Get Used to It: Ep. 30, "Sex, Genderbending, and Videotape"

(typewriter pounding) (funky music) - Hi, I'm Sheila Kuehl. Welcome to "Get Used To It," our show, as you know, on gay and lesbian issues, in which members of our community talk to each other about issues of interest to us. Today, I have a very special show for you. I've been thinking a long time about this issue of gender and its relationship to the way our community perceives itself and the way the world perceives our community. Now, gender is different from the notion of sex. We know what sex we are. We just check the equipment, right? We're men or we're women. That's about what we have at the moment, but gender is very different. Gender is a kind of an imposition of ways that we are in the world, ways that we think about ourselves. We are female, or we are male. At least that's the way they try to define it, and I think the most revolutionary aspect of what our community has brought into this dialogue is we threaten those very rigid notions of gender, simply by who and what we are. We know that gender must be very important because it's the only question anyone ever asks when a baby's born. You could probably think of a million things one would want to know about a new life, but no, the only thing we ask is, hey, what'd you have, and the question of gender is so buried in that question, they don't even have to say, did you have a boy or a girl, and everyone knows what we mean. Why is this rigidity of gender differentiation so important that it leads to the deepest homophobia and frankly, some discomfort in our own community when we think about the gender benders with which we ourselves may not be as comfortable. That's the reason for this show today, three fabulous people to talk to us and share their lives and not only to describe their lives, but really to talk about kind of the notion embedded in the way they live their lives is. My first guest has come all the way from New York to be with us today. Chris Tanner, he is an actor. He is an artist, a performance artist, and I'm very pleased to say a drag queen. - Yes. - Drag queen. What a wonderful thing to call oneself. - [Chris] Isn't it a great thing? - You do like it, huh, Chris? - Yes, I love all the connotations. - [Sheila] And what are the connotations? - Well, drag queen, it's kind of like a queen, I don't really know. It's like dragging something wonderful and royal out of the closet and bringing it to life. I don't know. It's like, it's sort of tawdry and wonderful. - Well, you know, it's clearly challenges our questions of gender. It's really more than crossdressing, although maybe it's crossdressing carried to its wonderful extreme. - It's, yes, it's like, we were speaking before. Like, I'm very proud of being a man. I love my genitalia and I don't want to cover it up or bind it or anything, you know. I'm proud of the lump in the skirt and I don't want to be a woman. I adore women. Women are a huge part of my life, but I want to be a fabulous man. - And part of being a fabulous man, I mean, it seems to me drag queens are freer than anyone, despite the fact that they're often painted as kind of very sad or very depressed, or I think that's sort of a way of putting drag queens down to make everyone think that they're all very suicidal or depressed. - [Chris] Or on heroin, or hookers, yeah, which they aren't. - So is part of your performance art being a drag queen? - Sometimes. A lot of it is, yes. It's a funny thing. I love myself, being who I am, but when I was a kid, I was in a talent show and my mother and my grandmother put me in a little slip in pearls, very simple, very elegant. - [Sheila] Oh they did? - And there was this great freedom in enhancement and attention and, you know, I hate to say, I love attention and, but also it, there was a power, something that wasn't there when I'm just being me and with that power comes freedom, and I, you know, I don't mean to be manipulating or whatever, but there is this sort of freedom, this powerful freedom that I have when I'm in drag and it's, as a painter, I've always been drawn to light and color and sequins and festival, and even as a kid, you know, and fish aquariums and glittering things underwater, and so my painting, I was a neon sculptor for a while. I used to blow neon with light. - [Sheila] Well, neon is all about light too. - Yes, it is, and Las Vegas and you know. (Sheila laughing) - I see. - All with it, but it's, then I got into glitter and into, you know, light, surfaces, gold leaf and all that, and now I just did a show in Paris that was all marabou and feathers and, you know, and glitter and payettes, and it's, really it's me. It's the true essence of me is this, is a drag queen. - Well, it's also, when you talk about freedom, I mean, I understand just from looking at your face, what you mean, it is, most of us, I think when we talk about freedom, we're talking about a sort of a non-boundary kind of existence where we have somehow crossed something that other people would want us to remain inside, and I often think that's with just this aspect of gender roles, that that's what I see in drag queens that they have crossed something. Is that what you mean by the freedom of it? - Yeah, the well, the freedom to be whatever you are. You're many things. You can be whatever. You can wear a dress and walk down the street, or you can even be walking down the street and see some fabulous woman walk down the street in a great dress and you can just put that dress on and walk down the street and not even be wearing it. It's a, yeah, it's a free, oh, what were you gonna say? Go ahead. - Well, I was just, it's interesting because I wear pants now all the time, even on the floor of the State Assembly. - [Chris] Isn't that great? - And no one thinks twice about it anymore. So people are not freaked out. Now these are not totally man-ish clothes. I mean, they are not men's clothes. They're certainly men's fashion. - They are. - No one's freaked out about this. I mean, all women are, it's sort of a good thing, you know, for us to wear, but