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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Tracy the Wilson. So today's subject, which is transgender

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Speaker 1: activist Sylvia Rivera is often compared to Rosa Parks, like

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Speaker 1: I would say seventy percent of the articles, but I

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Speaker 1: read researching this episode compared her to Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks,

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Speaker 1: as you probably know, became famous in part for refusing

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Speaker 1: to give up her bus seat on a segregated bus,

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Speaker 1: and Sylvia Rivera became famous in part for purportedly throwing

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Speaker 1: the first bottle at a police officer during the Stonewall Riots.

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Speaker 1: But really, Rosa Parks and Sylvia Rivera almost could not

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Speaker 1: be more different from each other. Rosa Parks's case was

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Speaker 1: chosen specifically to try to overturn bus segregation Montgomery, Alabama,

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Speaker 1: precisely because she seemed really polite. She was married, she

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Speaker 1: was soft spoken, she went to church, and she had

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Speaker 1: no criminal records, so basically there was nothing in her

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Speaker 1: background that might turn white people off to the idea

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Speaker 1: that she deserved the same basic civil rights that they did.

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Speaker 1: Sylvia Rivera, on the other hand, has a lot more

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Speaker 1: in common with Claudett Colvin, who was also arrested for

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Speaker 1: refusing to give up a seat on a segregated bus

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Speaker 1: in Montgomery. But Claudett Colvin did not become the household

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Speaker 1: name that Rosa Parks did. Because she was an unmarried,

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Speaker 1: pregnant teenager who had a reputation for being a troublemaker.

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Speaker 1: Civil rights leaders deliberately didn't pursue her case because they

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Speaker 1: knew it would be a hard one to win. They

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Speaker 1: held out for a more so called respectable plaintiff instead,

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Speaker 1: And that brings us to Sylvia Rivera and the years

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Speaker 1: immediately after the Stonewall riots. She campaigned bravely and stridently

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Speaker 1: and vocally for the rights of gay and transgender people.

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Speaker 1: Although the term transgender, which is used to describe people

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Speaker 1: whose gender and identity doesn't match up with the sex

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Speaker 1: that they were assigned when they were born, that word

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Speaker 1: had not been coined yet. But Sylvia was also loud

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Speaker 1: and aggressive and angry and poor, sometimes even homeless. She

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Speaker 1: had a history of sex work and drug addictions. Her

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Speaker 1: mannerisms were really flamboyant, in your face. So when the

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Speaker 1: gay rights movement started trending towards so called respectability. Sylvia

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Speaker 1: got really pushed to the sidelines along with a lot

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Speaker 1: of other transgender people. She refused to be put in

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Speaker 1: a box, and so she wound up being excluded from

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Speaker 1: the very movement that she was fighting for, and she

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Speaker 1: was for decades pretty much forgotten about. So before we

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Speaker 1: get started, there's a word of caution about this story.

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Speaker 1: Because Sylvia ran away from home when she was only eleven.

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Speaker 1: Some of the events that happened to her, especially in

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Speaker 1: her young life, are disturbing. So parents and teachers, before

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Speaker 1: you share this with young people, I recommend listening to

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Speaker 1: it yourself first. And as a second note, some of

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Speaker 1: the language that was used at the time that Sylvia

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Speaker 1: lived and that she used about herself isn't the preferred

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Speaker 1: language that we used today, and will sort of point

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Speaker 1: out those as they come up. Uh. So, now that

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Speaker 1: you've been warned, we will jump in as we usually

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Speaker 1: do at the very beginning. Sylvia was actually born Ray

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Speaker 1: Rivera on July two of nineteen fifty one. Her mother

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Speaker 1: was Venezuelan and her father was Puerto Rican. Sylvia's mother

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Speaker 1: committed suicide by eating rat poison when Sylvia was three.

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Speaker 1: She also tried to kill Sylvia at that time, but

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Speaker 1: Sylvia survived and went on to be raised by her grandmother,

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Speaker 1: via Hita. Via Hita raised both Sylvia and Sylvia's half sister.

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Speaker 1: Viahita was essentially functioning as a single parent. Her husband

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Speaker 1: had abandoned her, and Sylvia's father, who had also abandoned

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Speaker 1: the family, was not paying child support. Sylvia's grandmother was

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Speaker 1: also very strict. Although she taught Sylvia to cook and

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Speaker 1: to sew and too niche, she really did not like

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Speaker 1: it when Sylvia started wearing girls clothes. Viajita would punish Sylvia,

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Speaker 1: sometimes physically, for wearing makeup and for dressing and girl's clothing, and,

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Speaker 1: as Sylvia described in the Oral History, Making History the

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Speaker 1: struggle for gay and lesbian equal rights, her grandmother would say, quote,

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Speaker 1: we don't do this. You're one of the boys. I

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Speaker 1: want you to be a mechanic, and Sylvia would answer, no,

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Speaker 1: I want to be a hairdresser, and I want to

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Speaker 1: wear these clothes. From Sylvia's point of view, her grandmother

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Speaker 1: also didn't like her because her skin was too dark.

