Speaker 1: But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Speaker 1: The Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2: She was sitting at a table with some friends and
Speaker 2: the police pull up and one of the queens threw
Speaker 2: coffee in the CoP's face, and the other cop pulls
Speaker 2: out as billy club and somebody clocked him in the
Speaker 2: head with one of those big round sugar shakers and
Speaker 2: knocks them down, and the place just erupted. Trans women
Speaker 2: would like they'd have liquor bottles and they're big heavy purses.
Speaker 2: They would use that purse to like clock people with it,
Speaker 2: or like you take off a high heeled shoe and
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, stiletto heels is like they can punch
Speaker 2: a hole in your skull if you hit somebody with them.
Speaker 2: The idea that street queens would fight back against the
Speaker 2: cops just blew people's minds.
Speaker 1: As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
Speaker 1: I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
Speaker 1: ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
Speaker 1: that by seeking out our history, and what I've found
Speaker 1: are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we'll meet Susan Striker, the historian who
Speaker 1: discovered the buried story of the nineteen sixty six Compton's
Speaker 1: Cafeteria riot, the first known full scale queer riot against
Speaker 1: police harassment in American history. We'll learn about the incident
Speaker 1: and why it was never talked about for almost forty
Speaker 1: years from my Heart podcast. I'm Jordan and Solve and
Speaker 1: this is what we loved. Right after college, I moved
Speaker 1: to San Francisco for a job. I used to get
Speaker 1: my haircut in this neighborhood called the Tenderlin, and one day,
Speaker 1: as I was about to cross the street to my barber,
Speaker 1: I realized that I was standing on a plaque that
Speaker 1: told me I was at a historic site, the site
Speaker 1: of Compton's Cafeteria. It said it was the first known
Speaker 1: full scale riot for transgender and gay rights in American history.
Speaker 1: I thought Stonewall was the first, so I went home
Speaker 1: and googled it and a documentary came up called Screaming Queens.
Speaker 1: It was about a queer historian who happened to find
Speaker 1: a document that referenced a queer riot before Stonewall and
Speaker 1: her journey to realize that it was actually the first
Speaker 1: known instance of collective, militant queer resistance to police harassment
Speaker 1: in United States history. My next guest is that historian
Speaker 1: Susan Striker. In the nineties, she went to UC Berkeley
Speaker 1: for her PhD, and around that time she came out
Speaker 1: as transgender. As a result, it became extremely difficult to
Speaker 1: find work, putting her into poverty. It was then, when
Speaker 1: she was at her lowest, that she unearthed the courageous
Speaker 1: story of Compton's Cafeteria. What was your story around coming out?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's it's hard to say exactly.
Speaker 2: I think being a trans person, it's a little different
Speaker 2: than what I would think of as more like a
Speaker 2: cis gay coming out story. It's not like I just
Speaker 2: said like, hey, I'm trans and then that was all
Speaker 2: there was to it, because you know, a transition is
Speaker 2: is not something that happens overnight. So I just feel
Speaker 2: like I had a very gradual process. There was the
Speaker 2: moment that I came out to my mother, who lives
Speaker 2: in Oklahoma, and I told her that I needed to
Speaker 2: come home and that I had some big news that
Speaker 2: wasn't bad news.
Speaker 3: And I'd been on hormones.
Speaker 2: For I don't know, maybe close to a year at
Speaker 2: that point, and it was getting to the point where,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like it was noticeable. So when I
Speaker 2: went home, I said to Mom, I'm just going to
Speaker 2: put it right out there. It's just like I'm trans
Speaker 2: and I'm in the process of changing my gender. And
Speaker 2: she says, well, I thought you were going to tell
Speaker 2: me that you were gay in HIV positive, so I
Speaker 2: guess that's good news. And I said, well, you know,
Speaker 2: I told you it was big news, not bad news.
Speaker 2: Having an HIV diagnosis and you know, ninety one ninety
Speaker 2: two would have been would have been very bad news.
Speaker 2: But you know, Mom took it pretty well. Honestly. We
Speaker 2: had a big conversation and she wound up say like, well, Okay,
Speaker 2: this wasn't what I was expecting, but I actually have
Speaker 2: to go back to work now, so why don't you
Speaker 2: just go to my closet pick out anything I have
Speaker 2: that you know fits you, and you can just have
Speaker 2: it and it'll just give me an excuse to go
Speaker 2: shopping for more clothes. So, you know, ultimately, that was
Speaker 2: a pretty good response.
