Episode 8: Trans narratives with Dr. Susan Stryker
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Susan Stryker: [00:00:01] I know when I was a kid and hungry for some kind of, you know, evidence that, like trans-ness existed in the world outside my own head because I knew how I felt about myself. But you're hungry to see something. You want to you want the world to reflect back to you the possibility that you can exist in it, the way that you feel that you exist on it. And so, like always looking for some, you know, just some scrap of evidence that there were like other trans people. And I wasn't just kind of like making this up in my head.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:00:36] You're listening to The Other Story, a podcast about the stories we live by. Each episode, we will examine a dominant narrative in our society and ask how it came to be, how it might be changed, and how the entertainment industry has played a role in reinforcing or deconstructing it. I'm your host, Jennifer Gottesfeld. Only 20% of Americans know someone who is transgender. That reality has meant that the majority of the public learned all they know about trans people from media depictions. This is a problem since historically there has been little to no trans representation in writers rooms. This has led to trans characters often being portrayed in ways that perpetuate simplistic stereotyping and even trans phobic narratives with storylines focused only on their gender rather than their whole self as an individual. While there has been progress in increasing trans visibility in Hollywood with popular shows like Pose and Transparent, there is also the persistent reality that the ignorance manufactured by decades old tropes in the media has fueled the disproportionate violence, poverty and systemic discrimination that the trans community continues to face. Today, we're going to be talking with Dr. Susan Stryker about the legacy of Hollywood's portrayal of transgender people in film and TV. We'll also explore how some of those narratives are beginning to be challenged and changed and the work that's still to be done ahead.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:02:00] Susan is a leading voice and pioneer in the field of transgender studies and has helped shape the cultural conversation on transgender topics for three decades. Susan's experience is expansive. So here, just a few highlights. She's currently the Barbara Lee distinguished chair in women's leadership at Mills College throughout her career. Susan has served as executive director of the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco and the director of the Institute for LGBT Studies at the University of Arizona. In addition, she co-founded the activist group Transgender Nation and the academic journal Transgender Studies Quarterly. Susan also co-wrote and produced the Emmy-Award winning documentary Screaming Queens: The Riot of Compton's Cafeteria about trans resistance to police violence in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood in 1966. She's co-produced, consulted on or appeared in numerous high profile transgender related projects, including the Danish Girl, Transparent, Tales of the City, Disclosure, and many, many more. Susan, thank you so much for being here with me.
Susan Stryker: [00:03:09] Hey, it my pleasure, Jenn. Thanks for inviting me on the show.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:03:13] I'd like to start out the show by first understanding that the persistent, dominant narratives that exist. So what we're able to first notice them, that's the first step in being able to deconstruct them.
Susan Stryker: [00:03:29] You know, I think one of the most common ways that trans people are represented in mass media is that we are people who are pretending to be something that we are not. That, you know, a trans woman is a man in a dress, you know, or a trans man is, you know, a woman who's just really unhappy about being a woman. And rather than, you know, engaging in feminist politics, she's trying to pass as a man to get male privilege. And you know that that doesn't take seriously the fact that some people just are trans. You know, that it's like I think about being trans is kind of like being left handed, you know, like I'm left handed and, you know, the world is organized for right handed people. Most people just assume right handed as a default. Some people just happen to be left handed. You know why? I don't know. You know, it's just like some people are left handed. And that I think about being transgender is kind of like being gender left handed. You know, most people are not trans. But, you know, I think whatever way it is that any given society understands gender and, you know, there is historically cross culturally a lot of cultures that have more than a biologically based gender binary, you know, which is the way we tend to think about it in the modern West. There's other ways to think about gender and sexuality. But whatever it is like, however it is that any given culture at any given time, how many pronouns their language is God, I think there are some people who just have a left handed orientation to that, you know. And so, you know, I, I don't really care so much about why people are trans. It's just an empirical reality that some people are, you know, go figure. And then how does society accommodate the presence of people who are different from most others? You know that that's the question for me.
Susan Stryker: [00:05:42] All of that being said, you know, for me, I you know, I didn't ask to be trans is just kind of how I got hatched. But here we are. And it's kind of interesting. You know, it's it's it's an interesting way of being in the world. It's unfortunately also a way that a lot of other people have a lot of attitudes about or a lot of ignorance about or a lot of misconceptions about. And sometimes that ignorance or hostility or even just unthinking, this can be something that actually limits the scope and quality of life for trans people. And so that's why I like to do work as a historian. That's what my training is in my formal training. I am an historian and as historians say, you know, I like to do work on trans history to just say, you know, it it's not a new thing. It's like trans people have been around. Gender variance is the thing that is very widespread in human cultures throughout time. There's nothing nothing new. Remember, there's nothing new under the sun, including trans, you know. So, yeah, you know, I hope that gets at some of the things you and your audience are interested in listening to. Yeah.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:07:08] Definitely. And actually, speaking of history and trying to understand where these narratives came from, I'd love to dig into that a little and and why they exist and where they originated from.