whenever I speak to audiences, I say, well, would all the women in the audience who are wearing pants, please raise your hand and you know, good half of the audience will always raise their hand, and then I say, will all the men in the audience who are wearing dresses, please raise your hand, and everyone laughs. - They laugh, yeah. - Now, why do you suppose we're so much, we're freaked out by men in dresses, not by women in pants? - Well, because men are giving up their, you know, their big role, their big suits, you know, their testosterone, you know. You know, that's all in the way, and so, you know, and they get freaked out at you for being in a dress, for a guy being in a dress, but then they wanna fuck you, you know, at the same time, you know, which is so weird, like, you know, it's taboo, it's all this, you're just messing with their whole psyche, with their whole macho psyche and women are more together, I think, about drag queens, I mean, I find it. - Well, I mean, interesting, 'cause I had heard from some feminists in years past that they resent drag queens. They think that it's not, it has nothing positive to say about women, that it must be done by men who hate women because the, it's so exaggerated. - That's so wrong. - So bitchy, so many of the negative stereotypes. - Well drag queen, it is exaggeration. It's total exaggeration, but let's wallow in it. I mean, it's wonderful. It's, femininity is wonderful and it's, has nothing to do with hating women. At least I can speak for myself. I adore women and I don't wanna be a woman, but I love, you know, I'm happy with my being a man, but I wanna just, you know, wearing a dress doesn't make me a woman. It makes me a queen. It, you know, and it doesn't have anything to do about hating women. I don't understand that, I really don't understand that. - Well, I feel the same way. I mean, when you, as soon as you know anyone else. - [Chris] You know, I have to interrupt you. - Go ahead. - A couple women did recently say that to me. I forgot about that. I was with my mother and her friend and a couple other women, and they said, do you have a problem with women? Do you dislike women? Because, so that, so evidently a lot of people do feel that, and that's a real misconception. - Well, I suppose in the one hand we might say, well, you know, why is this different from a minstrel show in a way where white people used to wear blackface and do exaggerated sort of blackness, but I think it is different, 'cause as I hear you talk, it's an aspect of who you are inside that's. - Right, it's like I wanted to play with drag. I remember the first time that I got in trouble for playing with a Barbie doll, you know, and I got a little taste of that femininity and I wanted to explore it. It has nothing to do with any other women in the whole world, except for probably my mother and my grandmother, the people that were right there, and Judy Garland on TV when I was very small growing up and getting everything, you know, in my brain. - [Sheila] You love Judy Garland too. - Oh yeah, oh yeah. - Did you want to sing like her, to look like her? - I, yes, I still do. - Yeah, I really understand. I was totally taken with her as a kid. - [Chris] I know. That heart. - And just wanted to be able to perform like that, to hit. - [Chris] So beautiful. - To be so open to that emotion and hit those notes. She's, it's well, I'll tell you what. - [Chris] Yes. - Let's take a break, and if you wouldn't mind, let's see Chris Tanner in drag. - [Chris] All right. - All right. We'll be right back, well after a little while. - Wasn't a big deal. It just seemed like the right thing to do. So it was sort of like the most fitting tribute that, you know, it's death, the final comment wasn't his death. It was that, you know, it was life. It was life affirming. - Hi, welcome back to "Get Used to It." Well, it's only been a few seconds for you, but it's been a little longer for us and I wanna welcome back my guest, Chris Tanner. - Hey. - [Sheila] Hey Chris, you look wonderful. - Thanks. - [Sheila] Oh, this is so much fun. - I know, isn't it? - It really is. You know, this is an interesting time in history because in the past 12 months we've seen two major mainstream movies about drag queens. What's that about? - I don't know. It's fabulous. It's really wonderful that it, you know, middle America is seeing drag in a positive way. It great, it's wonderful. It's not, I wasn't totally, wonderfully pleased about the content though. I thought that they were sort of dickless and I felt that the, they sort of, you know, cut the genitalia off the drag queens and made them, you know, it was all homogenized and I felt kind of bad about that. - [Sheila] And they were in drag all the time. - All the time, they never, (Sheila, Chris laughing) they, and if, you know, when they would've left New Jersey, they would've got the shit beat out of them if, you know, if they would've, the first gas station they would've pulled into, you know, and drag is wonderful. I, you know, it's so wonderful, but it hurts. You know, I've got like a waist cincher on, a girdle, you know, eyelashes in my eyes, a wig on my head. You know, it hurts. You don't want to go, you know, all day long, all night, you know, in drag. - So it's a sacrifice really to be free, I mean, in that sense, to cross those lines. - You know, and before again, we were talking about women and about the problems women have or some women have, you don't have one obviously, about men dressing up in drag that it's all stems from love. It's all about beauty and love and love for glamor and for wigs and makeup and beauty, and it's all from the heart. It's all about love. There's nothing negative about it. It's all about life. - But it's sort of like it, doesn't it ratify to some extent this sort of you're either this or you're that? - [Chris] Yes, and. - Like, men can't be glamorous unless they adopt sort of the, another culture or this culture, and I don't even mean lifestyle, but I mean, how to look glamorous is to look like a woman in a sense, doesn't it? It kind of ratifies