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Speaker 1: She had heard her grandmother say that she wanted a

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Speaker 1: white granddaughter instead, and the struggle between the two of

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Speaker 1: them went on until at the age of ten, Sylvia

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Speaker 1: tried to commit suicide by taking her grandmother's pills. She

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Speaker 1: wound up instead in the hospital for two months. Sylvia

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Speaker 1: also faced bullying and harassment at school and in the

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Speaker 1: neighborhood as as well. The other children and their neighbors

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Speaker 1: didn't like her wearing girls clothing, and they didn't like

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Speaker 1: her effeminine mannerisms. Feeling lonely, isolated, and desperately at odds

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Speaker 1: with everyone around her, Sylvia left home at age eleven.

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Speaker 1: The straw that really broke the camel's back was seeing

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Speaker 1: how others treatment of her was affecting her grandmother. Even

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Speaker 1: though their relationship was often contentious and strained and even violent,

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Speaker 1: Sylvia did not like seeing her grandmother suffer over the

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Speaker 1: way people talked about her. After she ran away, Sylvia

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Speaker 1: went to forty two Street in New York City, which

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Speaker 1: was a haven for cross dressers and street walkers. She

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Speaker 1: had no other means to support herself, and so she

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Speaker 1: turned to sex work. And I want to make it

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Speaker 1: clear that there are people who choose to go into

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Speaker 1: sex work, but at this time Sylvia was eleven and

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Speaker 1: she had no other options. The area's drag queens pretty

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Speaker 1: much adopted her, and they're the ones who gave her

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Speaker 1: the name Sylvia. Sylvia was arrested frequently and her grandmother

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Speaker 1: would come and bail her out. A few days shy

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Speaker 1: of Sylvia's eighteenth birthday, she went to the Stonewall In

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Speaker 1: for the first time, and this was June twenty, nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty nine. The Stonewall End was, like many of New

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Speaker 1: York's bars that catered to the gay community at the time,

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Speaker 1: owned by the Mafia. Homosexuality was a crime, and so

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Speaker 1: was cross dressing, so pretty much the only people who

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Speaker 1: were willing to operate businesses that catered to this demographic

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Speaker 1: were also themselves criminals. Gay bars were rated on a

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Speaker 1: regular basis. Standard operating procedure was that the police would

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Speaker 1: come in, they would make arrests and confiscations. They would

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Speaker 1: then collect a payoff, and then they would leave and

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Speaker 1: padlock the door behind them. Not long after the police

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Speaker 1: had gone, members of the mafia would come by cut

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Speaker 1: the padlock off. They would then restock the alcohol supply

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Speaker 1: and business would start right back up. So for the

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Speaker 1: people who didn't wind up getting arrested, it was more

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Speaker 1: of a hassle and an interruption to their evening's revelry

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Speaker 1: than anything else. For people who did get arrested, it

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Speaker 1: could be way way harder, and not just for the

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Speaker 1: fact that they were taken to jail, but often in

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Speaker 1: jail they were then taunted and sometimes beaten and sometimes

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Speaker 1: assaulted by other people who were in the jail. On June,

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Speaker 1: when the police came in, most of the patrons went

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Speaker 1: to the park across the street to wait, and they

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Speaker 1: were tired of being hassled. A lot of people say

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Speaker 1: that this was because it was the same week that

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Speaker 1: Judy Garland died, and that doesn't seem through the oral

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Speaker 1: histories to actually add up necessarily, but it's more a

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Speaker 1: point a coincidence than to cause an effect situation. Right

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Speaker 1: at some point, somebody started throwing coins at the police officers,

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Speaker 1: yelling things like here's your payoff, come get some more,

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Speaker 1: and then things started to escalate. People started throwing bottles

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Speaker 1: and Molotov cocktails. Sylvia is widely cited as the first

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Speaker 1: to do this, but near the end of her life

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Speaker 1: she really worked to try to dispel this idea, saying

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Speaker 1: that she was in fact the second to throw a bottle.

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Speaker 1: Soon the police were pinned down inside the bar with

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Speaker 1: the protesters outside, and the riot went on until reinforcements

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Speaker 1: arrived and dispersed the crowd. The Stonewall ryot wasn't remotely

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Speaker 1: the first event in the modern gay rights movement. It

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Speaker 1: wasn't even the first riot in an establishment that was

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Speaker 1: frequented by LGBT people. An early earlier example was a

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Speaker 1: riot at Cooper's Donuts in Los Angeles in X five,

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Speaker 1: and in that event, drag queens and gay men, many

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Speaker 1: of them black or Latino, fought back against police, first

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Speaker 1: by throwing donuts, which sounds sort of funny, and then

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Speaker 1: with hand to hand fighting much less funny. Uh. In

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Speaker 1: San Francisco, a picket protest among LGBT protesters turned into

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Speaker 1: a riot at Compton's Cafeteria in nineteen sixty six. But

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Speaker 1: Stonewall really did act as a sort of tipping point

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Speaker 1: and a rallying cry, definitely the most famous today. So

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Speaker 1: there are several things about the riots and lvia's presence

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Speaker 1: there that are caused for debate today. One is just

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Speaker 1: how much of the Stonewell Ins clientele was made up

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Speaker 1: of cross stressers and transgender people. Now, as we mentioned before,

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Speaker 1: the term transgender had not really been coined at this

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Speaker 1: point in history, but when it was coined about ten

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Speaker 1: years later, a lot of the people who would identified

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Speaker 1: as cross stressors or as transvestites at the time then

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Speaker 1: went on to identify as transgender. So we're gonna keep

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Speaker 1: talking about both cross stressers and transgender people both for

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Speaker 1: the rest of the episode, because there are two different things.