Susan Stryker: [00:07:24] You know, in some ways that's a hard question to answer. It's like I think we have to ask, like, what mainstream social need is met by persistently misperceiving or misunderstanding transgenes? Like, what's the threat in there? It's like, why do some people have such a hard time wrapping their head around the fact that there can be trans people in the world. And, you know, and maybe that that goes off into, you know, to to abstract sort of a tangent to to talk about right now. But, you know, I'll just say maybe rather than answering that question, why, you know, we can just say that a lot of mainstream media representations of trans this focus on the question of, you know, trans people being duplicitous, trans people being. Criminals, trans people being deceptive, trans people being crazy, you know, trans people being somehow morally suspect or perverse or ill intentioned or violent or aggressive or or freakish or monstrous, just like, you know. And that my question is, what about me? So threatens another person that they want to act in an aggressive or dismissive or belittling way about my life, you know? So, like, I like to sort of flip the script a little. I like to to not because I feel like as a trans person, we're often put in the position of saying, like, oh, you're different. Explain yourself to me, you know, because I want to know and I want to say it's like like why are you so interested in me? And like, what's in it for you? It's like, what are you trying to work out to be? Not you personally, but, you know, just like in general. Speaking of society at large, why are people so fascinated and get their knickers in such a twist about trans people? You know, and I think at some level it's you know, it is that we all, you know, as we're becoming people, you know, it's like we're we're born little squirmy worms without any culture and that we get enculturated as being something we learn to use, language we like learning to recognize in our family and significant people in our lives. And like in that process of like becoming a person, we all become something like we become something specific, a specific kind of person. And I think what transgenes confronts, let's just say cis-gender people with is the fact that it's like who you think you are could be completely undone somehow, like could have been otherwise it could have. It's like, you know, I listen to some people talk about trans folks. And I actually heard this woman say to me one time, she says, If I admit that you are who you say you are, I will be completely undone. You know, it's kind of like, wow, that's a lot of power you've given me that like you think that my mere existence somehow threatens how it is that you've put yourself together as a person. And I could actually have compassion for a person who feels threatened and endangered. But I would also like look at that moment as an opportunity for them to perhaps put themselves together in some way where, like their happiness doesn't depend on, you know, objecting someone else.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:11:20] I'm curious what role you see Hollywood and storytelling play and in some of that.
Susan Stryker: [00:11:28] Yeah, well, you know, I think it actually goes really deep. You know, I think that kind of the the most customary level, we're used to interacting with film as we are consuming representations. You know, like we the audience are the consumer of an image that some image maker storyteller has made that they put out there. And we consume the representation that they are selling to us. And that at that level, it's like, yeah, film becomes a really powerful way of propagating common sense misinformation about trans people. I mean, it just imbibes the sort of dominant cultural narratives about transcendence. And then through the medium of film, it propagates and amplifies it in new ways. But at a to a to a greater extent, you know, at mass-ifies that, you know, as mass media. But I think at a deeper level that there is something that I would say sort of cinema is actually pedagogical, that it's something that teaches us how to look at bodies. It teaches us how to experience our bodies, and that there's something about the filmic medium itself that becomes a really powerful pedagogical or instructional technology. We're basically teaching people how to be gendered people, you know, and like to to not try to sound too abstract about that. I remember reading this essay by a famous anthropologist, this guy, Marcel Maus. late 19th, early 20th centuries, and he was giving this lecture on what he called the techniques of the body and. It was this kind of anthropological take on us, well, whatever culture we're living in, it's like there are culturally specific, stylized ways of moving and holding the body, you know, that we could do a comparative ethnography of practices, of sitting and standing and walking and swimming. And, you know, just that there are culturally specific ways that we learn to to move and hold our bodies and relationship to other people. And he tells the story of being in Paris, I think it's in the 1920s and that he was walking down the street and he sees two shop girls walking towards him on the sidewalk and he thinks that they're Americans. He says like, oh, I thought I was saying to Americans, you know, walking towards me. And only as they got closer to me that I realized that they were to French shop girls who were gossiping about a movie that they had just seen. And it dawned on me, it's kind of like, oh, like they're walking not as I would expect a young French woman to walk, but they're modeling what they're seeing on screen. It's like they're walking like American movie stars, you know? And so that sense of how the cinema becomes a way of inculcating in all of us certain kinds of cultural scripts for how we move and hold and envision and imagine our bodies. I think that's so profound, you know, that I think there's a deep, deep, deep historical relationship between the invention of cinema and the cultural production of stylized ways of being gendered people that we think of as just natural and normal and given, but are actually acquired and learned and transmitted. And the cinema is a really, really powerful technology for inculcating a sense of embodied self to people.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:15:36] Yeah, I love the way that you put that so understanding. That is sort of our foundation. How have those narratives that have been put put into our into our bodies and our minds affected the way that the trans community has both been treated? But also I think how also the question of like how trans people see themselves.