the fact that you have to choose, doesn't it? - Well, it's always been. Look at, look, well, look at peacocks. I mean, you know, they're big, they're men, they're big fabulous when they've got all the feathers and everything, at Louis the 14th and, you know, and all, and like, great princes and everything, but you know, I don't wanna make it so, I mean, women have the best dresses, I mean. (Sheila, Chris laughing) I mean, you know, the it's, I don't know. I mean, it's just, you know, it's prettier, it's more beautiful. It's much more fun to, you know, be dressed like this than a truck driver or a three-piece suit. - Well, I think it's, I think it's incredibly revolutionary, really. I mean, I don't think it's any mistake that drag queens were deeply involved in the Stonewall riots. You know, we were talking about Judy Garland earlier. - Yes, we were. - And there is this mythology, and I don't know whether it's true, that part of what really happened that day had to do with Judy Garland, at least for drag queens. - Yeah, she died that day. That's what people. - Do you think that's true? - I think so, I think so with all my heart. I don't know the correct history of it, but I believe it because it, for something with gay people, what is it about Judy Garland? - [Sheila] You tell me. - It's the, I think it's, you know, it's that incredible voice and, you know, the heart on the sleeve and the voice and that naked, raw, beautiful feeling in front of the camera that she had, you know, that we can relate to, and that, and also, yeah, about drag, sure, of course. Like a lot of guys, you know, drag queens, you know, even me, sometimes I'm a little, I feel like myself sometimes, you know, and with people and at parties, or if I'm alone, especially if I'm alone in a gay bar, you know, or alone in some weird, like I was in Paris and I had all my paintings with me and I was, and I went to the gay center in Paris 'cause it was right next to my gallery and I was really pissed off 'cause my gallery wasn't open and here I had all my paintings with me from New York City and I was like saying, oh hi, I'm from New York, and they go ha ha ha. (Chris speaking foreign language) (Chris, Sheila laughing) I can't speak French, and so then, you know, and then I'm sitting around and I'm trying to, and I thought it's, you know, oh, so how are you? Fine, you know? And I felt like really, you know, I started to sweat and I was alone and I, I felt, oh God, did any of these guys think I'm cute, or do they think I'm a nerd, or, you know, whatever, but when you put on a dress and everything and you're performing and like, maybe like Judy Garland or something, then you have all this confidence and you have another being and you're wearing this fabulous wig, and aren't you beautiful, and you can tell because you walk down the street and everybody looks at you and it's all this power. - Well, I see it as kind of an extension as kind of carrying it beyond where most people would have the courage to go where you know that you feel more confident when you are dressed the way that you, you look in the mirror and you say, I look great. - I look fabulous. I look great a lot of ways. You're many things. You are an actress, and now you're a great assemblywoman, and look at Leonard da Vinci. He was a painter, but he made airplanes. You know, you can do many things. Why not do everything and do it fabulously? If I wanna wear a dress today, I can just get up and wear a beautiful dress or I, you know, go, you know, wear a big leather jacket and you know, be tough. - But you know, Chris, what you said about getting beat up, I mean, it was a little bit of a joke about New Jersey in a way, but still, it is true. It's a dangerous thing to cross these lines. I mean, even in the gay and lesbian community, I'm sure you've found. - [Chris] Oh, a lot of it. - Is freaked out, angry. They don't want drag queens in the parades. Everyone will think badly of us, as though we are not enough of an extreme. You know, we'll say, well, I'm healthy, but they're. - What is that about? - Well, I guess it's a way of even our community saying, you know, I'm better than you. - Keep it together. Yeah, and what is that, and also the women. They're always telling the women to take, put their shirts back on. They don't wanna. (Sheila laughing) You know, pisses me off. - It's true. It's really about freedom, isn't it? - Yeah, it's freedom. - Isn't it funny that a country that talks nonstop about freedom is most freaked out when people really exhibit it? - I know, and just about wearing a wig and a dress. - [Sheila] Yes, I know. - And what is that about? - That's why talking about gender, I think today, is sort of the essence of what I wanna get at because you look wonderful, and you know that you look wonderful and you feel good and your paintings have to do with drag as well, right? - They do, they do, all about light and life and vibrancy and fantasy and sex and love and beauty. - Now, do you find that all, are all drag queens gay? - Yes, I think all drag queens are gay and I'm proud of that. Transvestites are kind of, is like a weird word to me. It feels like, it feels like. - Now be careful who you put down, okay. Excuse me, darling, really. (Sheila, Chris laughing) - I don't wanna put anybody down. No, but I always think of straight men with sweaters. I love Ed Wood. You know, Ed Wood was a great filmmaker. "Glen and Glenda," and they just did that great movie, which I loved everybody involved with, but you know, I always think, don't you think of straight men, you know, with their wife's cashmere sweater and so on in the closet, you know. I think drag queens are gay men. I'm a fruit in a dress. You know, I'm a fruit in a dress and I love it, (Chris, Sheila laughing) and I'm a drag queen. I love that name, the drag queen. - It is, you wouldn't wanna use any, palers. - [Chris] Illusion performer, or was that, what were you gonna say? - I don't know, I said, kind of paler word, I guess I was gonna say. - Yeah, like drag illusionist or some kind of word they use. No, I love drag queen. - Now