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Speaker 1: Cross stressing is about the clothes you have on and

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Speaker 1: transgender is about your gender expression, so your expression of

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Speaker 1: the gender that you uh that you are inwardly versus

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Speaker 1: the clothes that you have on your body. In Sylvia's

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Speaker 1: own words, cross stressers could only get and if they

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Speaker 1: knew somebody, because cross stressors were really frequently targeted by

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Speaker 1: the police, so a lot of businesses felt like it

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Speaker 1: was too much of a hassle to deal with them.

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Speaker 1: Other people have characterized the Stonewell in as a haven

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Speaker 1: for cross jessers and for transgender people, and there are

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Speaker 1: reputable historians on both sides. Another bone of contention is

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Speaker 1: actually whether Sylvia herself was even there. She says she was, uh,

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Speaker 1: And of course she's often credited with being the first

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Speaker 1: bottle thrower, but historians have not been able to corroborate

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Speaker 1: her presence there through eyewitness accounts. In the end, it

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Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily matter how many transgender patrons the Stonewell in

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Speaker 1: had or whether Sylvia was actually there that night. What

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Speaker 1: does matter is that Sylvia and the rest of the

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Speaker 1: cross dressing and transgender community became vocal, aggressive campaigners for

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Speaker 1: the rights of game and lesbians, bisexuals, and all manner

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Speaker 1: of people who just didn't conform to gender norms. They were,

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Speaker 1: in many ways the people who were the most visibly

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Speaker 1: on the forefront of the fight for equality and for

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Speaker 1: civil rights. And we're going to talk more about what

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Speaker 1: happened after Stonewall, right after a word from our sponsor.

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Speaker 1: If that is cool with Tracy, it is. Sylvia Rivera

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Speaker 1: had already been active in racial equality and anti war

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Speaker 1: causes before the Stonewall riot, and after the riot she

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Speaker 1: immediately passionately turned her attention to the growing movement for

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Speaker 1: gay rights to gay rights organizations formed in New York

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Speaker 1: in the wake of the riot. That was the Gay

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Speaker 1: Activists Alliance and the Gay Liberation Front, and Sylvia was

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Speaker 1: active in both of those groups as part of the

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Speaker 1: Gay Activists Alliance. Sylvia petitioned the city of New York

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Speaker 1: for an anti discrimination bill, and she was arrested while

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Speaker 1: trying to get signatures. When she appeared before the judge,

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Speaker 1: he immediately let her go. He recognized that with all

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Speaker 1: of the social turmoil that was going on in the

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Speaker 1: United States at that point, it would be a really

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Speaker 1: unwise pr move for him to jail someone who was

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Speaker 1: getting signatures for a petition. Sylvia also testified before the

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Speaker 1: city Council to try to get the bill passed. However,

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Speaker 1: as the bill was being negotiated, others in the gay

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Speaker 1: community agreed to drop protections for cross dressers from the

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Speaker 1: bill in the hope that it would be more likely

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Speaker 1: to pass. Sylvia and many of the other cross dressing

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Speaker 1: and transgender citizens of New York felt really deeply betrayed

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Speaker 1: by this. They had been working, campaigning and getting arrested

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Speaker 1: and sometimes facing abuse and violence and sexual assault in

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Speaker 1: jail once they had been arrested fighting for these causes,

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Speaker 1: and at this point it felt like they had done

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Speaker 1: this for a cause that had then turned their back

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Speaker 1: on them. And it didn't help that the bill minus

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Speaker 1: discrimination protections for gender expression did not actually pass until

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Speaker 1: fifteen years later, so that would have been ninet So

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Speaker 1: this concession really in the end was not much of

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Speaker 1: a help along the way. The Gay Activists Alliance specifically

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Speaker 1: dropped rights for the cross dressing communities from its mission entirely. Consequently,

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Speaker 1: after being excluded from other gay rights organizations, Sylvia and

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Speaker 1: her long time friend Marcia P. Johnson co founded the

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Speaker 1: Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries or STAR in the fall of

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy. Essentially, the cross dressing and transgender community had

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Speaker 1: begun to feel excluded by other gay and lesbian rights organizations,

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Speaker 1: and so they formed their own. As a side note

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Speaker 1: to a lot of people today, the word transvestite has

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Speaker 1: connotations that are offensive, so people a lot of people

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Speaker 1: prefer the word cross stressor but at the time it

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Speaker 1: was a word that they were using to talk about

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Speaker 1: themselves frequently. Yeah, you also hear drag, which is in there,

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Speaker 1: and they can get a little fuzzy, and they're still

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Speaker 1: ongoing debate over you know, terminology and who should use

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Speaker 1: what to some degree that's still being worked out. Yes, so, uh,

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Speaker 1: we're not at all using those terms to be disrespectful,

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Speaker 1: but because that's those are the words that Sylvia and

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Speaker 1: Marcia were using to describe themselves. So Sylvia and Marcia's

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Speaker 1: next step was to start what was known as Star House,

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Speaker 1: and this was an outreach effort for the so called queens.