Susan Stryker: [00:16:03] You know, I think well, my own experience of this is that, you know, I I know when I was a kid and hungry for some kind of evidence that, like transcendence existed in the world outside my own head because I knew how I felt about myself. But you're hungry to see something. You want to you want the world to reflect back to you the possibility that you can exist in it, the way that you feel that you exist in it. And so, like always looking for some, you know, just some scrap of evidence that there were like other trans people. And I wasn't just kind of like making this up in my head because I didn't I didn't know anybody, you know, when I was a kid growing up on army bases back in the 60s and 70s. But that what you often see, so like you're drawn to, like, look for something and you find something that you think kind of might be the thing you're looking for. But then encountering that representation just sort of throws you back out of the scene. Like, for example, you know, you're you're watching the Flip Wilson TV show. And Flip Wilson is going to do the Geraldine character. And there's something about like, wait, this person who is a man is like dressing as a woman. And that's like kind of sort of related to, like how I think about myself, you know, that there's some transition thing in there. But then you're seeing people laugh at Flip Wilson as Geraldine. You're seeing the representation of trans ish something or another as like negative or comic or, you know, risible and then you, the trans person, comes to that encounter looking for something, experiences something negative, and then like goes somewhere else in their mind.
Susan Stryker: [00:18:16] You know, I had a student who wrote it and actually wrote a dissertation and like trans film theory who wrote about what they called the exit scape. Which was in that moment of like having your desire thwarted and going elsewhere as a trans viewer of mass media, where do you go? Like, what is that what is that exit scape look like? How was it structured? What does it do for us? And, you know, it's kind of like fanfiction. You know, it's like, you know, like it's like you really want Spock and Kirk to hook up, you know, you really want Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy to be getting it on. It's like you're seeing it in the text. You know, you want something. The author didn't write it. So you know what? You know, as the fan, you're just going to say,I'm going to inhabit this imaginative universe, but I'm going to make the story be what I want it to be. And to me, that is such a trans way of relating to mass media. You know,that that more often than not, what encountering trans representation in mass media has meant is that it kicks you out of the scene. It doesn't satisfy you, and it compels you to reimagine something. One of the things that I think is really exciting right now in Hollywood is that there are more and more trans people who are in the writers room, you know, who are in front of the camera and behind the camera, who are producing, who are, you know, just like there is this really exciting to me and trans cinema scene. You know, that's not just trans cinema studies, you know, but it's like it's like trans people making movies, you know, and that's very exciting. That really changes the conditions in which representation is taking place.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:20:22] That's actually a perfect segue to where I want to go now that we have a little bit of framing of of what we're what we're working with in terms of what we're trying to deconstruct. So what does what does that deconstruction look like? And you started to allude to that. And what are what are some of the new narratives that are that are emerging or that the movements are trying to make the mainstream?
Susan Stryker: [00:20:48] Well, you know, I think there's a couple of things. I mean,one of the things that I've seen is that we're seeing a trans perspective in media making that is not necessarily about representing transgenes on screen. And in an example of that, there's a trans guy who's a film director named Reese Ernst, who was one of the executive producers of the television show Transparent and, you know, had made a number of short art films. But their first sort of indie feature film that they made was called Adam came out and oh gosh, I think 2018. I'm not going to remember the date exactly not too long ago and that there was this huge controversy around the film that a lot of trans people didn't like it because what they thought they were seeing was like here's a trans director making a film about and this was the plot, a young cis-gender guy who goes to visit his his lesbian sister in in Williamsburg, you know, sort of this whole, like, Brooklyn queer scene and that his sister's friends think he's a trans guy and he passes as a trans guy to hook up with this woman. And it's like so it's like straight guy passing as trans and in some ways playing on that trope of, you know, the deceptive trans person, but flipping it around, a lot of members of the audience felt really let down by that. It's like, how could you be a trans guy and like make a film about this, like, you know, messed up guy pretending to be trans. It's like that is not OK. But I know what Reese thought he was doing and that he you know, he's talked about this in public. He's like, well, it's not that I as a trans person need to make a film only about trans people, but it's like as a trans person and an artist, just like I have a way of looking at the world and I'm interested. And it's like, oh, it's interesting to me that at a certain moment in history, trans kind of became cool enough that, you know, people would like try to pass this trans to hook up. It's like that's sort of an interesting little flip and that, you know, fascinating to me. It's like, you know, I always thought of that as like trans I for the CIS guy. You know, and so the idea of transmedia makers making media from a position of being trans and that giving you a perspective on the world, it's like that's new, you know. And so kind of related to that is that I see one of the other emerging trends being to getting beyond positive representation, you know. The idea of like well, like if we're not going to tell the story of, like, you know, the messed up trans person who's just a deceitful figure, you know, and, you know, they're the wig will be ripped off at the end and someone will