Speaker 1: That's pretty awesome. I wonder what it was like for
Speaker 1: you to transition in the nineties, given that the landscape
Speaker 1: of role models was so different from what it is today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, there weren't a lot of role models
Speaker 2: in the early nineties for me, and it was a
Speaker 2: really different historical moment where it's like, however hard things
Speaker 2: still are for trans people, and however much we are
Speaker 2: right now in the crosshairs of a really vicious backlash
Speaker 2: that there are more visible role models. And back in
Speaker 2: the nineties, if you came out as trans, that meant,
Speaker 2: you know, you were a mentally ill person and you
Speaker 2: were going to lose your job, and you're going to
Speaker 2: lose your family, and you could be legally discriminated against.
Speaker 2: It was a hard decision to make in the sense that,
Speaker 2: you know, I knew that I needed to do it
Speaker 2: for myself, but I was very aware of what the
Speaker 2: social cost was going to be. I was transitioning right
Speaker 2: at the end of finishing up a PhD in US
Speaker 2: History at UC Berkeley. That to come out as trans
Speaker 2: was pretty much to say, I have chosen to be unemployable,
Speaker 2: you know. And I call my first seven years post
Speaker 2: PhD my unpaid internship and transgender studies because I think
Speaker 2: I was making, you know, by hook or by crook,
Speaker 2: I was able to scrape together you know, usually less
Speaker 2: than about ten thousand dollars a year to live on.
Speaker 2: It was difficult, but I was also doing some of
Speaker 2: the work, not compensated in terms of salary, but sort
Speaker 2: of doing the work of putting together my sort of
Speaker 2: basic understanding of what the Bay Area's transgender history was.
Speaker 2: And so it's all right, well, this is sort of
Speaker 2: what I'm going to do. I'm going to figure out
Speaker 2: how to try to do a kind of historical work
Speaker 2: that served me personally and kind of by extension, I
Speaker 2: hoped would serve anybody who was in a similar set
Speaker 2: of life circumstances, you know, other trans people and queer
Speaker 2: people who really needed to know that we are a
Speaker 2: people with a past. We didn't just sort of, you know,
Speaker 2: PLoP down from Mars. So even though I wasn't necessarily
Speaker 2: getting paid to do that work, it's like it totally
Speaker 2: rewarded me and compensated me to do that work at
Speaker 2: an emotional and political level. And I was just happy
Speaker 2: to be able to share what I was learning by
Speaker 2: doing that research with other people.
Speaker 1: Well, how did you first hear about Compton's Cafeteria.
Speaker 2: Well, when I was in early transition, I just showed
Speaker 2: up at this organization that was then called the Gay
Speaker 2: and Lesbian Historical Society, which was a community based archives
Speaker 2: and history project in San Francisco. And I said, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm actually an academically trained historian.
Speaker 3: I'm trans.
Speaker 2: I don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting
Speaker 2: an academic job right now, and I just want to
Speaker 2: show up and volunteer, which I did, and it was
Speaker 2: doing work there that I came across. One of the
Speaker 2: founders of the organization was this guy named Greg Pennington,
Speaker 2: and he had been collecting gay and lesbian community newspapers
Speaker 2: back into the fifties and sixties, and he had started
Speaker 2: working on a chronology of San Francisco's gay history. So like,
Speaker 2: there was this page that said, like August nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 2: and he was listing all of these things that had
Speaker 2: happened in nineteen sixty six, and there was one that
Speaker 2: said drag Queen's riot against police at Compton's Cafeteria. It's
Speaker 2: like what And I asked Greg about it. He said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: that was something I came across in some publication that
Speaker 2: was called Gay Pride Quarterly number one. And I could
Speaker 2: not find that publication to learn any more about it,
Speaker 2: and I was keeping my eye out for anything that
Speaker 2: I could find about that story because I was just
Speaker 2: intrigued by it. And in nineteen ninety five, a friend
Speaker 2: of mine and I were working on a book called
Speaker 2: Gay by the Bay, a History of queer culture in
Speaker 2: the San Francisco Bay Area, and I just had this
Speaker 2: question in my mind.
