Listen to the episode here.

We are in the middle of Pride Month and celebrating with some brilliant heroes.

Angie kicks things off with the story of Dora Richter, a German woman who was the first known person to undergo a complete transformation from male to female via surgery.

Theresa moves into more well-known territory by sharing the life and background of the historic Sylvia Rivera. You might have heard of her, as she was credited with throwing the second Molotov cocktail at Stonewall. Come hear the before and after.

Transcript

Welcome 

Theresa: to the Unhinged History Podcast. The podcast where two absolute nut jobs are going to compulsively study history because we can’t not do it. And then we will join forces and tell our co-host the story. We’ve only recently learned I’m host number one. I’m Teresa and that is host number two. 

Angie: I’m Angie. You know what I was thinking recently? I don’t remember which episode, but we have an episode that is titled Thank You for helping me stop sharing. And I was like, that’s right up there with We Can’t Not Learn It. 

Theresa: Yeah. I mean, honestly, the names of our episodes crack me up because I will either remember exactly why that episode is named that or like the one named Cross Stitch and Screaming Cats. I think I’m going to know what happened here. 

Angie: I was doing something with the episode titled Thanks for Translating Past Teresa. And Mads has been sitting next to me and he goes, what? And I’m like, dude, that’s what it’s called. And he goes, what? Like, leave it alone, man. I don’t know why we called it that. Yeah. 

Theresa: That’s past Teresa’s problem. 

Speaker 3: That’s not feature and like pay attention. Compact clues. Yeah. 

Angie: Go listen to the episode and then we’ll figure it out. 

Theresa: Well, and it’s because we base all of the episodes off the throwaway lines we say and it’s like SEO practice says you should name it off the characters that you’re covering and whatnot. It’s like boring. Yeah, that’s not fun. No. I would rather title it pause for me to find something. Dick Gorgeous. 

Angie: Okay, but to be fair, Dick Gorgeous was actually a character in that story. 

Theresa: But to be fair, his name was actually Richard Gorgeous and I elaborated because how could history not go with Dick Gorgeous? 

Angie: If his friends didn’t call him Dicky or Dick, are they even his friends? 

Theresa: I mean, look, I’m just saying that if my name were Richard Gorgeous and I were a gay man, no, scrap that. It loved anybody, anything but an asexual. I would introduce myself just like Bond. I’m Dick, Dick Gorgeous. Dick Gorgeous, Dick. 

Speaker 3: Yes. How have you heard it? Yes, I’m Gorgeous Dick. Yes. Yeah. 

Angie: And this episode is titled Gorgeous Dick. 

Speaker 3: Oh my goodness. 

Theresa: Hey, I got to go first. I was just going to make that weird transition. So yeah, I’ll make it. And that’s, sorry, my eyeball. 

Angie: All right. I’m looking at my sources here and there’s one I cannot share the title with you just yet. So I have a them.us article by Samantha Riedel from March of 22 titled, Remembering Door Erector, One of the First Women to Receive Gender Affirming Surgery. Ooh. Yeah. Are you familiar with Door Erector? 

No, not yet. The Legacy Project Chicago. So there’s a biography by Gwendolyn Smith from June of 24 that’s really, really well, like just so much information but so well put that it’s like, oh yeah, I got it. 

I understand what’s going on here. There’s a queryaf.com and I just think this is really cool. Please allow me to just like briefly tell you about the author because I was like, whoa. They are Jamie SK Star, an Irish Jewish non-binary disabled and deaf socialist migrant historian. 

Theresa: That’s a lot of adjectives. Yeah. 

Angie: And I was like, what’s your one do you put first? But wow, every one of those by itself is like a thing, right? Is cool or is something that’s unique? And to put them all together, I’m like, wow. Okay. I don’t have that many adjectives. 

Theresa: Yes. We’ll start picking them up. I’ll get a hat. We’ll pull one out and then we’ll have to do it for the plot. We will run with it. 

Angie: Anyway, that was their write up about themselves, not mine and I was simply blown away with it. There is a unsung history podcast featuring Dr. Brandy Shalas. That was really, really good. So those are my sources. I’m sorry. I can’t tell you the title of the one, but I would also like to preface my story with I feel so far out of my league with this story and I hope I do the character justice because they were amazing. So Rudolph Richter, and that’s the last time I will say that name, was born in roughly 1891, 1892. 

The sources differ on the exact year, but that’s the gist, 1891, 1892. They are born on a farm near the rural village of Scythian in Bohemia that’s in the ore mountains on what is now the border of Germany and the Czech Republic. So the area where they are born is like rural, like rural. 

Theresa: Or as in like laws, rules. No. 

Angie: This is one of the words I can’t say no matter how my face tries. 

Theresa: Rural. First of all, they were born in the countryside. Yes. 

Angie: They were in the countryside. They’re 200 miles away from the nearest like town. Costco runs their plants. Very much so, yes. So not a ton is known about their childhood except that Richter was the second of seven children. And feelings about their body, they said in early and very, very intensely, but it seems that their family accepted these feelings and they did the best they could to allow like the time and the place for them to be female. They’re born male at birth and even like six, seven years old. 

They’re very, very strong in their feelings. And mom goes as far as to teach them laced making skills and the feminine things because this child is just so sure that I do not belong in a male body. And for the most part, even dad is like, OK, do the thing. But because of where they live, there is a little bit of push and pull with that, right? Like you’re going to have to be safe. 

But at home, do your thing, which I think speaks a lot to their family and a lot to just the type of people they are, because I’m imagining that in 1900, Border Town, mountain area Czechoslovakia is probably not the most permissive, free place to be. 