say it's a man. You know, if we're past that well, is the next step then to say, oh, we want to have, you know, dignified stories that ennoble and uplift the oppressed minority. And we're going to basically, you know, our characters are going to be marching down Main Street carrying a pink, white and blue trans flag. And everyone's going to be applauding them and, you know, minutes exaggerating, but that you kind of you know where I'm going with that. Right. And so that, you know, got a lot of the trans makers, the trans creatives right now, like, you know, like it's kind of a boring story. It's like, of course, you know, it's like, you know, we want to live with dignity and be respected just like anybody else. But it's like it's not necessarily an interesting story to say that. And so I I've seen this increasing emphasis on really messy, complicated trans characters who, you know, like dealing with the messiness of the character becomes a way of like actually learning more and like creating more empathy for trans characters and for actually teaching people how to read. And now that there was there was a project I was connected with is a consulting producer and an on screen talking head directed by Zachary Drucker and Nick Cammalleri, this project that was a Duplass brothers production that showed up on HBO. It's called The Lady and the Dail, a four part true crime docu series that at one level, you know, I'll just say it's kind of like a trashy, true crime story with like a train wreck of a main character. But at another level, it was, you know, I thought a project that did an awful lot of really great education, as you know, or in infotainment, as education, you know, edutainment, and that it was a project that revolved around a trans woman named Liz Carmichael back in the 1970s who sort of burst onto the scene when she claims that she is developing a car called the Dale that will get like seventy five miles to the gallon. And remember, this is like at the height of the oil embargo and energy crisis, you know, so the idea of a super fuel efficient car that could solve America's energy woes, it's like, you know, there was a hook there and Liz Popson was like, hey, I'm building this car. Well, it turns out that maybe it was somewhere between overly aspirational and outright criminals, like was she a con artist is like, I don't know. She did actually break the law, you know, like she was convicted of securities fraud, like taking money from investors to build this car and, like spending it on other things. So so we've got this person who was trans who let's just say was a con artist who was involved in criminal activities and then gets vilified in the media. You know, it's like when the story becomes, you know, when it breaks that maybe the deal is not a real thing. What happens then is that Liz's transgenes becomes part of the story. And it's kind of like, is this car a real car or is it not? Well, the person who's promoting it, shock has just been outed as a transsexual. She is really a hippie who's masquerading as a she. And there's a con going on there. It's like this is just criminal disguise and we're going to blow the whole thing up. And so there was this conflation of these like really old tropes of like trans people as deceptive with the story of, you know, was a crime committed in the promotion of the. Automobile what? The the docu series is able to do really effectively is stage all of those questions and then help the audience untangle them, you know, so that kind of where you wind up is like, yes, Liz Carmichael was a criminal. She engaged in con artistry. Being trans was not part of the crime, you know, she paid your dues, you know, she went to jail, you know, on a felony conviction. But ever afterwards, it's like she's dogged by the media, you know, like as a trans person is like who keeps getting outed over and over again in her public life. And so in this in this film, it's like you use the messy, complicated, not necessarily celebratory picture of a trans person to actually show how media constructs the transfigure, you know, how mass media constructs a pejorative image of a transfigure. And you let the audience develop a, you know, a more sophisticated way of sort of parsing all of the different strands that usually get compacted into one pernicious stereotype. So that's a new development. Um, you know, and then I guess finally the the the other major change that I see in the relation of trans people to mass media is partly because of Joey Sulloway, who who directed Transparent as well as people connected with Disclosure, which is a major recent documentary film on history of representation of trans people in mass media, that both of both Transparency and Disclosure were very explicit about practicing what they called transformative action, that it's like hire a trans person to tell a trans story. And if there is not a trans person who can do that job right now, then whoever you hire needs to mentor a trans person to be able to do that job. And now after four or five or six or seven years doing that kind of work in Hollywood, it's like there's a lot better connected cohort of trans people in Hollywood, you know, cinematographers and editors and, you know, people doing lighting and, you know, people writing and directing and producing. And so it remains to be seen, I think what consequence that will you know, that that will have, you know, I think disclosure and the lady in the Dail or actually two of the the most significant recent projects that are pretty much like trans led and are telling more complicated and more interesting stories and unpacking a lot of media misrepresentation. And, you know, I think pose you know, the the Ryan Murphy show also does a lot of really good work. And Janet Mock, who's been connected with that, has moved more into producing and writing and directing. And, you know, it's just like I just think we're on the cusp of really interesting moments in terms of mainstream mass media representations of trans people.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:32:04] That's that's really exciting. I loved Disclosure. I feel like it. It. This story that I'm trying to tell with this podcast around sort of what media does to the public psyche and how it changes, it encapsulated that perfectly. So for our listeners, please, please watch the watch the Netflix documentary, because it's really it's really informative on the history of trans representation in Hollywood.