Speaker 3: It's like, well, you know, we should.
Speaker 2: Definitely say something about the first Pride parade that happens
Speaker 2: in San Francisco. And so there was a box of
Speaker 2: materials from San Francisco Gay Pride and looking through that
Speaker 2: material the program for the very first gay Pride parade
Speaker 2: in San Francisco from nineteen seventy two. I opened it up,
Speaker 2: opened the program up, and in the centerfold of that
Speaker 2: program there was this story. It says, hey, people were
Speaker 2: here to celebrate Stonewall, but don't forget gay Pride started
Speaker 2: in San Francisco three years earlier. It all started with
Speaker 2: a hot August night in nineteen sixty six when drag
Speaker 2: queens fought the cops at Compton's Cafeteria at the corner
Speaker 2: of Turk and Taylor Street. It's like, Ah, there's the story,
Speaker 2: but now do I believe it. It's like, how come
Speaker 2: I've never heard about this before? And it took me,
Speaker 2: i would say, about three more years of research to
Speaker 2: piece things together.
Speaker 1: Susan had just discovered a document about a riot led
Speaker 1: by drag queens in the sixties at a local diner.
Speaker 1: She figured that drag queens probably meant transgender women. If
Speaker 1: it was true, this was a big deal because it
Speaker 1: would have predated the Stonewall riots by three years. That diner,
Speaker 1: Jene Compton's Cafeteria, was in San Francisco's red light district
Speaker 1: called the Tenderloin, where many transgender women would perform sex
Speaker 1: work for survival. The twenty four hour diner was their
Speaker 1: respite for a warm cup of coffe or a visit
Speaker 1: with friends in between clients. Because Comptons served so many
Speaker 1: people in the criminal class, like sex workers and drug dealers,
Speaker 1: it was a target for police harassment. But according to
Speaker 1: Susan's research, one night, these queens had had enough. On
Speaker 1: an August night in nineteen sixty six, a fight broke
Speaker 1: out at Compton's cafeteria between those transgender diners and the cops.
Speaker 1: Before we get to actually what happened at Compton's cafeteria.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about what you discovered about the
Speaker 1: context of that time. What was it like for trans
Speaker 1: women living in San Francisco in the fifties and sixties.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, in some ways, it's like it is now.
Speaker 2: It's like the trans community, even the trans women community,
Speaker 2: is not monolithic.
Speaker 3: I mean, you've.
Speaker 2: Got people who are impoverished who are like doing survival
Speaker 2: sex works on the streets, and you've got people who
Speaker 2: are amorous quasi celebrities. But the people who were involved
Speaker 2: in the riot at Compton's, it's like they were people
Speaker 2: who were more socially marginalized. I think one of the
Speaker 2: things that was really different back in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 2: and sixties is that it was much more likely that
Speaker 2: if you were known to be trans, you would wind
Speaker 2: up living in a tenderloin like neighborhood, kind of a
Speaker 2: red light district. And that is certainly the way it
Speaker 2: worked in San Francisco. The tenderloin was a part of
Speaker 2: the city that was set aside for all kinds of
Speaker 2: illegal activities, criminalized activities that were tacitly allowed to take
Speaker 2: place by corrupt police officers.
Speaker 3: It's like where drug dealing would happen, and you know,
Speaker 3: maybe the dealer like pays off the cops.
Speaker 2: There was prostitution and then you know, madam gives the
Speaker 2: cops a little slice.
Speaker 3: Of the pie.
Speaker 2: Lots of corruption, lots of corruption, and those kinds of
Speaker 2: districts you called red light districts, tenderloin districts, whatever you
Speaker 2: want to call them. For most people, they were parts
Speaker 2: of the city that people would come into and leave.
Speaker 2: It's like, it's where you'd go to the after hours bars,
Speaker 2: it's where you'd go see a drag show, it's where
Speaker 2: you'd go score drugs, it's where you would, you know,
Speaker 2: go to buy sex for money. But for trans women,
Speaker 2: they were residential ghettos because of housing discrimination, employment discrimination,
Speaker 2: general social stigma. If you were out as trans and
Speaker 2: were transfeminine, it's that you would wind up in a
Speaker 2: sex work economy, living in a tenderloin style neighborhood and
Speaker 2: so to like live in what we're called queen's hotels,
Speaker 2: to be involved in sex work and to be brutalized
Speaker 2: by the police. That was a very common story for
Speaker 2: trans women.