Theresa: That would be my assumption, but that is just that. 

Angie: It is an assumption, but later I’ll mention something else about the area that I thought was interesting to point out because it is an assumption, but type thing. So despite the fact that for all purposes, she is loved and accepted by her family. She doesn’t ever accept herself because she knows she’s female, but she’s living in a male body. And for her, this is unacceptable. 

According to records, she attempts to remove her penis with a tourniquet. Oh, at least once. That started at age six. By that time. Oh, yeah. I was like, I can’t say that out loud. 

Speaker 3: Congratulations. You’ve been working on it for three days. 

Angie: By 13, the struggle to accept her body and herself, it leads to an attempt at taking her own life by swallowing nails again. Wow. Okay. But she survives and reaches adulthood. Somewhere in her teens, she takes on the name of Dorkin or Dora for short. 

And by this point, it’s like roughly 1909 and she has taken on a beggars apprenticeship, which is super cool. Like she’s doing stuff. She leaves town. She gets to a larger area where she falls in with this wandering theater troupe. It’s such a random thing, but there you go. So she moves to Lipzig and she stays with this theater troupe for a while. 

She’s been in this theater for a couple of years, but then 1916 happens and she is drafted into the army and probably discharged two weeks later. Okay. Okay. We’re moving. 

We’re doing things. Now the timeline here is a little differing from source to source, but at some point, just past 1916, she makes it her way to Berlin and she finds work as a seasonal male waiter in various upper class hotels. So she will often have to take jobs where she presents as a man, but she’s not happy with it. But when she’s not working, she is very much living as herself, which I think is pretty cool. Now the sex paragraph is a little bit clinical and I’m sorry for that, but it seems like the best way to explain what’s about to go on. 

But Dora is living in the rather permissive Weimar Republic. So. Okay. Right? Yeah. 

When I was earlier speaking about the area where she was raised and how it could have been a little less than accepting, we do have to remember that she is part of the Weimar Republic and they had a little bit more leeway in their lifestyles at the same time. Well, right? 

Theresa: To piggyback on that, right? Like I believe it was the episode on the pink triangles that we talked about the Weimar Republic and how there was a lot of allowances made for all of that. Like Berlin was a happening place for what would now be called the LGBTQ community. And then once the third right came to power, we watched a lot of those things close up and a lot of those things collapse and it become much more oppressive. And so I think that’s kind of what we’re harkening back to here. 

Angie: Yes, 100%. So during Germany’s Weimar Republic transgender people had limited but actual legal protections. These included police permits that exempted them from cross-dressing laws, which is wild to me, but that’s even a thing. And the ability to legally change their names, which I think is huge. In Berlin, like you said, they’ve got magazines, they’ve got political clubs, they’ve got a visible, like cultural space. 

You have the El Dorado Cabaret, which I think you did mention in the pink triangle episode. They’re supported by advocates like sexologist Magnus Hirschild, who I’m going to talk about more later. But when the Nazis rose to power and he has a little foreshadowing, all of this is dismantled, like you just said. 

The cultures, the venues. Everything is shut down. And these legal protections that trans people or people of any sort of differing views than the Reich, they’re going to have issues and all of their protections are going to be stripped away. So one of the things that I thought was really fascinating is they have these passes. And so I had to learn more. So according to the Wikipedia page, I’m going to quote them on this, a transvestite pass. Their word, like the word of the time, not mine, was a document issued by the responsible police authority of the Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic under support of sexologist Magnus Hirschfield, identifying a person as a transvestite. Transvestite at the time referred to all individuals whose gender identity or preferred clothing was discordant to that associated with their assigned sex. And so included both cross-dressing and transgender people. As gender confirming surgery was only an emerging practice in the early 20th century, obtaining these permissions, these permits, along with official name change, basically represented the contemporary maximum extent to what a trans individual could do towards transition. 

Theresa: Now I want to jump in here because you touched on something that I’m going to mention in my story. Oh, OK. Language change. Language evolves. The language we use now is not the language we used a decade ago, two decades ago. Yep. 

Angie: And even Hirschfield himself made the comment. He said this word doesn’t cover the spectrum of things we’re dealing with, but it is currently the word we have. Right. 

Theresa: And I think it’s important to, as we’re telling stories from a historical context, use the language they had because they didn’t have trans. They didn’t have. So transvestite now is a slur to some. But if you were coming of age during that time, as the language changed, you might choose to use the old language because you just didn’t adopt the label. Right. OK. 

Angie: And again, that’s the word that’s used because that’s the word that’s used at the time. Right. And we don’t have to agree with it. But I think when you’re trying to be as accurate as possible, that is what’s required. 

Theresa: Yeah. Like to push back and add a different thing. Nobody dies of apoplexy anymore. 

Angie: But that was the word that they had at the time. Everybody you did in the 15th century. Right. Yeah. Exactly. So this past, the first ones were issued around 1908, 1909 in Germany. And then up until 1933, police grant perhaps dozens of these permits with the help of Hirschfield. And these passes, they allow the individuals to dress according to their identity in public without legal trouble. Now, the issue is that it’s mainly going to middle class heterosexual male to female individuals, partly to distance the practice from associations with any gay or lesbian culture. So there is, somebody is looking out for you, but you still have to fit into the right box. You know? 

Right. And that part sort of frustrated me because there’s not a lot of, I was thinking the whole time about women wanting to transition to men and there’s not a lot of coverage for that. But at the same time, maybe there was less of that happening or maybe it was less noticed. 