when you perform, do you sing, do you? - Oh, I have a wonderful voice. I sing and dance with my, all my body parts and everything. Yeah, it's my voice, yeah, when I sing and when I do plays and things. - And so do you appear all over the world or mostly New York? - In New York. Can I tell you, I'll? - [Sheila] Yes, please. - In, the 30th of November, I open in, at La Mama in "Polly's Panic Attack." It's a Christmas nightmare. It's the horror in the holly, the terror in the tinsel, (Sheila, Chris laughing) and then I'm really gonna get killed for this one. I'm, at The Kitchen, I'm doing a one man art show of my paintings, but I'm doing, you know, remember, well I'm doing Lana Tanner in "Imitation of Imitation of Life-The Musical." - [Sheila] Oh, that's good. - And so people, you know, in the gay community, they're killing me now also because the black and white thing, you know, whenever you do a little something, but I don't care, I'm doing it. I really believe in it and I believe racism is a hideous monster and I want to put it in people's face. - Chris, it's been wonderful talking to you. I've had such a good time. I really appreciate you came all the way out to LA really to do this show. - Well, I think you're fabulous. - Well, I think you're fabulous. (Sheila, Chris laughing) I had a great time. Stick around. We've got even more. - Billy wants to work on airplanes someday, maybe one that you'll fly in. Now, would you like to call for this free booklet of simple ways to improve his education? - Hi, welcome back to "Get Used to It." As you know, today we're exploring issues around really gender bending roles, various ways in which our community is having to face its own approval and disapproval concerns, and our next guest today is on Unhei Kang, who's one of the founders and co-chair of the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Sisters. She has done extensive work in our community around issues of racism, people of color in our community, but also specifically around issues of bisexuality in her own organization. - [Unhei] Right. - And really, I think in the broader community. Welcome. - Well, thank you. I'm glad to be here as well. - Thank you. It's a little difficult these days being a bisexual activist in our community, isn't it? - Actually, I think it's a very exciting time, 'cause it seems like the bisexual community is really mobilizing at this time and doing a lot of educational work. So I think it's a good time to be at 'cause I definitely feel that bisexuals are also part of the queer community, which represents the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgenders. - Well, but it's interesting. I would assume that the kind of, I don't know if we'd go so far as to say disapproval, but let me use the word discomfort. Straight community is uncomfortable with bisexuals for one reason, I would assume. Our community is also sort of having issues around it. Could you explore that a little bit for me? - I think that for both the straight community and the gay-lesbian community, it's, bisexuality is very difficult to conceptualize, I guess 'cause we've always been told you have to be one or the other. You can either be straight or you can be gay-lesbian, and here we are as bisexual saying, no, we have the capability to be emotionally and physically attracted to both men and women. - It sort of is a challenge to our community. Of course our community's in complete denial that this is what we're doing, but we sort of replicate the heterosexual either/or notion ourselves, right? 'Cause they're the ones that said, you're either straight or you're gay. - Right, and we're saying that we can, we're not straight or we're not gay, but we're basically saying that we have the capability and we are also part of the queer community because we are still facing the same kind of discrimination based on your sexual orientation which gays and lesbians face, and this is something though that we do have also face in the heterosexual community as well as with some gays and lesbians, 'cause they don't understand that we're not talking about straight privilege as some of them think that we are doing, but we're talking about, we face discrimination based on our sexuality because we are basically attracted to both men and women. - This was an aspect of the, your founding of LA Asian Pacific Sisters too, because I know you were saying to me that often women will come to the organization, but they're really not sure that they're lesbian or ready to, you know, say I'm lesbian? - Right, basically the LA Asian Pacific Islander Sisters is open to both lesbians and bisexual women as well as women who are questioning their sexual identity, 'cause we don't want to say that, no, you're definitely a lesbian, definitely a bisexual. We want women to find out for themselves in an environment where they feel comfortable to come out. We actually have a mentor program for women who are questioning their sexual identity, and we basically set them up either with a bisexual or lesbian woman, depending upon what, you know, what they think that they're more comfortable with and have, basically provide support for them so that they can talk to somebody about their sexual identity, and we're saying you don't have to choose. It's okay if you don't choose. That's all right. - Well, I know that a number of lesbian activists that I've known in my life are very impatient with women who think they're bisexual because very much like straight parents say to their gay children, this is only a phase you'll get over it. Lesbian, and I assume gay men too, say to bisexuals, this is only a phase. You're in total denial about your gayness. You'll get over it and you should be brave and, you know, and declare that you're gay, but this is entirely different from what you think is the truth. - And I guess I say it is not a face, a phase. I think it's pretty brave of me to be coming out as a bisexual to gays and lesbians because I know that there is a lot of discriminations against bisexuals, and I say that when I first came out, actually I did