Speaker 1: And how did Compton's Cafeteria fit into this scene.
Speaker 2: Compton's cafeteria was just you know, I think of it, it's
Speaker 2: like a clean, well lighted place for cheap food, you know,
Speaker 2: that would open twenty four hours a day, and everybody
Speaker 2: in the neighborhood went there. It's where the hustlers would
Speaker 2: hang out, It's where the street queens would hang out.
Speaker 2: Compton's was their safe space. It was a really important,
Speaker 2: unofficial community gathering spot. And it was just a cheap,
Speaker 2: well lighted place for food in a poor neighborhood that
Speaker 2: catered to people who were there for quote unquote vice activities.
Speaker 2: So for all of those reasons, it was a place
Speaker 2: that often drew police attention.
Speaker 1: And speaking of which this is a story about standing
Speaker 1: up to police harassment. What was the relationship between the
Speaker 1: cops and these queens in those days.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the interviewees in the film Screaming Queens
Speaker 2: Tomorrow Chank. She talks about how the police would come
Speaker 2: in and say you you, you, and you like come
Speaker 2: with us and just you know, throw them in the
Speaker 2: police wagon and take them off to jail.
Speaker 1: I remember when when the cops used to go in
Speaker 1: the bar and say you you, you, and you come
Speaker 1: with us.
Speaker 2: Or Amanda Saint James. Also in that film, she said
Speaker 2: there was this one cop who had it.
Speaker 3: In for her.
Speaker 4: I had one policeman that hated me with a passionate
Speaker 4: Every time you see me, he says, get in the
Speaker 4: paddy wagons. I just had my hamburger, he says, ed
Speaker 4: it Monday when you get out.
Speaker 2: So the general vibe was that transfeminine sex workers were
Speaker 2: just regarded as the bottom of the barrel, lowest rung
Speaker 2: of the social ladder, who could be abused with impunity.
Speaker 2: These women would tell me stories of how, like, you know,
Speaker 2: the police would raid for some kind of quality of
Speaker 2: life disturbance. It's like, oh, you're creating a public nuisance,
Speaker 2: or you're gauging and lude and lascivious behavior in public.
Speaker 2: These these kinds of laws that were basically like we
Speaker 2: can bust you for being trans in public.
Speaker 3: They talked about being.
Speaker 2: Driven around in the back of a police car for
Speaker 2: hours and hours, of being forced to perform oral.
Speaker 3: Sex, of being raped.
Speaker 2: Like you get to jail and it's like they would
Speaker 2: sort of strip you in front of, you know, other prisoners,
Speaker 2: Like they would shave women's heads.
Speaker 4: I didn't know wasn't bothering anybody but I was dressing
Speaker 4: as a woman the way I feel. So they put
Speaker 4: me in jail, shave my head, or I refuse to
Speaker 4: let them shave my head, and they put me in
Speaker 4: the hole and lock up. One girl was in there
Speaker 4: sixty days in the hole because she wouldn't let them
Speaker 4: cut their hair. That's how important it was to us
Speaker 4: back then. They were you know, it was like they
Speaker 4: were trying to humiliate us, that we weren't human beings,
Speaker 4: so they should humiliate us.
Speaker 2: Trans women could be violated with impunity at the time,
Speaker 2: nobody gave a damn. I read the gay press from
Speaker 2: that time, and there was a newspaper called Citizens News,
Speaker 2: and the guy who edited that newspaper, he would talk
Speaker 2: about what he called the walking eye sores along Market Street,
Speaker 2: and he met trans women. You look at the gay
Speaker 2: organizing that was happened at the time, and they would say,
Speaker 2: like these queens, you know, give gay people a bad name.
Speaker 2: It's like trans women were just the bottom of the
Speaker 2: barrel and they had nothing to lose when they fought back.
Speaker 2: I really think police violence and police targeting of queer
Speaker 2: people is the single biggest driver of queer history. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's the Stonewall story as well as the Compton story.