I couldn’t really pinpoint why that is the way that it is, but that is the way that it is. But all that said, you would think this makes life a little easier for Dora because she is a white male transitioning to or wanting to transition to a female. No, no. 

Our girl is arrested repeatedly for wearing dresses in public and required to serve her time in a male prison. Joy. Not great. Now, one of these times she gets lucky and the judge releases her to the care of the gay Jewish doctor, Magnus Hirschfield, who I’ve mentioned a couple of times. 

It’s around 1921. This happens. And Hirschfield promises her employment, which I think is phenomenal because he is for all that is wrong with the world. He is looking at a person and going, we need to help the whole person and not just the part we have an expertise in. So he offers her employment and housing at his institute for sexual license craft or the Institute for Sexual Science. Now, this is the first modern research institute for queer and transgender health and it sort of nestled in this ideal area in Berlin called the Tiergarten Park. According to them, US, Hirschfield had in his prior 20 years or so established himself as one of the leading researchers of gay and transgender identities, pioneering research alongside surgeons and psychologists like Eugene Spinech and Arthur Clonesfield, many of whom came to work as residents or visiting fellows after the Institute’s founding. Now, at this institute, Dora is given a pass to present openly as a woman in public. She is working as a housemaid for the Institute as well, which is often the case for these individuals. 

Finding work or housing outside of the program is hard, right? So the doctor, like I said, he’s literally doing everything he can to help the whole person here. He’s giving them jobs, he’s giving them housing, he’s giving them a safe place. So while she’s working for the Institute, they are assessing her needs and it’s determined that the first thing that needs to happen, and hopefully I pronounced this right, is an or she ectomy. 

It is removal of one or both testicles. Because this research is still actually research, they seem to be basically learning as they go at this point, right? This is the mid-20s. But for example, they had already identified that a lack of testosterone could alter a male’s body fat distribution. So after Dora undergoes the removal of her testicles, which was performed by Dr. Irwin Gobhart in 21-22, Dora’s case seems to confirm their prior research. 

And in the years following her surgery, she develops a fuller figure, reduced facial hair, noticeable breast growth, and what they refer to as more feminine fat distribution. Oh, okay. All right. And this is all documented by the Institute’s forensic sexologist. His name is Felix Abraham. Now, for the next 10 years, Dora and a team of other trans women make up the essential housekeeping staff of the Institute. These are women like Tony Elba and her lover Charlotte Sharlicu. She played, she acted as their receptionist. 

I keep going back to a movie and I keep thinking that’s the actress’s name and it is not. For the next 10 years, they are basically living human test subjects for things like the first trial runs of modern vaginal plastry surgery. So like, stuff is happening and they are at the forefront of the time in the area. And I just want to think, like, just want to take a second to think about how brave these individuals are. They are walking this fine line for so many reasons, right? 

For one, they are giving their bodies to science for the chance to feel like they are meant to feel. And that’s huge. Right. Like, and two, they are trying to openly live in a world that is getting less and less willing to accept it. 

Which is also terrifying. Them.us acknowledges the fact that the timeline is unclear on when each procedure is being done. And I also like to point out that we are still learning new things all the time about marginalized communities because history largely erases them. Yet historians persist. And there are so many historians working to make it clear all of humanity, not just the ones that were written by the victor. And so we are learning more and more every day. And I think that’s pretty cool because it really speaks to these communities. And maybe one day we will have a clear timeline, but right now we don’t. We just know things are happening. Now Dora, she had, by 1931, received one of the institutes first full reassignments. By what year? 1931. Okay. 

Theresa: So this is going to be one of those cases that influences Christine Jorgensen. Yeah. 

Angie: What’s really interesting is there, for a long time, there was a lot of like, because Christine Jorgensen was so famous, there was some debate about whether or not she was in fact the first. And then they learned about the Lillielba, I think is her name. 

And then Dora. And so people are sort of starting to make a timeline. But the point is like, they’re the first of their own, in their own way, each one of them, right? Christine Jorgensen was the first American. Dora happens to be living in Berlin. 

Theresa: Well, and I think like, Christine learned about all of this happening, and that’s why she skedaddled off to Denmark to make go. 

Angie: I mean, that would make sense. They had, it seems to me based on what I read that that area of the world had way more research and way more stuff going for them in a lot of areas than the rest of the world did. So it would make sense why she would just find herself there. Also, she had family there too, didn’t she? 

Theresa: She did. And that was her excuse of why she was going there. So she didn’t have to tell everybody. 

Angie: That makes sense. Yeah, okay. So Dora is about 40 when all of these surgeries are done. So that’s okay. We’re doing it, right? Them got us again. They say the penile inversion technique used today was still decades away from being developed. And Dora’s surgery was a rudimentary two-part affair, a connect me performed by Dr. Levy-Lenz, followed by the construction of a neovagina by Dr. Goh part. Still, her vaginal plassi and those of her friends and fellow workers at the institute were an extraordinary success and attracted other European trans women to Berlin, including Lillie-Lenz. So, I’m not keen on somebody saying this is a rudimentary surgery being done, but Dora was for it and good for her because things went well. 

Theresa: You know, it makes sense that it was. And I get that it would be uncomfortable to say that. But if it’s like, hey, we’ve got this experimental procedure to help you feel better, that’s rudimentary. 

Angie: And let’s go, right? I mean, we’ve come this far. I’m not stopping now. Now, the other thing that’s happening at this time, right? It’s 1931, 1932 is 1932 marks the official rise to Hitler and the 32 Reichstag election, which is basically the death blow for the institution and Dr. Hirschfeld. He is labeled the most dangerous Jew in Germany. Of course he is. 