come out as a bisexual but however, due to my lesbian friends who kept an insisting, Unhei, you're afraid to admit that you're a lesbian, I finally said, okay, that's fine. I'll come out as a lesbian 'cause I guess you're right. Maybe I am afraid, but the thing was, I never felt comfortable with that identity. I just felt that it wasn't me and it wasn't until I met other bisexual women who are willing to say, I am bisexual and I'm proud of it that I felt comfortable to say, okay, you know, I'm going to start coming out as a bisexual, and it was a process for me to come out because so many of my friends knew me as a lesbian and were unwilling to accept my bisexuality, and there were some pretty heated arguments sometimes based on my sexual orientation when I felt that they should be accepting of it and be happy for me that I finally know who I am, but it is difficult. - And you're in a relationship at this time, right. - Right, I am. - I shouldn't say at the moment. It's been a long term relationship. - It's two and a half year, we've been together two and a half years. It is with a woman who identify as a lesbian. She does not have a problem with my, I guess, identifying as a bisexual. She feels that it's not how you identify with, but more of whether we have a common bond and whether we understand each other and can trust. So it's a very good relationship that I have. - I suppose everyone in a relationship is always worried about the other person, you know, having affairs or whatever, but I guess part of believing that you will stay in a lesbian relationship might relate to whether you were sure that, you know, you really wanted to be there in terms of your sexuality, but maybe that's not the case. - I think a lot of people believe that if they are dating a bisexual, I mean, for example, I've been with other women who said you're definitely going to leave me for a man, and I said, that's not what I mean when I'm saying I'm bisexual. It means that I have the capability to be attracted to both men and women, but it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to leave you for a man or that I'm going to be dating both men and women at the same time, 'cause I definitely believe in monogamous relationships, and I think that it's important to have a monogamous relationship if you plan on growing, so. - Well, it's, I guess in a way it's a very important step for our movement to take, to embrace bisexuality because it allows us to move forward on a path that says there are a lot of different ways to be. We don't need to adopt that kind of hierarchical duality stuff that they insist on. - [Unhei] Right. - [Sheila] We don't need to adopt it either. - Right, exactly. - You know, we need to allow people to grow in their own way and identify whomever they are. - Right, I agree, 'cause I think it's, we, it's a very wide spectrum and I think it is important because we're all basically facing discrimination based on our sexuality. That's what we're all facing as well as the fact that I feel that I belong in the community 'cause I do love women and I do care about women, so that's another aspect of it. So I think it is definitely important to open it up and we can all definitely join together in educating, basically I guess the straight community, about who we are. - And how do you think the women in the LA Asian Pacific Islander Sisters are themselves embracing this notion? - I know that in the beginning we had some lesbians who were very uncomfortable with having bisexual women and we've actually done two sensitivity workshops to educate everyone and just have it straight that we are accepting of both lesbians and bisexual women, and we wanted this especially for bisexual women to know that they don't have to face actual discrimination by lesbian women 'cause it has happened where some of the bisexual women were verbally abused by some of the lesbians and we didn't, as the board, we felt that that wasn't right. It's really important that they understand that we're all part of the organization and since then, we really haven't had a problem and we've actually had more bisexual women who come out and admit that they're bisexual and feel comfortable admitting it so. - Well, you know, there are a number of women in the community who are, I guess I would call it serially bisexual. I mean, that's what if you're in monogamous relationships, you would almost have to be, right? - Right. - But I mean, a number of us, I'll speak from my own experience when I was in relationship with a woman for the first 12 years of my sort of adult life, but I didn't know whether that was enough to make me a lesbian. I know that's a sort of a joke now, but I just didn't know. I had fallen in love. We were in this monogamous relationship and I didn't know. So I wanted to explore my sexuality with men, which I did for several years in my 30s, and I think that it actually sort of broadens the way that you can understand everyone's sexuality, because it was a wonderful experience. I simply discovered that I didn't fall in love with a man, that my own affectional preference, you know, was women, but I think that it's very important for people to understand that if we allow these barriers to be broken down in our own community, in our own selves, that we're moving the revolution along a little bit for everybody. - Right, I definitely agree with what you said, 'cause I think it's very important to explore and to let other people explore. I think you should never pigeonhole a person to say you're this or that 'cause I think everyone should make up their own mind or decide what they are, and if they decide like 10 years later or five years later that that's not who they are, I think that's okay too, because people go through transitions. They change as they grow, and I think it's basically all right as long as we know within ourselves who we are, I think that's the most important thing. - Now if people watching the show are saying, gosh, I never heard anybody say anything that made so much sense to me, and I think I really am a bisexual. I'm getting