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Speaker 1: These were young homeless gay youth, many of whom later

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Speaker 1: went on to identify as transgender, and many of whom

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Speaker 1: were also people of color. And they originally operated Starhouse

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Speaker 1: out of the back of a truck, and then they

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Speaker 1: started renting a building at two thirteen et Second Street

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Speaker 1: and they fixed that up and there they provided shelter, food,

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Speaker 1: and guidance for homeless transgender youth and Sylvia and Marcia

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Speaker 1: really became mother figures for these kids. They had a

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Speaker 1: dance to try to raise some money to fund their operation,

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Speaker 1: but for the most part, Sylvia and Marcia kept the

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Speaker 1: place running by doing sex work. They tried to protect

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Speaker 1: all of the young people who were in their care

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Speaker 1: from being involved in the sex trade at all. However,

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Speaker 1: many of the youth wound up helping Star Houses efforts

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Speaker 1: by stealing food and eventually, uh, you know, this is

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Speaker 1: not really a workable business model. So Starhouse was evicted

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Speaker 1: from the property for non payment of rent, and before

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Speaker 1: they left, they took the refrigerator and they destroyed all

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Speaker 1: of the improvements that they made in the building out

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Speaker 1: of a sort of turnabout is fair play mindset, And

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Speaker 1: I feel like we should point out that the reason

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Speaker 1: that they were having to turn to stealing and sex

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Speaker 1: work to fund their operations is because their entire lives

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Speaker 1: at this point were not only illegal, but also specifically

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Speaker 1: targeted by the police and other people for harassment. So

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Speaker 1: that was sort of what it had come to by

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Speaker 1: being excluded from so many other social organizations that were

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Speaker 1: working to help homeless people and others in New York. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it certainly was not like, oh, we don't want to

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Speaker 1: pursue legitimate means of gaining money. They just did not

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Speaker 1: have opportunities to do so, right, and that continues to

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Speaker 1: be a problem in a lot of areas today. Throughout

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Speaker 1: this time, Sylvia was also active in other radical organizations

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Speaker 1: as well, including the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords,

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Speaker 1: which is a Puerto Rican nationalist activism group. In nine three,

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Speaker 1: Sylvia was supposed to speak at Christopher's Street Liberation Day,

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Speaker 1: which was a festival to commemorate the anniversary of the

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Speaker 1: Stonewall Riots. However, radical feminists tried to keep Sylvia from

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Speaker 1: the stage because they viewed her wearing women's clothing as sexist.

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Speaker 1: In particular, activist Gino Leary, a former nun and lesbian feminist,

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Speaker 1: spoke out against Sylvia taking part. Sylvia's response was to

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Speaker 1: physically grab the microphone and to talk anyway, with a

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Speaker 1: lot of vigor and profanity behind her words. Um. She

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Speaker 1: spoke very candidly and angrily about how the gay community

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Speaker 1: was benefiting from the cross stressors work while simultaneously excluding

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Speaker 1: them from their successes as your payment. I do want

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Speaker 1: to note that Gino Leary went on to soften her

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Speaker 1: views about cross stressors and transgender people later in her life.

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Speaker 1: I don't want to paint her as a terrible person

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Speaker 1: who went around oppressing other people. She she did later

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Speaker 1: on express embarrassment and shame that she had really sickly

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Speaker 1: kicked people who were already down. Yeah, and the drag

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Speaker 1: queens that were supposed to perform at this rally were

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Speaker 1: also barred from performing. After this incident, Sylvia moved to Terrytown,

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Speaker 1: New York and lived with a boyfriend. Since she was

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Speaker 1: no longer in the city, she became less prominent in

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Speaker 1: its civil rights and gay rights efforts, but she did

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Speaker 1: make her way back every year for the parades and

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Speaker 1: festivals that commemorated the end of the Stonewall Riot. In

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Speaker 1: the interim, she led a relatively quiet life. She mostly

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Speaker 1: worked food service jobs for a while, but eventually, unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: she began abusing drugs again and wound up homeless, and

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Speaker 1: journalists who were working to chronicle the gay rights movements

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Speaker 1: earlier years and transgender people's contribution to the gay rights

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Speaker 1: movement found her living on the streets in New York

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Speaker 1: in the early nine nineties. This actually marked her return

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Speaker 1: to activism and to the public eye, which we'll talk

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Speaker 1: about after another brief ad break. It's tricky to talk

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Speaker 1: about some of the issues that are in today's episod

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Speaker 1: because the terminology that we used to talk about it today,

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Speaker 1: some of it was coined basically halfway through Sylvia Rivera's life.

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Speaker 1: It's also tricky to talk about Sylvia Rivera's identity, specifically UH,

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Speaker 1: because she really really resisted the idea of labels for

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Speaker 1: a lot of her life. She referred to herself as

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Speaker 1: a transvestite, and as we said earlier, that's the word

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Speaker 1: that a lot of people don't prefer to be used anymore.