Right. Now, right about this time, Dr. Hirschfeld goes on, he leaves Germany and goes on this like grand tour of Asia and North America. And then, like just prior to that, he had already been attacked several times in the streets because of these Nazi beliefs that are growing. What I learned after the fact is he never came back. Like the world went to hell in a hand basket and he was like, okay, it is not safe. 

Theresa: I’ll just keep booking one way tickets to other places. 

Angie: Yeah, I’m unclear what happened to him during the like after the tour, during the tour. I should have looked because he is really central to her story and I didn’t. 

So for that, I’m sorry. But this does not stop our girls from being in a film from director Wilther Gaffey. It’s called, see if I can say this right, Mysterium des Gauchlets, the mystery of gender. It is an Austrian film about sex and gender and this is like 32, 33. 

Theresa: I’ll say this would be cutting edge today. 

Angie: Oh yeah. And it was then as well. But then on May 6th of 1933, the Nazi stormtroopers and a gang of nationalist students lay waste to the Institute because of course they do. They destroy as many books and files as they can and then they drag the inhabitants into the street to be shot. Some of her friends escaped Czechoslovakia. That is the end of her story, but not mine. A few days later, the Nazis set fire to more of the Institute’s research as well as tons of Jewish and communist literature, just to drive the point home that we could, we already ruined a bunch. Let’s just go ruin some more. Now, fast forward to 2023. A researcher named Clara Hartman discovers, now Clara is also a trans woman, which I did not realize when I was first hearing this part of the story. 

And I thought it was really cool that it sort of comes full circle with curiosity. Clara Hartman, she discovers that Dora had actually escaped the terror. She was in fact not shot that day. 

Oh, yeah. She goes back to her birthplace. She becomes a lace maker and she lives there until all the Germans are expelled from Czechoslovakia in 1946. Then she travels on to Nuremberg and Alsberg where she lived for the rest of her life. She was a chef for a time, but she seems to have mostly stuck with lace making. She tended to her flowers and kept pet pigeons, some even in her handbag. Yeah, I love her so much. 

We all know this because Hartman discovered that sometime after the fall of the Institute, her birth and baptismal certificates were changed. And I think that’s phenomenal because Dora wasn’t trying to hide. Like she wasn’t trying to not be out in the world, whatever. 

She was just trying to live. And at some point, somebody granted birth slash baptismal certificate change to make her who she was, like on paper. And I just think that that kind of brings her story like fully around and that she got to live the way that she was hoping to. Now, Clara does one of the coolest things ever and she goes to the places that Dora lived. Like she finds these records by being in the place where they were changed. But then she goes on and she specifically is going into these villages, these towns, and looking for the oldest people she can find. Do you recall this woman? And she finds stories. 

Oh my gosh. And that’s how we learned that she has pigeons in her purse. And like they would have been children when Dora lived there, but they’re elderly now. And they recall her. They say that she kept pigeons in her purse. They remember her living with her brother. Query asks, suggests that locals thought he might actually have been her lover and not her brother, but was just disguised that way because living on a wet at the time was socially unacceptable. But more than that, what they remember is that she smiled and laughed a lot. 

Oh, yeah. So she got to live. I did not put it down, but I think she died in the 60s. She got to do her thing and got to not be part of the, you know, I mean, she was attacked by the Nazis in the Nazi office, but for decades we thought she was murdered in that institute. 

And it was only just two years ago that this researcher was like, hey, hold on. No, she didn’t. She’s here. She’s here doing stuff. 

Wow. She’s pigeons in her bag, making lace, doing old lady things. And people remembered her and then it was the smile they remembered. And I’m like, yeah, Dora. Get it, woman. Get it. Yeah. Day made. 

Theresa: All right. Well, I am going to take us on a Mary John, down a very different direction. Love this. My sources. Okay. So, you know, before I get into the sources, last week I covered Marcia P. Johnson. Yes. Today I’m covering her bestie, Sylvia Rivera. 

Angie: I was hoping we were going to hear about her. Okay. 

Theresa: Good. Because it felt difficult to do one without the other and I wanted to give each their own episodes. So here we are. My sources, biography.com, Sylvia Rivera by Catherine Caruso, New York State Attorney General, the National Women’s History Museum. They have an article on Sylvia Rivera and multiple podcasts, Making Gay History, Sylvia Rivera Parts 1 and 2. And I recommend these because here you get to hear the podcast host play actual interviews he did with Sylvia. 

Oh, cool. So you hear her voice. Steph, you missed the history class, Sylvia Rivera. The oldest profession podcast, they have a three-part series on Martha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. Okay. 

Okay. So, July 2nd, 1951, Sylvia Rivera is born. She’s assigned male at birth. She is Puerto Rican and Venezuelan, one parent for each. Now, she has a very troubled childhood. This starts with her father’s abandonment right after birth. Hmm. Okay. And the hits keep coming because when she’s three, her mother kills herself by eating rat poison. 

Right up there with nails. Now, to make matters a bit worse, mom also attempts to kill her as well, but Sylvia survives and goes on to be raised by her grandmother. Oh, yeah, that doesn’t create issues. Especially when that there seems to be like Sylvia believes that there was something her mother saw in her that led the mom to believe that Sylvia was about to have a tough life. And if mom’s going to check out, she might as well bring the baby with her. 

Angie: Good Lord. To have to live believing that. Yeah. 

Theresa: True or not, just that thought process in your head is awful. Now grandma, Viajita, who raises her and her half-sister, Viajita is surviving as a single parent because her husband had already abandoned her as well. And the father, Sylvia’s father, he’s not paying child support. Shocking. Right. So this just goes to show how difficult things are in the 50s. 