pressure from both communities. Where would you suggest they go to connect and get a little validation? - I know that there are definitely bisexual organizations. There's the bisexual network, I believe. I know that they could also probably call the gay and lesbian center to find about bisexual support group. I think that's a good way to start. - Most of the centers in most of the cities now incorporated this 'cause I know we've incorporated bisexual into the name of our movement, and as I said, I think that's a really important. - Right, and I think that it is pretty easy to find a referral if you are looking for it and I guess basically go to your gay and lesbian center and ask them about it. - So do you think this work is basically political too? - In terms of coming out as bisexual, or what do you mean? - Well, I mean, we found that our own sexuality, which seemed very personal in the old days when it was very secret is really a political sort of thing, not only a way of organizing, but almost a statement of anti-institutionalism, you know, we are who we are, and in being that we're challenging all of the status quo and in a way I guess, challenging the right wing. - No, I agree in that sense that it is political. We're definitely saying it's a coming out process. It's basically saying I shouldn't have to hide myself or closet myself in the gay-lesbian community or in the straight community when I am bisexual. It's definitely political as well as in the civil rights saying that you cannot discriminate against me because of my sexual identity. You just cannot do that, so definitely it is political. - It seems to me that the sort of the next generation, that people in their 20s are more comfortable, and almost insistent on this idea that bisexuality is the natural or at least a very natural way to be. I know that even women who identify very strongly as lesbians are wanting to explore their sexuality with, you know, with men that they love in the gay community. Do you see it more among young people who seem less rigid about these things? - You know, I think I do see that just like I've noticed for as an example, I met Asian lesbians in their 40s and 50s who had a very difficult coming out are even forming an organization saying we're out as, whereas with LAPIS we're definitely out and we're visible and I think definitely for the younger generation, it's a lot easier for them to be out and be more open about it and explore their sexuality, which I think is wonderful, 'cause I think they should do that. I don't think that they should be afraid to basically, I guess, explore. - But how about the guys? I mean, it looks to me like many of the bisexual activists are women. Are men involved in the bisexual movement as well? - There are definitely men involved. I think there's definitely both bisexual men and women. So yes, there are definitely more involved, but I guess it's just that I've been part of the women's movement more often. So I'm not as well informed, but yes, there are definitely men who are involved. - 'Cause it seemed to me that sometimes men have more, gay men have more of a concern about this bisexuality and understanding it than some of our lesbian women, but I could be wrong. - Really, I've always thought it was the other way around, 'cause you know, I've actually always had gay male friends who tell me, I don't understand why the women are making such a fuss about your bisexuality. So I don't know. - Well, I really appreciate you being with us today and. - [Unhei] Thank you. - Keep up the good work, and we'll be back in exactly 11 seconds. Trust us. - [Narrator] Having sex without using a condom is like playing a game of Russian roulette. For more information, call Planned Parenthood. - Hi, welcome back to "Get Used to It." Our final guest today is Connie Norman, who is known to many of us here in Southern California. She has a cable show. She writes for "Update." She is an AIDS activist and for the purposes of this show, as well as our friendship, Connie is here because she's a member of our transgendered community and has been well, she'll tell you, either since the moment she was born or since the surgery in 1976, but in the further exploration of our issue today in terms of this issue of gender bending and our community, who better to talk to us than Connie Norman? Connie, welcome. - Glad to be here, darling. Always happy be to have the opportunity to talk about how we transgender folk fit into the community, and our place in the schism of things. - Well, the schism of things is an interesting way to put it because in this issue where gay and lesbian people are saying, look, you know, we're just a regular part of the natural progression of things. You should just accept us. It's not about, you know, being a man or a woman or whatever. It's about sexual orientation, but in terms of the transgendered community, it really is about being a man or a woman. What, tell me what this means to you. - Yeah, for many transsexual/transgender folk, it is about being a man or a woman. For some transgender folk, it's just finding your human spirit and finding what expression that human spirit is gonna take. We deal in gender in Western patriarchal society and absolutes and sorry, men, but there's no such thing as absolutes when it comes to gender. It's a spectrum and a bell curve and male males being over here and female females being over here, and the vast majority of folk fall somewhere in between. Transgender folk tend to fall toward the top of the bell curve and either lean toward masculine or feminine. I took a more feminine path in my journey in life, but I've certainly been with and understood transgender folk who took a more masculine path. My husband, the man, the gay man that I married is just as transgender as they come. I know a lot of lesbian sisters who don't think of themselves as transgender, but in fact they are expressing transgenderism. I think that our definition of transsexualism is founded on a heterosexist male patriarchy way of thinking. - [Sheila] The sort of either-or. - Oh, that's