Speaker 2: That's the story of many bar fights and street actions.
Speaker 2: Our history is really motivated, I think, by resistance to
Speaker 2: prejudicial state actions carried out by the police through the
Speaker 2: criminalization of our life. There's a you know, we can
Speaker 2: tell a story about why on that night? Why was
Speaker 2: that night different from all other nights? Because the oppression
Speaker 2: that trans women were facing from the police and their
Speaker 2: exclusion and stigmatization within a broader public, it was chronic,
Speaker 2: it was routine. So like, why on one night did
Speaker 2: they fight back?
Speaker 1: How did the riot start?
Speaker 2: As near as I can make out, there was a
Speaker 2: little precursor incident. There was a woman named Dixie McClain
Speaker 2: who got into some kind of altercation with a police
Speaker 2: officer at another eatery, this place called the Doggie Diner,
Speaker 2: which was a few blocks away from Compton's, and she
Speaker 2: managed to leave that altercation and go to comptence and
Speaker 2: apparently she was sitting at a table with some friends
Speaker 2: and the police pull up. There were two cops who
Speaker 2: went into the restaurant apparently looking for her. We have
Speaker 2: eyewitness accounts of like the cops come in and they
Speaker 2: seem to be looking for someone. They focus on this
Speaker 2: one queen sitting at a table with her friends, and
Speaker 2: that they came over to her and one of the
Speaker 2: queens threw coffee in the CoP's face, you know, and
Speaker 2: he stumbles and falls over backwards, and the other cop
Speaker 2: who's there pulls out his billy club and somebody clocked
Speaker 2: him in the head with one of those big round
Speaker 2: sugar shakers and knocks them down. But then there were
Speaker 2: already sirens that people hurt. It's like there were other
Speaker 2: police officers pulling up, and it's like, oh, like this
Speaker 2: was a planned raid. These two cops were coming in
Speaker 2: for this one particular person, but that they were planning
Speaker 2: on doing more of a sweep.
Speaker 4: All of the sugar shakers went through the windows and
Speaker 4: the glass doors. I think I've put a sugar shaker
Speaker 4: through one of those.
Speaker 2: And the place just erupted. The patrons broke out the
Speaker 2: windows of the diner. They were like fighting with the
Speaker 2: two cops who were there, who get pushed out under
Speaker 2: the streets. They were breaking out the windows. Other cop
Speaker 2: cars are pulling up, and the best account that I
Speaker 2: have found says that there were a few hundred people
Speaker 2: in the streets fighting with the police. Trans women would
Speaker 2: take like they'd have liquor bottles and they're big, heavy purses,
Speaker 2: and like they would use that purse or like clock
Speaker 2: people with it, or like you take off a high
Speaker 2: heeled shoe and it's like those stiletto heels is like
Speaker 2: they can punch a hole in your skull if you
Speaker 2: hit somebody with them. So I actually kind of love
Speaker 2: that sense of trans women turning these like accoutrement of
Speaker 2: femininity into weapons for fighting the police who are trying
Speaker 2: to oppress them. Not only did they trash the interior
Speaker 2: of Compton's, but they burned down a newspaper stand that
Speaker 2: was at the corner that people were taking the newspapers
Speaker 2: and lighting them on fire, and the little fires all
Speaker 2: over the intersection. Police cards are being vandalized. It was
Speaker 2: a major, major incident. It probably went on for you know,
Speaker 2: it's say at least an hour, and that eventually there
Speaker 2: were some people who were arrested taken to jail.
Speaker 3: So there was this tremendous.
Speaker 2: Sense of a pent up rage at how people were treated.
Speaker 1: Susan, the story you're telling sounds like it was such
Speaker 1: a pivotal moment in queer history, So why do you
Speaker 1: think it was never told for almost forty years.
Speaker 2: One of the things that really surprises me, it's like,
Speaker 2: why is this not something that is recorded in the
Speaker 2: mainstream press. Why was there no footage of the riot itself. Well,
Speaker 2: it turns out that back in the day, the television
Speaker 2: news agencies they really only had filmed cruise out six
Speaker 2: days a week, and so like after midnight on Saturday,
Speaker 2: if it happened on Sunday, there wasn't going to be
Speaker 2: a crew out there, which leads me to think Riyat
Speaker 2: happened on Sunday. We have still not been able to
Speaker 2: pin down definitively exactly what the date was, because people
Speaker 2: remember things, but there was no contemporary written documentation of it.