Now Viajita is very strict. She teaches Sylvia, again, a signed male at birth, to cook, sew, and knit, but didn’t like it when Sylvia is wearing girls’ clothing. Okay. Now, she punishes Sylvia for this act and tells her, we don’t do this. You’re one of the boys. I want you to be a mechanic. 

Angie: Then you need to teach me how to change the oil, Neam. 

Theresa: And I have a feeling she might have been that too, but it sounds like grandma wants her to be self-sufficient. And so these are the skills I have. These are the skills I teach. Now Sylvia would respond, and we have, you can hear the interviews in which she says this, that she would respond to grandma by saying she wanted to be a hairdresser and wear these clothes. Good for her. So she stood on business and what she wanted to do with her life. 

Now, growing up, Sylvia would overhear her grandmother saying that she wanted a white grandchild because Sylvia’s darker skin tone wasn’t desirable. Thanks. So there’s a lot happening here. Now, this goes on until Sylvia attempts to take her own life by downing a bunch of grandma’s pills. 

This landed her in the hospital for two months. Oh. So this was a deep attempt, right? Yeah. 

Now, surprising no one. Sylvia gets bullied for wearing girls’ clothing and her effeminate mannerisms. Okay. Now, at one point in the Making Gay History podcast, you hear Sylvia describe in her own words that she heard her grandmother come home saying the neighbors were calling her a slur in Spanish for being homosexual. 

Okay. And she knew that this meant that things were just really hard on her grandmother for this. And so around age 10 and a half, Sylvia makes the decision to leave. 

Angie: My God, you are still a baby. Yeah. 

Theresa: So she leaves. She’s just straight up, so she’s in the heart of New York City. She’s in the Bronx and she just skedaddles to another part of town. She’s got no means to support herself. 

Angie: I’m assuming we also don’t have a ton of friends at this time? Not truly. 

Theresa: Yeah. So she turns to sex work and local drag queens adopt her and call her Sylvia. Okay. Now, she describes how she dressed at that time as being a scare drag. And this is one of those terms I brought up in the Stonehenge episode. And it’s a term we don’t use now. Sorry, Stonewall. Thank you for correcting me. I would have heard that. I was like, wait. Yeah. No, that was a very different episode that we haven’t done yet. 

Angie: You have given me a visual that I cannot unsee though. Thank you. You’re welcome. 

Theresa: You’re welcome. Scare drag according to Sylvia is when you do not have breasts and you’re wearing female clothing, you’ve got a tiny bit of makeup. You have your hair done. 

Angie: Oh, like drag by at home on Tuesday? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So drag light. That seems comfortable. Drag light. Okay. 

Theresa: She would end up getting arrested and when she was brought before the judge, she would be charged with upper head female impersonation. What the hell is that? Basically, this means you’re wearing makeup. 

Angie: It is makeup. In fact, you are allowed. 

Theresa: I mean, the fact that it’s upper head female impersonation is a wild string of words in a sentence. 

Angie: Yeah. None of those words go with the other words they were given. 

Theresa: Yeah. Now, when she’s arrested, which happened often to the point where I think Sylvia stops counting at the hundredth of rest. Oh, okay. Her grandmother would come and bail her out. So grandma is still in the picture. Okay. 

Okay. Now, she’s living a very transient lifestyle to put it mildly. A couple of days before her 18th birthday, she heads the Stonewall Inn for the first time, which we covered in a previous episode, which I’ll put in a show notes. Now, Stonewall is owned by the mafia and the mob is the only one willing and able to cater this community because it is illegal to serve alcohol to someone you presume is somebody who enjoys the same sex. 

Angie: That is the stupidest lie I’ve ever heard. 

Theresa: I mean, there’s also laws about tying alligators to fire hydrants. That one makes sense. 

Angie: What if you need that fire hydrant and there is an alligator tied to it? 

Theresa: I just think certain laws shouldn’t need to be made, but the fact that it was made meant something happened. Carry on. Yeah, I would like to know the backstory. Thank you. 

No. As we covered previously, gay bars are routinely raided by police who would rush the bar, take the money out of the cash register, snag all the booze and lock the place behind with a padlock. Now, the mafia running Stonewall runs this place like a NASCAR pit crew to the point where they had a second cash drawer, a second stash of booze. They would come right behind the cops, cut the padlock, slide a new cash drawer and restock the bar, turn the lights back on. 

Angie: I kind of love that, to be honest. Yeah. Honestly. It’s kind of great. 

Theresa: I mean, it just creates such a visual. Now, it does. 

Angie: Tony, I’m going to need you to go down, huh? 

Theresa: You’ll fat Brian. They raided Stonewall again. I got the cash drawer. I’m going to ring little Billy and get him to bring the booze. You got it, boss. So right as Stonewall is kicking off, right? That same week, the stuff you missed in the history podcast. They point out that Julie Garland had died. Now, that in some circles is said to have contributed to the feelings of angst and amosity in the LGBTQ community. 

Angie: Now, they will go on if they like… You’re referring to Dorothy Wizard of Oz, right? Okay. I mean, sure. I’m placing the right person. Okay. Got it. Yeah. 

Theresa: Now, when they said that out loud, I was like, yeah, right. And they kind of echo this sentiment later on. They’re like, yeah, we kind of disagree with this thought too. But so they’re saying like, there’s a lot of things going on at this time. Right. 