Susan Stryker: [00:32:32] Yeah, I love it that the film Disclosure in talking about the history of trans representation in cinema, it goes all the way back to the earliest silent film. Yeah, I actually they have me on screen talking about this scene in an old D.W. Griffiths film, which, you know, in film history, some film scholars say this one scene and D.W. Griffith's Judith of Bethulia was the first time in cinema that the cut, you know, when you're the editor is like putting two pieces of film together. It's like where the cut was used to advance the story called the Dynamic Montage, rather than like just like taking like a static camera that's filming a stage play that it's like it's like, oh, here is this new technique of representation where you're editing the medium of the film, you know, in a way that tells the story. You're telling your story through the cinematic cut. And it's really interesting to me that in that scene there is a transfigure, you know, that that there's a unit who is presiding over the scene in which Judith of Bethulia cuts off the head of the you know, the general hello for me is who's trying to, you know, besiege Jerusalem. And so the idea that you have a gender ambiguous, trans-ish sort of figure who's been surgically altered by cutting, it's like is being represented on screen in the moment where the medium of film is figuring out how to tell stories through cuts, it's like that. That's a fascinating connection between content and form.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:34:30] Well, so you've talked about the things on the precipice that you're excited about and that you're seeing, I'm curious, what are some of the things that you're concerned about? I think in any in any movement, when when there's a tipping point, there can be, you know, flags.
Susan Stryker: [00:34:50] Yeah, well, you know, there's a really influential, really smart and interesting anthology that came out a couple of years ago called Trap Door and the Cultural Politics of Trans Visibility. And it's a very sort of, you know, arts and graphic design and film oriented book that it's all about the cultural politics of trans representation and what it thinks of as the trap of visibility, in that there is kind of a belief that just making something visible will advance civil rights or social justice agenda. It's kind of the logic behind the idea of white gay coming out. And it's like, well, if they don't know that there are gay people in the world, it's like, of course people are going to maintain their homophobic prejudices. But it's like saying gay people should come out and, you know, tell people I'm gay. And so the idea of like there's some link between, like visibility and liberation. Hmm. What we see with trans people in particular, I think, is that there was this two things happened at the same time. So around 2014, you know, that was the the so-called tipping point moment where Laverne Cox, who was, you know, in Orange is the New Black, was the executive producer of the film Disclosure, and, you know, winds up on the cover of Time magazine with a title, This is America that a transgender tipping point. And so right at that moment where there's this like new level of trans visibility, where there are some really unprecedented sort of civil rights victories, where the Obama administration was, you know, doing, I think some, you know, reasonably progressive things on trans issues. And at the same time, you have that sort of celebratory moment of visibility and progress. You also see at the same time this escalating spike of violence being directed primarily at trans women of color, particularly African-American trans women and indigenous trans women. And so there's that conundrum between like heightened visibility, heightened violence, and the way actually Miss Major, who's a sort of a legendary trans person, Stonewall veteran nonprofit leader, ran an organization called the TGI Justice Project to support formerly and currently incarcerated trans women. And she's a legendary figure and that she's interviewed in this book, Trap Door. And, you know, she's very clear about trying to unpack that paradox of heightened visibility and heightened violence. And, you know, the way she puts it is saying, like, you know, like there's some transphobia standing on a street corner who sees Laverne Cox on Orange is the New Black isn't happy about that. You know, it's like that's the thing that draws this person's attention to the issue. And it's not Laverne who is, like, ensconced with, you know, money and privilege, you know, hard earned. But it's the trans woman who's standing on that street corner who is going to bear the brunt of the transphobia violence that is being elevated by the heightened level of attention to transit shoes. And so, you know, the heightened visibility leads to racially inflected trans anti trans violence, which lands most heavily on people who are not socioeconomically privileged. And so the idea that representation is enough for that positive representation is enough. It's just simply not true. It can actually make things worse for some people. Not everyone benefits or is harmed in equal measure by representation. It depends on, you know, kind of how you live your body in the world. Um, and so, yeah, that's that's actually one of the points that I try to make and disclosure, you know, to say representation is not enough. You know, representation is only one component of our multifaceted campaign or struggle or movement for social justice for trans people. What are some of the other parts of it? You know, it's complicated, I think, because, of course, you know, it's good to change laws or to prevent the passage of bad laws. But, you know, I think the law only gets you so far. And there's a cliche, I think if I'm remembering it rightly, it was Moliere, you know, French wit who who said this, you know, centuries ago is like the law. And its majesty forbids kings and commoners alike from sleeping under bridges, you know? And so, like the law in and of itself doesn't necessarily address social inequalities or the idea of like, oh, we're going to treat everybody the same before the law can actually be a way of ignoring or exacerbating other kinds of social disparities. And so, you know, yes, I think we need to be mobilizing right now to resist this like really mind boggling slate, that anti crans legislation that's working its way through the state legislatures in the US right now.
