the pulp fiction and tabloids
inspired by me than my own performances or activism.
The spotlight was on me,
as though I were a sideshow attraction.
The media turned me into a curiosity
and then ridiculed me for being a curiosity.
They invaded the most personal of spaces.
I wonder who else's life can be peered into as closely as mine,
and they would still have a sense of humor themselves.
- Are you a woman? - Yes.
- You are a woman? - In my mind
and in my medical doctors' minds.
- Are you a man or a woman? - Well, dear, first one
has to determine what a man and what is a woman.
Are you, as a female, capable of having sexual relations?
Oh, yes, definitely.
Let me ask you this question. Can you have sex, Christine?
- Of course. - Alright, do you enjoy it?
Yes.
But a lot of people wonder, does Christine?
Does she do it or does she don't?
- Yeah. - She does it.
Good.
What was it like the first time a man ever made love to you?
It was nervous, but it was alright.
- Forgive me, but I mean... - Most men...
- I just want to know that... - Most...
Many men are not very good lovers.
You know that?
It's true.
Do you have any recurring problems
that you have to handle?
Not in my private life.
Do you mind the wave of Christine jokes
that are starting all over again?
Well, you know, it... they do hurt.
Christine Jorgensen was planning an early marriage
with Howard Knox of Chicago, Illinois.
The New York City Hall License Bureau
has temporarily denied issuance of a license.
With all this publicity and all, that...
that started all over again,
and I did not want this publicity, believe me.
And everything has just mushroomed
into something fantastic, and I find it so difficult.
There are a lot more important things in the world
than... than me.
Yes, but don't you know that as long as you live,
whether your name is Christine Jorgensen
or Christine Knox,
you're gonna be a news story? -Really?
People would naturally be curious and inquisitive.
I must get used to being stared at and studied.
If I were to function in the world,
I needed to accept that as logical and address it as so.
But be that as it may, I don't need anyone's opinion.
I've got my own.
I do hope that I have built the letter properly
so you already know what I am going to say now.
I want you to know that I am an extremely happy person
and that the real me has not changed.
But nature made a mistake, which I have corrected,
and I am now your daughter.
Christine Jorgensen faced unprecedented challenges
and criticism as an openly trans woman,
but weathered it all to become a major catalyst for change.
Dear Christine, I've had your same problem, but in reverse.
When things get low, I can say to myself that here
is a human being who pioneered in what I am trying to do.
Jorgensen became my idol.
She always stayed with me, like a goal.
When I got to where I wanted to give up,
I would say to myself, "She did it. That's proof."
Right up until she died in 1989,
Christine used her celebrity status to establish nonprofits,
activist groups, and publications.
She continued to do interviews and college tours,
answering the most ignorant of questions
with her high spirit and wit.
_
We arrested around 3,000 homosexuals.
The police department knows they're sex deviants.
They treat us as common criminals and sex deviants,
- somebody to spit at. - Preverts.
Preverts, something that should be locked up.
Every time I was arrested,
it would result in the loss of my job.
This is not a crime.
Now, I hope you didn't forget about my sister.
Or forget about that riot we started on that August night
in 1966 here at Compton's Cafeteria.
As soon as a bunch of us started throwing cups and plates,
forks and knives,
the cops retreated outside until reinforcements arrived.
And Compton management ordered the place closed.
And with that, the gays began breaking out every window
in the place.
And as they ran outside to escape the breaking glass,
the police tried to grab them
and throw them into the paddy wagon.
But they found this no easy task,
for the gays began hitting them below the belt,
and drag queens smashing them in the face
with their extremely heavy purses.
A police car had every window broken.
A newspaper shack outside the cafeteria
was burned to the ground.
Later, drag queens, hair fairies, conservative gays,
and hustlers joined in a picket of the cafeteria,
which would not allow the drags back in again.
It ended with the newly installed glass windows
once more being smashed.
After the Compton's Riot, the City of San Francisco
and their police department finally started to support
the trans community with social programs.
I'd like to present Mr. Sandy Adkins, human being.
I know there are more girls who would like to change over,
but they are unsure of what would happen
and how they would be accepted in this world.
Each of us is a different person
and requires somewhat different handling and counsel.
We do want to work
and be self-supporting members of society.
As far as I can remember,
I have always desired to be of the opposite sex.
Finally, Christine came around, and I realized it was possible.
I will attain it if I live.
If we're allowed to be people and not things,
we can accomplish our goals
without infringing on anybody at all.
It has taken Christine Jorgensen 15 years
to feel that she is now accepted as a human being,
rather than a freak of nature.
No one is a freak.
We are all human beings.
Persons with a transsexual condition
merely want to be themselves.
Thank you.
Though they didn't know each other, Christine, Jack,
and Lucy stood on the shoulders of one another.
Their individual courage lit fires
that ignited the Compton's Riot
and inspired future leaders and activists.
Support for trans rights gained visibility and momentum,
enabling social, legal, and medical advancements.
But the movement is not yet fulfilled.
Trans and gender-non-conforming folks have had some wins...
Until today, you could be fired in half the states in the US
just for being gay or transgender.
But are still the victims
of violence, discrimination, and criminalization,
sometimes even within the queer movement itself.
Transgender rights are human rights!
But marginalized groups that stick together are strong.
I believe in our power!
No matter the opposition,
no matter how much they criminalize our lives,
we will not back down until we are all equal.
CREDITS