But I think it’s interesting to place us in history by saying that. Now, Sylvia Rivera is famous for taking part in these riots and allegedly through the second Molotov cocktail in protest at the police raid at Stonewall Inn. It could have been a shot glass, could have been a Molotov cocktail. 

This story is like really hard to substantiate because we don’t have a play by play multiple camera angle, whatnot. But it’s important to remember that Stonewall itself was a six day event and was one of the biggest catalysts in the Gay Liberation movement. And Rivera co-founded the Gay Liberation Front the following month after Stonewall. There you go. So in later interviews, she reminisced about her place in history with quote saying, or saying quote, we were the front runners. 

Nope. We were the front liners. We didn’t take shit from nobody and we had nothing to lose. Okay, sis. Yeah. So she stood on business. Like I said before, she was one of the founders of the Gay Liberation Front. She was also active in a second group that formed the Gay Activist Alliance. 

Now as part of the Gay Activist Alliance, she’s petitioning New York City for legislation against discrimination. That’s awesome. Yeah. She’s like, look, I don’t want to be arrested for not having three items of clothing assigned to the gender I was given at birth. Yeah. 

Angie: And look, pants are pants. I don’t know if you know this, whether they’re pink or jeans. 

Theresa: Or whether they button on the left or the right. Like this shouldn’t matter as much as it does. Yep. Agreed. So as she’s collecting petitions or, nope, collecting signatures for the petition, she gets arrested. And she’s brought before a judge and the judge, looking at the public unrest going on at the time, realized how bad of a PR move it would be to incarcerate someone who is collecting signatures on a petition. And he dismisses her. That boy. 

Angie: That might have been the first nice thing that’s happened to her so far. Yeah. 

Theresa: Now, she’s hoping to get this bill to pass. And other organ… No. So in hopes to get the bill to pass, other organizers decide that there’s a lot going on in this bill and it’s going to be very difficult to come up with this all-inclusive bill for everybody that’s a part of the alphabet mafia to get what they need. So there’s a couple of humans who decide that they’re going to drop protections for the trans community as a whole. 

And they don’t tell the rest of the group. Oh, how nice. Yeah. And so it gets presented and even without the language to protect the trans community, it doesn’t get passed for another 15 years. 

Okay. So dropping it didn’t help anybody. But it results in Sylvia and the rest of her subset of this community feeling deeply betrayed. Well, fair. 

Yeah. Because according to her, she’s like, we’re your foot soldiers. We’re the ones out on the front lines. 

You wouldn’t have pride without us. Period. End of story. 

Fair. And you’re throwing us under the front, the first bus you see. So feeling excluded as a gay activist, she founds the street transvestite action revolutionaries and teams up with Martha P. Johnson to do so. I love that. Because she’s like, if you’re not going to fight for trans causes, we’ve got our own backs. And we have recordings of Martha P. Johnson’s voice on the oldest professions podcast and you hear her credit Sylvia with starting star and how she was basically there just to run support. That’s awesome. And you’ve got to remember Sylvia was 11 when she met Johnson. Marcia was around 19. 

Angie: Was, this might not be known information, but was Johnson one of the drag queens that adopted her when she went to the streets? That’s sort of what I thought. 

Theresa: I think in the last podcast I said that it was Marcia who taught Sylvia how to do makeup. 

Angie: I remember you saying that’s why I asked. Because I was thinking, okay, well she did like taught Sylvia how to do like her hair and her makeup or anything. I bet you she was one of those first ones. 

Theresa: Yeah. So now I’m going to go back and say again, you know, I just said the word transvestite to describe star. And that’s the word they used because that’s the word that was freely available. Some people in the modern vernacular are going to view that as a slur. I’m using the parlance of the times. Please don’t at me. Yes. Because I guarantee five, 10 years this isn’t going to age well despite all of the wiggle words I’ve got. 

Angie: Well, I mean, it like we mentioned in my story, words change with history and people’s understanding. And so you have to tell history accurately. 

Speaker 3: Right. 

Theresa: But the words. The word gay used to mean happy and was used as a dog whistle or secret link code word, however you want to describe it for gay people to identify other gay people. You’re on a train to a new city. You’re like, Hey, do you know any gay bars in this town? And they’re like, what? I’m sorry. 

What? Like it’s happy cool bars. Oh, you can go to this one down the street. 

Hey, do you know any gay bars? Oh yeah, you could have Johnny’s down on third. Oh, right. Yeah. And so that’s so weird. Thanks English. I know. Well, I mean, thanks to humans trying to be sneaky and subversive. That’s truly how this all comes up. 

Angie: You know, which I mean, and that from that perspective, humans do cool things. Right. The way words change the way our understandings of words change. I’m all about that. But like we could just English could make things so much easier for itself. You know, it could. I’ll always be English. 

Theresa: So zipping back to star house. They’ve got a. They’ve got a mission, both Martha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, and they’re trying to target street queens. They want to give them a place to sleep. And so Martha and Sylvia, no, Marsha and Sylvia engaged in sex work with the stated mission to protect their charges from needing to do it themselves. Break my heart for them. 

Yeah. They’re regularly meeting as a group to organize and discuss political issues that are affecting the trans community. And both Sylvia and Marsha had been homeless as teenagers. Rivera was only 19 years old when she started star house. 

Angie: Listen, you see any of you feel an need. 

Theresa: Yeah, this knows what’s up. And she recalled that her and Marsha decided it was time to help each other and to help our other kids. Like they just said, you’re one of us. 