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Speaker 1: The term transgender came around about halfway through her life,

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Speaker 1: but she wasn't totally comfortable calling herself that. Towards the

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Speaker 1: end of her life, she said quote, I'm tired of

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Speaker 1: being labeled. I don't even like the label transgender. I

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Speaker 1: just want to be who I am. I'm living the

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Speaker 1: way Sylvia wants to live. But despite her lack of

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Speaker 1: affinity for labels, Sylvia was undoubtedly an advocate for rights

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Speaker 1: and protections for transgender people throughout the last ten years

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Speaker 1: or show of her life. We talked earlier about Sylvia

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Speaker 1: founding the organization Star with Marsha P. Johnson. Marsha's body

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Speaker 1: was actually found in the Hudson River in Nineteo. Police

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Speaker 1: originally said that it was a suicide, but they eventually

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Speaker 1: opened a homicide investigation. And when I say eventually, I

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Speaker 1: mean two decades later. At the time of her death,

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Speaker 1: Sylvia and other friends of Marsha's had said that she

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Speaker 1: was not suicidal and that they had witnessed her being

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Speaker 1: harassed by someone near where her body was found shortly

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Speaker 1: before her death. In nine Sylvia was asked to lead

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Speaker 1: the twenty fifth anniversary Stonewall March. That same year, she

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Speaker 1: advocated for Martin Duberman's publishers to translate his LGBT history

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Speaker 1: book Stonewall into Spanish, but according to her, she was

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Speaker 1: told it would not sell well in quote third world countries.

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Speaker 1: In Latin countries and her last years, she and her

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Speaker 1: partner Julia Murray lived and work at a place called

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Speaker 1: Transy House. This is a collective and shelter for transgender

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Speaker 1: youth and they joined this collective in nine in Sylvia

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Speaker 1: was arrested during m O real for Matthew Shepherd in

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Speaker 1: New York. So if you are not familiar with his story,

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Speaker 1: Matthew Shepherd was a student at the University of Wyoming

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Speaker 1: at Laramie who was tortured, tied to a fence post,

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Speaker 1: and left to die as part of an anti gay

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Speaker 1: hate crime. He wound up dying of his injuries a

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Speaker 1: few days after he was found tied to the fence post.

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Speaker 1: According to Sylvia's own account, a police officer basically spread

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Speaker 1: the word to arrest her first because she was known

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Speaker 1: for being very vocal at these kinds of demonstrations. In

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Speaker 1: Sylvia spoke at the World Pride rally in Rome. In

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Speaker 1: two thousand, another transwoman named Amanda Milan was stabbed in

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Speaker 1: the neck and killed on street. Sylvia organized a series

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Speaker 1: of rallies and protests surrounding her death and the trial

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Speaker 1: of her killers. Sylvia continued to be really vocal about

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Speaker 1: the schism between the gay community and the trans community

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Speaker 1: in the years before her death, and about a year

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Speaker 1: before she died, at a talk given before the Latino

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Speaker 1: Amen of New York, she said, yes, we can adopt children.

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Speaker 1: All well and good, that's fine. I would love to

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Speaker 1: have children. I would love to marry my lover over there,

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Speaker 1: she pointed to Julia Murray. But for political reasons, I

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Speaker 1: will not do it, because I don't feel that I

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Speaker 1: have to fit in that closet of normal straight society

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Speaker 1: which the gay mainstream is going towards. In the same speech,

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Speaker 1: she described the trans community's participation in the gay rights

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Speaker 1: movement this way quote. We were determined that evening, that evening,

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Speaker 1: being the night at the Stonewall riots, that we were

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Speaker 1: going to be a liberated, free community, which we did

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Speaker 1: acquire that Actually, I'll change the WII you have acquired

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Speaker 1: your liberation, your freedom. From that night, myself, I've got

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Speaker 1: expletive deleted, just like I had back then. But I

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Speaker 1: still struggle, and I still continue the struggle. I will

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Speaker 1: struggle till the day I die. And my main struggle

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Speaker 1: right now is that my community will seek the rights

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Speaker 1: that are justly ours. In the last year of her life,

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Speaker 1: Sylvia campaigned for New York Sexual or Ination Non Discrimination Act,

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Speaker 1: which is also referred to as SUNDA, and that act

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Speaker 1: prohibits discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived sexual

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Speaker 1: orientation in employment, housing, public accommodations, education, credit, and the

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Speaker 1: exercise of civil rights. It includes protections for transgender people.

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Speaker 1: Sylvia was not exaggerating when she said that she was

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Speaker 1: going to work until she died for this. Her last

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Speaker 1: meeting about SANDA, when she met with city officials for

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Speaker 1: the last time, took place in a hospital bed when

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Speaker 1: she was an in stage liver disease and in great pain.

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Speaker 1: She died on February nineteenth, two thousand two, of liver

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Speaker 1: disease at the age of fifty one. SANDA was signed

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Speaker 1: into law on December seventeenth of that same year. On

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Speaker 1: November fourteenth of two thousand and five, the City of

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Speaker 1: New York named the corner of Christopher and Hudson Streets

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Speaker 1: in the West Village Sylvia Rivera Way. Today, the Sylvia

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Speaker 1: Rivera Food Pantry, which is under the auspice, is of

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Speaker 1: the Metropolitan Community Church of New York, which serves the

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Speaker 1: working poor as well as people with HIV through a

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Speaker 1: specialized pantry program that's designed for people on anti retroviral

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Speaker 1: therapies UH. These are higher in protein and easy to prepare.