Speaker 2: The police records have been disappeared. I looked at the
Speaker 2: television news logs. There was no film crew out there
Speaker 2: for it, There was no coverage of it in the
Speaker 2: mainstream newspapers. And I think mostly it was because it
Speaker 2: just kind of seemed like an impossible thing, just like
Speaker 2: there was the idea that street queens would fight back
Speaker 2: against the cops just blew people's minds. It was this
Speaker 2: moment of a really unprecedented political response on the part
Speaker 2: of one of the most marginalized people in society to
Speaker 2: fighting back against the structural oppression that just kept a
Speaker 2: boot on their neck. Nobody had seen anything like that.
Speaker 2: I know that the police had good relations with the press,
Speaker 2: and I honestly think they killed the story.
Speaker 1: On a late summer night in nineteen sixty six, a
Speaker 1: group of transgender women who had been regularly harassed by
Speaker 1: the cops stood up to them by fighting back. They
Speaker 1: destroyed a police car, set the corner newspaper stand on fire,
Speaker 1: and broke the windows at Compton's enrage. No one had
Speaker 1: ever seen anything like this, a bunch of queens standing
Speaker 1: up to the cops. The Compton's riot was a big deal.
Speaker 1: Many of the women involved said. The police largely left
Speaker 1: them alone after that night, which is what they'd always
Speaker 1: wanted to live without being harassed. So after the riot,
Speaker 1: how did the relationship between the queens and the cops change.
Speaker 2: It's really hard as a historian to say one thing
Speaker 2: caused another thing. I do think the riot was something
Speaker 2: that gave notice to some of the powers that be
Speaker 2: in the city that there was a social issue that
Speaker 2: they needed to deal with. I think because people on
Speaker 2: the street demanded something, the city responded. There was a
Speaker 2: police officer, Elliott Blackstone, who was the liaison to the
Speaker 2: you know what was then called the homophile community, and
Speaker 2: he was able to help put through some changes in
Speaker 2: police practices like of not you know, in trapping people
Speaker 2: in bathrooms or not arresting somebody just because they knew
Speaker 2: that they were trans. There was a unit of the
Speaker 2: San Francisco Public Health Department called the Center for Special
Speaker 2: Problems that started doing support groups and helping trans people
Speaker 2: access hormones and changes in their identity documents. You know,
Speaker 2: they issued ideas that said so and so is under
Speaker 2: the care of Center for Special Problems for the treatment
Speaker 2: of transsexualism. And so it both stigmatized and minoritized people
Speaker 2: as suffering from some kind of health condition called transsexualism.
Speaker 2: And on the other hand, it let people do things
Speaker 2: like open checking accounts at a bank. It helped them
Speaker 2: do things that were useful in their lives. So there
Speaker 2: was this moment of real hopefulness. But within a couple
Speaker 2: of years, you know, I think it had kind of
Speaker 2: gotten back to what it was before. It's like, there
Speaker 2: was this moment of police officers going like, oh wait,
Speaker 2: it's not like a crime, it's a medical condition. Oh okay,
Speaker 2: we'll treat that a little differently, and then like within
Speaker 2: a few years it's like, yeah, no, we're still just
Speaker 2: going to treat it like it's a crime.
Speaker 1: Well, Susan, if I could step away from the history
Speaker 1: and ask you what was going through your mind as
Speaker 1: you were learning all of this incredible history. This is
Speaker 1: at a moment in your life where you're sort of
Speaker 1: transitioning and experiencing transgender discrimination in your own way, and
Speaker 1: here you are learning about all of these women that
Speaker 1: came before you, that are standing up to the same
Speaker 1: system in a lot of ways. What was that like
Speaker 1: for you?
Speaker 2: You know, when I found the story of the Competence
Speaker 2: Cafeteria riot, it just felt very validating to me because
Speaker 2: I knew in my own direct experience the kind of
Speaker 2: social oppression and stigma that can land on you as
Speaker 2: a transperson. So there was this way that when I
Speaker 2: found that story, it was just kind of like a
Speaker 2: hell yeah moment, like you go girls, like right on.