Susan Stryker: [00:40:53] So that's one thing. But I also think, you know, trans people need to band together for mutual aid and comfort and support. You know, that there needs to be a lot of what gets called in the community, you know, tea for tea,that it's, you know, it's like not necessarily separatist, but just like knowing that it's like we need to have our backs for each other rather than sort of expecting the state to solve our problems. Because, you know, I would say part of the problem for trans people is that there's a relationship between how state power wants to manage its populations and its territories. And ways that it manages its populations is by categorizing them in different ways, whether that's by class or race or sex or gender, you know, and that it's the state power that's behind the administrative organization of the population, according to it, biologically based gender binary. That is exactly what trips trans people up. You know, when we're over here going like, yeah, I hear that. But it's like there's actually a different way to be a gendered person that I didn't pick and that I really can't change and just kind of messed me up. Kind of like the left handed things, like I just happened to be left handed and the world is built on a right handed way. OK, well, I understand that I'm a minority, but I just sort of want to be accommodated so that it's like my life isn't considered less valuable than yours, you know, so so the state doesn't necessarily, I think, have an interest in accommodating the trans minority. And so the state, I think, is always going to be, um, at best a partial solution to injustices experienced by trans people. But the third thing that I think we need to do is that for those of us, you know, like me, who, you know, feels like I can be out in my life to be out as a trans person, taken it for the team, so to speak, you know, doing a lot of public work, trying to, like, educate, inform, change the narrative and, you know, see if we can get that 20 percent of people who you know, or that 80 percent of people who don't know a trans person to, like, have a different kind of knowledge about trans life. You know, um, and at I would say at the deepest level, though, you know, and why I'm so interested in doing mass media work, you know, not not just sort of being a scholar and recovering history or teaching gender theory or, you know, some of the other things that I do. But like really trying to figure out how can you tell a story with a character that reaches an audience that people it shifts their feelings. It's not just it provides new information, but then it shifts their feelings and perceptions and understandings like creates a little light bulb moments
Speaker3: [00:44:07] Or, you know, like, oh, how I say, ah, now I get it. Or, you know, you just it's like you can argue with arguments, you could argue with facts, but it's like you kind of can't argue with feelings. It's like feelings is just how you feel about something. And that feeling I would say is true no matter what. If you're scared of something, you're really scared and it's not an argument, you know, if you're feeling love, it's just love, you know. And so to do narrative work in the public sphere that can shift people's understandings and emotional reaction to and relationship to transcendence and all of its myriad varieties, it's like that's the part that both feels like magic and that feels like, you know, what the Buddhists would call right livelihood, you know, for me. And and that it's, you know, politically significant. You know, it's like I wouldn't say good representation necessarily saves lives because, like, it can also lead to, like, heightened precarity for people. But that, you know, a story that can change the mindset of other people can be a way of actually saving trans lives now. So, you know, I'm down for the cause and it's fun. You know, it's like it's fun to think about, like how you can use big media platforms to tell stories that have integrity, that have interests that have consequence. And yeah, it's just a yeah, it's fun. Yeah.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:45:57] I'd actually I'd love for you to speak a little more about that side of your work because, you know, I feel like you have this strong, incredible academic history, but you have a really extensive filmmaking history as well. And what that how that has played into both your academia and also just your activism work. Yeah, well,
Susan Stryker: [00:46:15] Thanks for that question. You know, I kind of joke about it and say, well, you know, it's like I know that I like to eat, so I figured I should learn how to cook. Right. And I like to read, you know, just like maybe I should try writing something sometime. And I love film. It's just like I'm a total film nerd. I mean, I like being a film nerd since I was a kid and I, I always kind of thought it's like maybe I'll make a film someday. Um, it was easier to become a writer because, you know, you can be a writer with a pencil and a scrap of paper. You know, the means of production are like not difficult to come by. And whether you have anything to say, whether you can get it published, you know, you know, that's a different question. But you can write, you know, pretty cheaply filmmaking. I mean, it's becoming much more accessible to people. I mean, everybody's got a little, you know, movie camera and editing suite on that computer they carry around in their pocket and call an iPhone, you know, so it's like it's become more accessible. But, you know, back in the day, you know, like more than ten years ago, it was harder, you know, to to make film. It costs more money. And, you know, and it's also a collaborative process. You can be a solitary writer, but you really can't be a solitary filmmaker. You know, at scale at least you cannot be a solitary filmmaker. So but it was like, yeah, you know, maybe I'll make a film, you know, and back in the, because it was the early 1990s, honestly, I was, you know, knocking around and the GOP Historical Society archives in San Francisco where actually where I wound up working for a long time. But this particular moment, I was just being an archives rat, trying to like learn, you know, as much history as I could. And I came across this document from 1972 that told this really different history of gay liberation and that, you know, the common story is Stonewall. Stonewall in the summer of nineteen sixty nine, you know, there was this, you know, police raid on a gay bar in Greenwich Village and people fought back and then gay liberation was born. Well, this document that I found was the the what was the program for the first pride parade in San Francisco, which wasn't until 1972. And that's also a bit of a story. But the organizer of the parade in the centerfold of the program says, well, you know, we're celebrating the Stonewall Rebellion this weekend. But don't forget gay pride started in San Francisco three years earlier. It was a hot August night in nineteen sixty six at the corner of Cherkin Taylor streets where the police raided an all