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Speaker 1: It also provides nutritional information and kind of meal guidance

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Speaker 1: for all of the populations that it serves. Sylvia's Place

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Speaker 1: is a Metropolitan Community Church of New York services organization

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Speaker 1: for homeless youth. Sylvia Rivera Law projects work focuses on

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Speaker 1: transgender intersects and gender nonconforming people, particularly those who are

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Speaker 1: low income people and people of color. They provide legal services,

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Speaker 1: public education, and advocacy for public policy reform. She had

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Speaker 1: a big legacy. She did have a big legacy. She

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Speaker 1: had a big legacy that I think her Her name

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Speaker 1: is not necessarily well known in the context of the

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Speaker 1: gay rights movement unless you are pretty familiar with it.

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Speaker 1: The oral history that we referenced, making history Um, she

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Speaker 1: is actually the only transgender person who's included, and she's

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Speaker 1: referred to with male pronouns the whole time, and is

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Speaker 1: classified as a drag queen, which is she did call

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Speaker 1: herself a drag queen, but that's kind of limiting and

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Speaker 1: how she actually viewed herself. I mean, since she was

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Speaker 1: not a fan of the labels and she identified in

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Speaker 1: her life as Sylvia, like a lot of drag performers

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Speaker 1: will still maintain their uh you know, in many cases,

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Speaker 1: the old school drag performers that were mostly men and

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Speaker 1: then presented as female for performance, they still maintained that

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Speaker 1: male persona, whereas she did not at all totally. One

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Speaker 1: of the reasons that I wanted There are a couple

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Speaker 1: of reasons that I wanted to do this episode, and

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Speaker 1: one is that I think the campaign for transgender rights

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Speaker 1: has been increasingly present in the news over the last

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Speaker 1: year or so in terms of mainstream news coverage. It's

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Speaker 1: definitely not something that has been unknown, but when it

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Speaker 1: comes to like the really mainstream news outlets, um, and

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Speaker 1: the other is a lot of the things that Sylvia

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Speaker 1: and the young people that she and Marcia were looking after,

431
00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:24,680
Speaker 1: you know, twenty years ago. A lot of those issues

432
00:25:24,840 --> 00:25:27,320
Speaker 1: still really exist today, Like, there are still a lot

433
00:25:27,520 --> 00:25:31,720
Speaker 1: of homeless transgender youth who's who've basically been thrown out

434
00:25:31,720 --> 00:25:34,159
Speaker 1: of their homes by their parents and don't really have

435
00:25:34,200 --> 00:25:36,639
Speaker 1: anywhere else to turn. So I think her legacy is

436
00:25:36,760 --> 00:25:39,760
Speaker 1: extremely important, not just for having been part of the

437
00:25:39,800 --> 00:25:42,439
Speaker 1: gay rights movement, but for specifically when it comes to

438
00:25:43,160 --> 00:25:48,000
Speaker 1: working with homeless young people who don't really have anywhere

439
00:25:48,000 --> 00:25:51,359
Speaker 1: else to go. Yeah, it's an extremely high risk community

440
00:25:51,480 --> 00:25:56,720
Speaker 1: in terms of uh, violence, falling into sex word, you know,

441
00:25:56,840 --> 00:26:00,880
Speaker 1: just really being in at risk situations. Yeah. Well, and

442
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:08,000
Speaker 1: Sylvia specifically in addition to being uh originally identifying as

443
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:12,320
Speaker 1: a transvestite and then later kind of identifying as transgender.

444
00:26:12,320 --> 00:26:15,320
Speaker 1: Maybe in addition to that, she was Latina, and she

445
00:26:15,480 --> 00:26:18,679
Speaker 1: was very poor, she was not particularly educated. She was

446
00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:20,399
Speaker 1: in a whole lot of at risk groups all at

447
00:26:20,400 --> 00:26:24,720
Speaker 1: the same time. And um she had she said in

448
00:26:24,760 --> 00:26:27,879
Speaker 1: a in a speech right before her her death, not

449
00:26:28,080 --> 00:26:29,680
Speaker 1: right before, about a year before, that she wanted to

450
00:26:29,720 --> 00:26:31,800
Speaker 1: live to be a hundred. She only made it to

451
00:26:31,840 --> 00:26:34,560
Speaker 1: fifty one. But given all of those factors, the fact

452
00:26:34,640 --> 00:26:36,720
Speaker 1: that she made it to fifty one in the time

453
00:26:36,720 --> 00:26:41,040
Speaker 1: that she was living. It's pretty incredible. That's the saddest

454
00:26:41,080 --> 00:26:44,160
Speaker 1: possible place to end that. So on a more upbeat tone,

455
00:26:44,280 --> 00:26:47,480
Speaker 1: we're going to do a continuation of what we have

456
00:26:47,600 --> 00:26:50,080
Speaker 1: already started, which is reading some of the responses we

457
00:26:50,119 --> 00:26:54,480
Speaker 1: got when we asked for people who had history degrees

458
00:26:54,560 --> 00:26:56,840
Speaker 1: to tell us kind of what they did with those

459
00:26:56,880 --> 00:26:59,119
Speaker 1: in terms of their career, which grew out of a

460
00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:01,280
Speaker 1: question someone to us of how we got work to

461
00:27:01,320 --> 00:27:04,040
Speaker 1: where we are and how people who study history in

462
00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:06,440
Speaker 1: college might get such jobs, and we didn't know because

463
00:27:06,440 --> 00:27:09,480
Speaker 1: that's not what we studied in college. So we went

464
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:12,400
Speaker 1: to our fabulous listener base because they are smarty pants

465
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:15,320
Speaker 1: is and a lot of them have history degrees. Uh.