You’re my kiddo. Now, at first our house operated on the back of a truck before they started renting out a building at 217 East Second Street. Okay. So we have the address. They provided shelter, food, guidance for trans and gender youth. They try to do the best they could to keep star house afloat. They’re even hosting a dance at one point to raise funds. Now they’re also petitioning the other groups that aren’t trans to say, hey, can we get some funding? We’re doing the work. We’re on the front lines and their causes go on deaf ears. 

Despite the hard work that they’re doing, the street youth living there were known to steal food to try to help support everything going on. And that part just when I learned that I was just like, oh, it was just. It was it was it was sad and it was it was beautiful and it was just to see everybody trying their best and to make the best of the bad situation. So eventually star house failed because their model wasn’t sustainable. And well, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, like Sylvia and Marsha, they end up getting evicted from what is described as a derelict house. Now Sylvia and Marsha, they end up stealing the fridge and apparently they had done several home improvements. 

And so as they’re getting evicted, they undo those home improvements. Okay, which, you know what? Turnabout’s fair play. I don’t know. 

I feel bad for both sides of this. Okay, yeah. Yeah, like so. And I’m going to go back a little bit in time. 

Oh, no. Before I zip there, I’m going to say that a decade later that decade in 1979, Dr. Emory Hettrick and his life partner Damien Martin founded the Institute for the Protection of Gay and Lesbian Youth. It’s now called HMI and that seems to try to take over what the star house tried to. Okay, so something came from it. 

Something came from that. Now, while Sylvia was active in star house, she’s also active in the Black Panthers and a Puerto Rican group known as the Young Lords. So she is trying her best to move the cost forward by being involved in so many of these other groups. 

That’s cool, which I absolutely adore. Now, 1973, Sylvia is supposed to speak at the Christopher Street Liberation Day and that was to commemorate the Stonewall Uprising. Now, while she’s supposed to be speaking, there’s some radical feminists that stood against her taking part, saying that a man wearing women’s clothes was sexist. Basically, she’s not technically a woman, so she’s not one of us. 

Angie: That is the exact opposite of what you would think feminism should be. 

Theresa: Yeah, I think one of the terms used to describe people like that are terfs. Just people who exclude trans women because they deny their existence and their struggle and their whatnot. Sylvia responds by snatching the mic and she goes on a very passionate speech. Good for her. And she, I will speak on this in a little bit. I’ll give you her speech in a little bit, so we’re going to pin a pin in that because, yes, I should say that the radical feminists who stood up against Sylvia also barred the drag queen performances as well. 

Of course they did. Now, I’m intentionally not naming the woman who fought against Sylvia speaking because she would later go back and say that she’s super embarrassed by her actions and how she made life harder for people who are already down and out. Okay, well, so we can learn. She learned from her mistake showing that there is evolution in human thought. But Sylvia herself continues to be incredibly defiant of labels. 

Okay. Like she doesn’t ascribe many of the labels to herself because she uses language that we wouldn’t use today. And when you listen to her interviews, you clutch your own pearls going, we don’t say that, but she does. And it’s because she doesn’t care. She just wants to be herself. And when you hear her speak, you hear that ring true where she’s like, I don’t care what you call me. I’m Sylvia. Sylvia is Sylvia. Sylvia does Sylvia. 

Angie: Well, and honestly, if you, as far as I’m concerned, if you are a part of that community or any community, you can call yourself whatever you want. Yeah. 

Theresa: Yeah. And that said, I think pushing back tiny bit, right? I think as an artist, as somebody with diagnosed autism, when I hear another artist use outdated language or language that’s harmful to brothers and sisters, the same diagnosis, I hear how harmful that could be. Okay. So if I hear Elon Musk say that he doesn’t have autism, he’s got Asperger’s and I’m like, no, you don’t. Then I realize how, you know, that language pairs with high functioning. And I’m like, no, no, there are days I am high functioning and there are days I am clearly needing a lot more support. And that language undermines the amount of support and recognition we’re willing to give. 

Angie: Yeah. I mean, you’re right. I do agree with you on that. I also see it from the perspective of I’m talking about myself, but I see where talking about oneself could also marginalize other people within the same demographic. 

Theresa: Right. It’s a tough line, right? Yeah. You know, I think it’s do no harm. Yep. Regardless of who you’re talking about and if the language you’re using describe yourself inadvertently harm somebody else, maybe you should readdress how you’re speaking. Yeah. Okay. I agree with you. I think that’s tough because you’re like, well, I was talking about myself. It’s like, okay, but now we’ve got to think we’ve got to zoom out a bit, not be so self-centered. 

There are other people in the room. Right. Okay. Back to Sylvia speaking of self-centered because I just did that. Sylvia herself is poor, trans, a drag queen, a person of color, a former sex worker. She’s experienced with drug addiction, incarceration, and homelessness. All the things. 

All the things. And so it’s for these reasons that she’s not fighting only for gay and trans rights, but also for racial, economic, and criminal justice issues. She’s looking at this full spectrum, right? Well, you have to. 

You think so, but here’s the next line. Gay, white, middle class, white men and lesbian feminists don’t seem to understand her passion or share in trying to uplifting marginalized communities within the larger group. Interesting. 

Okay. They’re not looking at it from an intersectionality standpoint. They’re saying, but it’s easier for us middle class gay, white men to assimilate or try to adopt and blend in, but you are harder to adopt and blend in. So we’re just going to exclude you because that’s easier. 

That’s stupid. It is, but these are things. And I think we saw this in women’s suffrage. We see this in the LGBTQ. 

Like, this is what happens. It has to be all of us or none of us because, you know, like, yeah. Now, because Sylvia is deep in her feelings about the lack of inclusion at the Christopher straight liberation day rally in Washington Square Park, she delivered a speech that is known as the y’all better quiet down. 