right. - This absolute duality without anything in between. - I was never offered the option of transgenderism because of course it didn't exist when I was going through my changes, and so you had to become a sex change if you were going to be like a woman. That's the way it worked, that's what all the doctors said, and the doctors insisted that not only do you become a woman, but you become like a "Stepford Wife" kind of woman. I think it's been very harmful to a whole generation of transgender folk. - Well tell us, I'm sorry. - We need to tell our children, our transgender children, that it's okay to be exactly who you are. - Now when you use the term transgender, you don't mean surgically changed as we would say, right? - Well that's right, although it can be. - [Sheila] Right. - Living proof. - [Sheila] Right. - I consider myself transgendered/transsexual, but I certainly have a larger affinity for transgenderism than I do transsexualism. Transgenderism is a relatively new term that the community coined itself so that we can begin to more express the spectrum of who we are instead of the absolutes. Here in this America, we love to pigeonhole and everybody all be alike and all be the same together, and that's not the way it works, and it's a great lie when we try to make it work. - What was it like for you as earlier in your life? I mean, how did you come to the realization that you, given only the choices that you had at the time that you really did not want to be of the male sex? I mean, gender is much more sort of how we, you know, our mannerisms and the way we are in society. Sex is really much more a matter of the equipment, don't you think? - Well, first of all, I have to give thanks to my other spirit. I really do believe that we're two spirit folks and that other spirit has been with me all my life and who that other spirit is is that little transgender child that remained true to itself and remained true to itself in here. It was my quiet steel voice that would never let me be anything but myself, and I'm very grateful for that. Now, as far as making the surgical decision, I looked at my life. I had been a runaway street kid and gotten on drugs and I went home to clean up and all that, and I looked at where I wanted my life to go, what direction, and I looked at how we treated drag queens. We only let them be whores or clowns, and I didn't like that. I had a little, not saying that drag queens don't have dignity 'cause they certainly do, but for me, I couldn't see a lifetime of being a whore or clown. I abhorred getting on stage and doing drag shows. I thought lip syncing was just untalented. I've since changed my mind of course, and so I looked at that and I didn't like the way society looked at or treated drag queens. I looked at nelly gay men, which is the essence of who I am, and I certainly didn't like not only how society, but how our own youth obsessed culture in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community, how they treated nelly gay men, and I said, there's no dignity in either of those paths. If I get a sex change by the time I'm 35 or 40, I'll be acclimated to my role and society will leave me alone to be as nelly as I want. This castration compromise, you know, has been going on in Western culture far longer than we realized, right? Christine Jorgensen wasn't the first. The Hijras of India have been castrating themselves for 400 years in order to be just that. Not man, not woman, nelly. I celebrate my nellyness, but I had to walk the path that I walked to come to the point that I did. When the gay boys said I didn't belong, I'd snap those fingers (Connie snapping fingers) and say, prove it, honey, you know? 'Cause you, I got a sex change, not a lobotomy and you'll never cut the queen outta my head. The queen has been aligned with that little transgender spirit in me all my life and I'm so grateful for it. - Well, it's interesting to me how the community has, much of the community still has a discomfort with transgendered people, though I give us great credit that in naming our community now, and through the work of people, I think, you know, I don't think, I know, like you, who have said. - [Connie] I did my little part. - Who have insisted that we ourselves come to grip with our own, you know, sort of strange feelings about gender and gender bending where we say, well, I'm okay, but the next group is, you know, has gone too far, and the next group says, well, no, no, no, we're fine, but the next group has gone too far. - But you know, we've been doing that generationally all of my life. When the gender benders came along, the Cockettes and that movement that came outta San Francisco, they really thought they were the first, but they were not in my lifetime, and there was also the era of the hair fairy, where you'd from here up be full woman, from here down be in some outrageously nelly men's clothing because drag was illegal. Among our Native American brothers, in many indigenous cultures, we had folk that wore pants and skirt so that they could make the statement of not men, not women. We have, as we've assimilated and drawn in the indigenous cultures that we conquered, we didn't assimilate some of their traditions, which. - No, as a matter of fact, we wanted to stamp it out in many ways. - Oh, that's right, but they're traditions that had been here for tens of thousands of years, and it was a way of folk living together. The children and were not raised as male or female. The children were raised as children and they decided male or female when puberty came. It was the children that made the decision. - Now it seems as though, and this is something with which I have also agreed for a long time, that the natural order of things is much more of a spectrum as you said. - [Connie] Oh, that's right. - And that it's a spectrum along various expressions of what we call gender, but we can see how rigidly the society insists on this either-or. Why do you think there's such insistence on this duality? - Fear or love. There's only two emotions that exist in the planet. It's fear or