466
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:18,959
Speaker 1: So we will read a few more summer short uh.

467
00:27:19,119 --> 00:27:21,320
Speaker 1: One is our listener, Christina. She has a degree in

468
00:27:21,400 --> 00:27:24,480
Speaker 1: history from the University of Toronto St. Michael's and she

469
00:27:24,520 --> 00:27:26,520
Speaker 1: went on to teach high school in the Toronto area

470
00:27:26,560 --> 00:27:29,959
Speaker 1: and she teaches Canadian history to Grade ten students as

471
00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:33,080
Speaker 1: well as other social studies courses. So we always love

472
00:27:33,080 --> 00:27:36,400
Speaker 1: a teacher, So thank you for teaching the historians of tomorrow.

473
00:27:36,840 --> 00:27:40,600
Speaker 1: Our listener, Kristen got her bachelor's in history and she's

474
00:27:40,640 --> 00:27:44,520
Speaker 1: currently finishing up her master's uh. She currently works to

475
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:47,640
Speaker 1: part time jobs both in history. She's a museum educator

476
00:27:48,119 --> 00:27:50,919
Speaker 1: at a hands on children's museum as well as registrar

477
00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:53,960
Speaker 1: at a lighthouse museum, which sounds fascinating to me, and

478
00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:57,320
Speaker 1: then once her master's degree is complete, her plan is

479
00:27:57,359 --> 00:28:00,480
Speaker 1: to work in preservation. So a lot of these kind

480
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:03,520
Speaker 1: of do lead to an archivist path. Our listener Meghan

481
00:28:03,760 --> 00:28:06,280
Speaker 1: is a curator, and she says, my recommendation is to

482
00:28:06,280 --> 00:28:11,000
Speaker 1: find out what your interests are teaching, research, museum studies, politics, etcetera,

483
00:28:11,080 --> 00:28:13,399
Speaker 1: and go from there. If working in a museum is

484
00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:16,199
Speaker 1: your career goal, I'd recommend taking any internships that may

485
00:28:16,240 --> 00:28:20,399
Speaker 1: be offered and volunteer as much as possible. Our listener

486
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:22,720
Speaker 1: Gina said, I have a double major liberal arts degree

487
00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:27,080
Speaker 1: in history and classical Studies, i e. Ancient Mediterranean. It

488
00:28:27,119 --> 00:28:29,320
Speaker 1: has served me well through very jobs by endowing me

489
00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:33,720
Speaker 1: with an appreciation of perspective, context, communication, and storytelling, which

490
00:28:33,760 --> 00:28:35,600
Speaker 1: is what drew me to ancient Greece and Rome in

491
00:28:35,640 --> 00:28:38,320
Speaker 1: the first place. And I believe that understanding the roles

492
00:28:38,320 --> 00:28:41,800
Speaker 1: played by perspective and context in historical storytelling gives us

493
00:28:41,800 --> 00:28:45,000
Speaker 1: a foundation for humanistic empathy that can impact how we

494
00:28:45,080 --> 00:28:49,000
Speaker 1: read and interpret news stories today. I could not agree more. Uh.

495
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:51,600
Speaker 1: These days, I am celebrating almost a decade in sales

496
00:28:51,600 --> 00:28:54,520
Speaker 1: and customer service and expanding my communication skills into the

497
00:28:54,560 --> 00:28:58,720
Speaker 1: animal world with dogcare and training. Uh. She makes such

498
00:28:58,720 --> 00:29:01,280
Speaker 1: a great point. I think about kind of the historical

499
00:29:01,320 --> 00:29:04,360
Speaker 1: perspective giving you a better lens through which to view

500
00:29:04,720 --> 00:29:07,959
Speaker 1: the world around us today. Definitely that's a motivating factor

501
00:29:08,040 --> 00:29:12,440
Speaker 1: in my episode selection. Sometimes. Yeah, and then the last

502
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:14,760
Speaker 1: time I will read is from Colleen, and Colleen says

503
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:18,080
Speaker 1: I bartend and my degree gives me lovely conversation fodder

504
00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:20,880
Speaker 1: off and all reference. Your podcast then discussed something I

505
00:29:20,880 --> 00:29:23,880
Speaker 1: studied that vaguely relates. I've worked with several other folks

506
00:29:23,920 --> 00:29:27,560
Speaker 1: with degrees in equally exciting fields creative writing, graphic design, etcetera.