Speaker 2: So it just I felt very jazzed by finding the story.
Speaker 2: I also felt pride, the sense of at whatever cost
Speaker 2: to you to just stand up to.
Speaker 3: Power and to say like, no, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: take that. I am a person of worth. My life matters.
Speaker 2: I consider that all Night Cafeteria and Eta Hamburger just
Speaker 2: like anybody else. To just assert that very fundamental sense
Speaker 2: of like, I am a being who exists in this world,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to take up the space inside my
Speaker 2: own skin, and I'm going to be in public and
Speaker 2: it's just like I am just not going to settle
Speaker 2: for anything less than that. It's just such a fundamental
Speaker 2: assertion of one's capacity to be in the world. And
Speaker 2: I certainly understand some of the things that land on
Speaker 2: you just for being trans And to have people in
Speaker 2: a community that I identify with to just assert their
Speaker 2: existence and to say like I exist, I am, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to hold my space. That's a very that's
Speaker 2: a very powerful thing to have found. In some ways,
Speaker 2: I feel like I found what I was looking for.
Speaker 2: I just knew in my heart that there was going
Speaker 2: to be a story like that somewhere, and I found it,
Speaker 2: and I thought, this is a story that I need
Speaker 2: to tell in the most public way possible.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and five, Susan released the documentary Screaming
Speaker 1: Queens on PBS. It was about the untold story of
Speaker 1: Compton's Cafeteria. It prominently featured transgender people that were actually
Speaker 1: at the riot who've since passed away. The film would
Speaker 1: go on to win an Emmy. Earlier this year, The
Speaker 1: New Yorker published a new documentary called Compton's twenty two
Speaker 1: by a young transgender filmmaker, Drew Depinto. He documented other
Speaker 1: transgender people his age watching Screaming Queens for the first
Speaker 1: time as they react to the bravery of those that
Speaker 1: came before them. What do you think is the impact
Speaker 1: of the Compton's Cafeteria riot on today's queer youth.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I hope it's something that queer youth
Speaker 2: today can take pride and inspiration from, particularly in this
Speaker 2: moment when trans people are just in the eye of
Speaker 2: the storm, this big, huge legal backlash, this moral panic
Speaker 2: around the existence of trans people. To put out a
Speaker 2: story of trans survival and resistance and joy as well
Speaker 2: as fierceness, I just think that's really important, and I
Speaker 2: hope that that's something that people younger than me can
Speaker 2: latch onto and take inspiration from.
Speaker 1: And my last question is just around that what came
Speaker 1: to your mind and to your heart as you were
Speaker 1: starting to understand that the history that you unearthed is
Speaker 1: now being passed down to new generations. The history that
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways came to you from a
Speaker 1: previous generation is now leaving you and going to the
Speaker 1: next generation.
Speaker 2: Well, you know that it's really gratifying to me that
Speaker 2: me doing my work as a historian, it's like I
Speaker 2: unearthed news that I could use from the past that
Speaker 2: served me somehow, and then to be able to transmit
Speaker 2: that to the generations that are coming up, it just, yeah,
Speaker 2: I just take such pleasure in that. And I feel
Speaker 2: like there's this like tremendous sense of responsibility to have
Speaker 2: become an elder and to take what my elders bequeathed
Speaker 2: to me and to pass that along. I can't think
Speaker 2: of anything that I would rather have done and to
Speaker 2: continue to be doing with my life, to be a
Speaker 2: sort of a culture bearer and storyteller for what trans
Speaker 2: life has been like in the United States. So I
Speaker 2: hope it's something that serves the people who I am.
Speaker 3: Bequeathing it to passing it along too.
Speaker 1: But we Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolvis. New
Speaker 1: episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write in
Speaker 1: to tell your story, email us but we Loved at
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Speaker 1: of The Outspoken Podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts. But We
Speaker 1: Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers Areshena Ozaki,
Speaker 1: Michael June, Emily Meronoff, and Joey patt Our. Executive producers
Speaker 1: are Me and Maya Howard. Original music by Steve Boone.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Jay Bronson and Rockqua Willis. If you
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Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: I'll see you next week.