I love that. Here’s a quote from it. She says, you all tell me to hide my tail between my legs. I will no longer put up with that shit. I have been beaten. I’ve had my nose broken. I have been thrown in jail. I’ve lost my job. I’ve lost my apartment for gay liberation and you all treat me this way. What the fuck’s wrong with you all? Think about that. Good for her. 

I mean, it went from a raw, raw. We’re all together to examine your privilege and lock forces and shut up. Yes. So she is determined to protect the rights of trans people. And so she’s continuing to advocate for this gay rights bill in the 1970s that is aimed to prevent discrimination and housing employment and public accommodations. 

This is back to that petition that she gets arrested from, right? Now, the final version of that gets passed in 1986 and only prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. So it’s excluding the trans right there. Sylvia explains, quote, they have a little back room deal without inviting the Sylvia and some of the other trans activists in this back room to deal with these politicians. 

The deal was you take them out, we’ll pass the bill. So she disappears from the scene. She basically puts two middle fingers up, bows out of the room. And this is where she starts a catering business in Tarrytown, New York. 

Angie: That is a vast shift from what I thought any of your next sentences were going to be. 

Theresa: Good for her. I mean, look, she is not going to be held down by what you think of her. She is a choose your own adventure book on her own. 

I love that. She moved in with a boyfriend around this time to help with and she’s held odd jobs. She struggles with drug use and then would wind up homeless. 

And in the early 1990s, she’s rediscovered by journalists. Okay. So this is kind of an interesting thing because I guarantee it’s about to get even crazier and you’re not going to understand where the next sentence is coming from. 

Okay. Shortly after this, Martha P Johnson is discovered dead and police determined it’s suicide. She’s one of the people that just says absolutely not. Marcia would never. And she and one of her friends told police about harassment that Marcia experienced. Okay. Now in 1999, Sylvia spoke at the World Pride Rally in Rome. Okay. 

Like, again, you, the none of these following sentences seem to just go in an orderly fashion. In 2000 on 42nd Street, a trans woman named Amanda Mulan is stabbed in the neck and killed. Sylvia organizes a number of rallies and protests around the trial of her killers. Okay. 

Like, she is just back in the spotlight and she’s not letting go. Then there is a act called the sexual orientation non-discrimination act. It’s known by the acronym SONDA and it prohibited all the discrimination, you know, that we were talking about, you know, with the sexual orientation. 

But this is also including human rights, civil rights laws and education laws. And so she’s trying her best to get this put into practice. And Sylvia is quoted and saying that she’s going to fight for SONDA until she died. She held the last SONDA meeting from her hospital bed where she was dying of late stage liver disease. 

Speaker 3: Oh, wow. What was that? That was February 19, 2002. 

Theresa: Sylvia Rivera died. Wow. And it ends up being liver cancer and she passed away in St. Vincent’s Manhattan Hospital at the age of 50. Wow. Her partner Julia Murray was with her at the time of her death. SONDA was passed into state legislature and signed as a law by the governor in late 2002 and became effective January 16, 2003 and protects individuals who are discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation from that date forward. Okay. In November of 2005, New York City named the corner of Christopher and Hudson Street, Sylvia Rivera-Way. That’s awesome. And in 2019, GENDA, the Gender Expression Nonconforming Act passed, which is something Sylvia Rivera’s dream would have been recognized. Like this is just the culmination of what she was looking for. And I’ve got pictures. She worked for it. Oh, thank you. 

Angie: I forgot. I had pictures too. I didn’t show you mine. 

Theresa: You can send them to me and I’ll make sure that they go into the Patreon so people on the paid Patreon can see. That’s awesome. Narate for the audience, please. Sorry. 

Angie: Can you… Oh, hold on. It’s me. I need to make it bigger. There we go. Okay. So the first photo is a sign that’s got the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. It’s like a banner. And in front of it, I’m assuming that’s Sylvia. 

Yep. Sylvia’s got some fluffy combed out hair. She has got such a look on her face. She is proud and she has got… She is standing on her business. I can’t see the signs that she’s holding, but she’s got like a handful of flyers and bangles on her wrists. Looking fly. She’s got like a blonde brown hair. That’s actually really, really pretty color. 

Theresa: I mean, it’s a black white photo, but I totally see what you’re saying there. Right? 

Angie: In a lower photo, she is sitting in an office chair outside with black stockings. I can’t tell the shoe. This beautiful white coat. Same style of hair, but older. 

Theresa: Much longer hair, yeah. Yeah. 

Angie: Beautiful. That is an iconic photo. I could look at it for hours. 

Theresa: And I think she’s holding a cat or a very small dog. Yeah, that’s what it looks like. Good for her. But that is the story of Sylvia Rivera. Thank you. And if you’ve enjoyed these incredible stories and you’re thinking, I have no idea what to expect next week, I can tell you true that next week is going to be insane with what we cover because my next story is a completely different tension. In a wildly different time period. I’m excited. 

Angie: And I don’t know what my next story is. You don’t. I mean, I have the calendar, but I don’t remember what it is. Oh. 

Theresa: If you loved this, remember we are a free podcast for the most part unless you’re on the page around which case we absolutely love every second we get to spend with you. 

Understand that we are independent and do little things like rating, reviewing us, subscribing. Those are incredibly impactful. And so does sending this to somebody who is unhinged and looking for stories just like this. We love your unhinged friends. Send us more. Send us your millions. Thank you. 

Angie: And on that note, send us your minions. Goodbye. Bye. 

Speaker 3: Bye.