night cafeteria. Their Compton's captain. A. Well, that night when the police came in to roust the queens from the tables, it's like one of the queens did not go willingly and she threw her coffee in the cop's face. And with that, pandemonium broke out. You know, the windows are smashed in. The paddy wagons drive up with reinforcements and there's fighting all throughout the neighborhood. And I thought I never heard this story, you know, and, you know, Deputy F, you know, like, what's up with this? And I just kind of made it up, you know, started keeping a file like any time I found some mention of like something related to Compton's cafeteria corner of Cherkin, Taylor Street, trans militancy and activism among the street queens of the Tenderloin. It's like, you know, I just sort of would put it in the file and over the course of a few years, say, like by around nineteen ninety eight, I thought, well, damn, I think this thing actually happened, you know, like, why doesn't anybody remember it? You know, it's like that there were like militant drag queens and trans women and sex workers in the Tenderloin fighting back against the cops three years before Stonewall. And what it kind of clicked into place for me. And it's like, yeah, you know, I think I am willing to say as a historian, this thing happened. You know, why didn't you know? Here's why we didn't remember it. And here's kind of how it went down. I thought, well. I think this is what I want to make a film about now. It's kind of like a part of that was like wanting to use film to reach a bigger audience. You know, it's like I could write an article about it and a history journal and, you know, two hundred academics would read it and, you know, two thousand of their students would have it talk to them in classes, you know, and that would be that, you know, I really wanted to do something that reached the public. I thought the story of, like, trans people not being so isolated, individuals who are just struggling in private with, like, the question of who am I? You know, I I feel like an X trapped in a Y body. Help me, doctor, you know. Oh, now I've transitioned. Now I'm happy, you know, end of story. The idea of, like, politically engaged collective Trans Street politics pushing back against police violence. I thought more people need to know that, like trans people have a history. We're not isolated. We've got each other's backs. We can do something that actually changes the conditions of our lives. You know, resistance is possible. You know, just like that was the story that I wanted to tell. And I thought I'd make a film about that because a lot of people will see it, you know, and back in the day, it's like nineteen ninety eight that I decided to make the film as twenty five by the time I finished it. But, the most accessible way to get that was to get that story funded and to get it distributed was to work with public television. You know, it's like you know, we, we eventually got a production agreement through ITVS, which is a nonprofit organization that works with independent media producers to develop content for public television. And yeah, I felt very fortunate that we were able to do that, especially as first time filmmakers in that, you know, it really was a sort of like, I want to make a film. It's like, well, OK, it's like I need to find somebody who can help me produce this. And it's like I need to find a cinematographer. It's like we need to, like, write the thing. We'll have to hire an editor. It's like but it's like I actually have those kinds of project management skills and, you know, I knew how to read it and consume film. I knew what I like to see. You know, I knew the story and I kind of learned how to become a filmmaker by making a film about a story that I just really wanted the public to see and made it in a, you know, with nonprofit funding for like free public distribution. So the film, if you know, your listeners want to check it out, it's called Screaming Queens, The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria. And there's a website screaming Queens movie dot com. And if you go to that website, you can learn about options for free streaming. It's like it's on KQED, TV or station partner. It's on their website and YouTube channel. It's available on Canapé, which is an educational media distribution platform that most public libraries, as well as many universities and colleges subscribe to. It's on Amazon, so it's free with an Amazon Prime subscription. And if you just really want to own a copy, it's like there's opportunities for, like, you know, digital downloads and Blu ray DVD or whatever. So go to screaming Queens movie dot com and we can hook you up. Um, but yeah. So that was how I learned how to be a filmmaker was by making a making a documentary film. Um and you know, it was well received, you know, it's like so it was very gratifying to work actually to work with an old into your friend Victor Silverman who who also wanted to become a filmmaker. And we kind of made that film together as friends and that that was a great experience in and of itself. But it did then sort of open the door for me, you know, like to move in, film me or circles, you know, like out on the film festival circuit and meeting other filmmakers and, you know, meeting people who would say, like, hey, we'd love to have your eyes on this. And, you know, I'd be looking at scripts or, you know, consulting on big budget projects. It's like because I had, you know, by the I would say by the certainly by the second decade of the 21st century by the 20-teens and I had enough of a public profile for anybody who was interested in transport history, it's like, oh, we should talk to Susan Striker. And it just became a thing. And it's grown over time. And I find myself now doing a lot of media consulting, you know, whether it's like consulting on a script or whether it's like popping into a writer's room or whether it's being, you know, having some kind of producer role mentoring younger filmmakers who are coming up, you know, so it's it's it's become an important part of my career, you know. So, you know, I can still be a fusty, tweed wearing academic, you know, who speaks and completely, you know, unintelligible, you know, polysyllabic gobbledygook stuff. I want to it's a look that I can that I can do. But, you know, I, I, I do like really trying to figure out the story and character and audience and, you know, like, how can we, you know, do something interesting and fun that reaches people and has a positive effect without it becoming kind of a propagandistic, you know, sort of, you know, rah rah rah rah film. It's like it's got to be like got to be real.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [00:57:32] And that's that's an amazing story. And just. Yeah. It's nice to see the value that I think continues to be given to two academics and two people with lived experience in writers rooms. I think that that's a big change that I've noticed over time of of who's brought in to consult and eventually, hopefully to actually be the writers. It's starting to happen.