507
00:29:27,920 --> 00:29:29,880
Speaker 1: I genuinely love my job, But as one of many

508
00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 1: folks who graduated just as the quote great Recession began,

509
00:29:33,080 --> 00:29:36,800
Speaker 1: the actual history related career opportunities for history degrees we're

510
00:29:36,840 --> 00:29:39,640
Speaker 1: not as plentiful as one might hope. That happens a

511
00:29:39,680 --> 00:29:43,040
Speaker 1: lot to liberal arts degree holders in general, and especially

512
00:29:43,040 --> 00:29:46,280
Speaker 1: in the last five seven years. It's been a long

513
00:29:46,320 --> 00:29:50,040
Speaker 1: time since we've had like a big staff expansion that

514
00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:53,360
Speaker 1: how stuff works, but we did several years ago. And

515
00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:56,720
Speaker 1: one of the best things about that was Number one.

516
00:29:56,880 --> 00:30:00,160
Speaker 1: I was always like, I wanna find people. You don't

517
00:30:00,200 --> 00:30:01,760
Speaker 1: have to have a journalism degree, you don't have to

518
00:30:01,760 --> 00:30:04,400
Speaker 1: have an English degree, but a liberal arts degree is

519
00:30:04,400 --> 00:30:07,440
Speaker 1: preferred because there's so much research and writing involved in

520
00:30:07,600 --> 00:30:11,560
Speaker 1: basically every liberal arts degree. Um. And then number two

521
00:30:11,760 --> 00:30:17,480
Speaker 1: was getting to basically offer people jobs. Yeah, it was

522
00:30:17,480 --> 00:30:19,600
Speaker 1: a good feeling. It's a really good feeling to make

523
00:30:19,600 --> 00:30:22,200
Speaker 1: that phone call doing the things that the career center

524
00:30:22,320 --> 00:30:25,760
Speaker 1: at college was always telling me, Like, people love liberal

525
00:30:25,840 --> 00:30:28,320
Speaker 1: arts degrees because of all these reasons that these history

526
00:30:28,360 --> 00:30:30,760
Speaker 1: majors have just been pointing out. But then when I

527
00:30:30,800 --> 00:30:33,000
Speaker 1: got into the world of actually trying to find the job,

528
00:30:33,040 --> 00:30:37,320
Speaker 1: I was like, you guys, true films were told. Yeah,

529
00:30:37,520 --> 00:30:39,440
Speaker 1: so I got to make that true for some people

530
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:44,200
Speaker 1: on a limited scale. Yeah, which is awesome. Anybody who

531
00:30:44,200 --> 00:30:46,280
Speaker 1: gets a chance to work for Tracy, I highly recommend it.

532
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:50,080
Speaker 1: So if you would like, I really genuinely do that.

533
00:30:50,120 --> 00:30:53,960
Speaker 1: It's not me being nice because she's here, she's my

534
00:30:54,040 --> 00:30:57,960
Speaker 1: favorite boss I think of all time. That's you have

535
00:30:58,040 --> 00:31:00,880
Speaker 1: some stiff competition there. You're there's a very close seconds.

536
00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:02,400
Speaker 1: So if you do something wrong, you're gonna fall the

537
00:31:02,480 --> 00:31:05,400
Speaker 1: number two. But right now I'll try not to do that.

538
00:31:06,160 --> 00:31:08,320
Speaker 1: You won't. If you would like to write to us,

539
00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:11,160
Speaker 1: we are at History podcast that How Stuff Works dot com.

540
00:31:11,160 --> 00:31:13,760
Speaker 1: Our Facebook is Facebook dot com slash mss in history,

541
00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:16,560
Speaker 1: and our Twitter is miss in History. Our tumbler is

542
00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:18,640
Speaker 1: miss in history dot tumble dot com, and we are

543
00:31:18,680 --> 00:31:22,240
Speaker 1: also on Pinterest at pinterest dot com slash miss in History.

544
00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:25,800
Speaker 1: We have a spreadshirt store where you can buy all

545
00:31:25,880 --> 00:31:28,880
Speaker 1: kinds of cool stuff you miss in history class slag

546
00:31:28,960 --> 00:31:32,040
Speaker 1: that is at miss in history dot spreadshirt dot com.

547
00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:33,680
Speaker 1: If you would like to learn a little bit more

548
00:31:33,720 --> 00:31:36,240
Speaker 1: about something that we've talked about today, you can come

549
00:31:36,280 --> 00:31:39,480
Speaker 1: to our website and you can put the word transgender

550
00:31:39,520 --> 00:31:41,120
Speaker 1: into the search bar, and one of the things that

551
00:31:41,120 --> 00:31:43,840
Speaker 1: you will find is an article called ten Things Doctors

552
00:31:43,840 --> 00:31:47,720
Speaker 1: Have Changed their Minds about this Century, which talks about

553
00:31:47,760 --> 00:31:50,600
Speaker 1: the changes in the ways that the medical community have

554
00:31:51,280 --> 00:31:56,040
Speaker 1: transgender people and gender expression. You can come to our website,

555
00:31:56,040 --> 00:31:57,880
Speaker 1: which is miss in history dot com, and you can

556
00:31:57,920 --> 00:32:00,840
Speaker 1: find our show notes and next to all the episodes,

557
00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:03,480
Speaker 1: and a giant archive of everything we've ever done. So

558
00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:05,440
Speaker 1: you can do all of that at how stuff works

559
00:32:05,440 --> 00:32:12,360
Speaker 1: dot com or missed in history dot com. For more

560
00:32:12,400 --> 00:32:14,680
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, is it how

561
00:32:14,720 --> 00:32:27,920
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com