Susan Stryker: [00:57:59] Yeah, well, you know, I think the there's a slogan that came out of the disability rights movement that I think about all the time, like "nothing about us without us" and that sense of like, oh, you know, like let's say you're a cis gender non transgender person who's, you know, you're a showrunner or a writer producer. You work with a studio or whatever. It's like, don't imagine that. It's like you're like, oh, this trans thing, it's kind of hot, hot button issues. Like I think we could like sell some popcorn with this. Like, we can get some we can get some clicks. We get some eyeballs on this, if that's what you're thinking. It's like cool, you know, and don't think that you have to be the one who knows everything about how that story is supposed to be told. It's like because what you're going to fall back on are the common tropes that are part of the so-called, you know, common knowledge about transcendence, which by and large is wrong, often offensive, certainly limited in its imagination. And if you will bring trans people in at every level, at every level from the P.A. who was getting coffee, you know, to the caterers, to the set designers. So the people managing wardrobe to the people who are lighting and gaffing, you know, it's like whatever job there is, there is a trans person who can do that. And if you're wanting to tell that trans story, like have trans writers, people with trans experience in the room, and it doesn't mean like only a trans person can tell a trans story, but there's a difference between talking to and talking with. It's like if you are a trans if you are a non trans person who wants to tell the trans story for whatever reason, it's kind of like, oh, we've got a true crime, like a detective, you know, procedural kind of story. It's like, oh, we want to have like a murder victim be trans who like, revealed to be something like, well, you know, you got a trans character storyline, like run it past some trans people, you know, who might say that's messed up. Or they might say you could actually make it more interesting by doing this or it would be more realistic if you did this or like that thing that somebody did. You know, such a cliche. It's like actually it doesn't happen. So just open the door. You know, like trans people are going to be banging on the door. Sometimes trans people might be breaking through the door. But if that door opens from the other side, it's like, isn't it just nicer for everybody?
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [01:00:38] I really love that that visual. So speaking of things that both filmmakers and just our listeners can do, I'm curious what you think everybody listening could could do to help identify narratives and start to deconstruct them. What's the work we can do on ourselves and in society?
Susan Stryker: [01:01:09] You know, so maybe this is going to sound melodramatic, but I will say the first thing to do is like stop killing trans people, you know, just like because, you know, it's like first stay alive and then do everything else. And and the level of need to use a little bit of jargon, the level of state sanctioned and extrajudicial violence, you know, whether it is like categorical or interpersonal is like truly shocking. It's like people do people who are not trans sometimes have a hard time wrapping their heads around them. The manifold forms of violence, they get directed at trans people. And so anything that you can do to interrupt that circuit that results in trans violence, do that thing. And then let's talk about storytelling. Self education is really important. Read stuff, you know, read stuff, watch stuff, learn about trans issues and figure out how to be an ally in trans led efforts being a break to anti trans violence, supporting trans led activism and yeah, doing the the dirty work that trans people are not. Often able to do on their own behalf. Like, I cannot talk to J.K. Rowling and say J.K. Rowling, I am not the monster that you imagined me to be. You know, just like Tranz is something different. Here, let me explain it to you. It's like I can't say that. It's just like because it just gets heard as like, see, that's exactly what I was talking about. It just like I'm inside her fantasy of what I am. Right. And so for somebody else to come in and go like Acebes, you know, like that's a very useful thing to do. And then, yeah, hire people, hire people. Listen, know these things aren't hard. You have to do them, you know.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [01:03:20] Um, so we we've had a wonderful conversation and I so value both your perspective and your candor. It's Yeah. Thank you so much.
Susan Stryker: [01:03:37] It's been fun. Yeah. Really. Thanks for having me. It's so I love doing stuff like this.
Jennifer Gottesfeld: [01:03:42] Thank you so much. Thanks so much for listening to the other story. For additional support and resources, please visit theotherstory@substack.com.