love. Love is the absence of fear. Fear is the absence of love, and you're either fear something or you love something, and usually we're feared because we tell men, eh, go put on a dress. You'll feel better. You know, we tell folks to not take themselves so seriously about their gender roles, and that's frightening to people. - There must also be some power stuff in it because you know, I, when I speak to an audience, I say, all the women in the audience who are wearing pants, raise your hands and you know, good half of the audience always raises their hands now, and I say, and will all the men in the audience wearing dresses, please raise your hands, and everyone laughs because it's unthinkable in general society. - We make it much easier for the female to take on male aspects and characteristics rather than the opposite. We make it very difficult for the male to take on feminine characteristics. - [Sheila] Why do you think we make it so difficult? - Fear and love, honey, fear and love. There's only two, fear and love. It's because we're afraid of it, because I say to the heterosexual man with my being that we're just alike, you and me, 'cause I don't, I've come to a point in gender. I don't even really see gender. I see the human that they're projecting at me. Now that human may have flavors of male or female, but I really see the human, and it does give you a lot of power, it really does 'cause you see beyond our societal trappings into the soul, in the heart of a person. It's great power, it truly is, and really it's nothing I can turn on or off. It's become a part of my being. I think it becomes a part of most transgender folks' being, 'cause we spend so much time observing the others. We are the one among the many all of our lives and we work so hard to figure out ourselves, not many of us around us when we're kids, that we start observing other folk. So observing and understanding other folk then becomes second nature to us. It's quite a gift. - Now are you, when, if young people say to you, I have the same feelings that you did. I feel that there's this spirit inside me and I'm not, I don't feel as though I'm fully who I wanna be. I mean, use the term to me. You were given permission to be the nelly that you were and the permission is now people say, oh well she's a woman. So it's really okay for her to act this way because she's a woman. - But in fact, I'm not a woman. In fact, I am a not man, not woman. In fact I am something other than male or female. Now I don't think we've defined that yet, and I hope we never do, but I'm very proud to emulate and walk the of life together with my female sisters. They have kinder hearts, and I think that's what appealed to me mostly. - Would you tell, if young people though come and ask you, is this something I should do? - Be yourself. Be yourself, be yourself, be yourself. Don't let them doctors tell you how to live. If you think it's okay for you to be a guy that puts on dresses or a male that takes on feminine characteristics, you don't have to cut your penis off in order to achieve that comfortability. Seek and find that comfortability in yourself, and then they don't matter, and if you go inside and you find that what you want is more of the woman path, than take it, but don't take it 'cause somebody tells you to. Take it because it's your path, and that's what I tell my little tranny children. - Connie, it's complicated too in your life at the moment by, because you're also a person with AIDS. - Oh, raging with AIDS, my dear. Body is absolutely failing. The spirit is soaring. - Well, anyone can see that. Anyone can see that. - The spirit is absolutely soaring, and I've been given many gifts from this blessing curse of AIDS. I know a lot of folk don't like to think of AIDS as a gift, but I've had many lessons put before me that I got to learn easily because my life was accelerated. So for me, it's a blessing curse. - And how have other people in the AIDS community accepted you, dealt with you? I mean you're a wonderful activist, absolutely, you know, fabulous and on the line every minute. - I have to say that I've been very well accepted. Of course I was not just there to say transgender, trans. I was there to do the work and I participated in the tables I sat at. I didn't just sit there to be a label. I participated in the work. I, when they said organized, I organized everybody, you know? So you have to be willing to participate in the work in order to gain acceptance. The PC code is not enough anymore. We need real human beings doing real work, and I did that with AIDS and continue to do it today. I believe that it is and continues to be genocide. I think Bill Clinton's just about a half inch better than Ronald Reagan, and so the work is before us and you know, I let the work be my reward, not the reward, many folk get in the AIDS industry, they focus on that paycheck. If you'll just focus on the work, the paycheck will come, you know, whatever you need to be supported in the work, if it's truly the work of taking care of the needs of folks with HIV and AIDS and getting for them the comfort and compassion that we need. As human beings, we all need to have that compassion. If AIDS hasn't taught us anything, it's taught us the lesson of compassion and it's taught that lesson to folks who are compassionless. So it's been a great teacher on the land and I'm, like I say, it's a blessing curse. I'm grateful for the blessings, and I'm a little angry that I won't get to be an old lady, 'cause I wanted so much to be an old lady and you know, talk to the young kids like an old codger, but. - I know, it's funny the way life leads us sometimes, isn't it? - [Connie] Oh, that's right. - I mean, you really don't know. We sort of make the best of whatever it is, although. - [Connie] Some of us do. - Yeah. - Some of us prattle and whine. (Sheila laughing) - [Sheila] And make the best and prattle and whine. - Oh, that's right. We have many gifts in our humanity. - You know, I'm curious about your husband, speaking of gifts, because you mentioned him and said, you know, as a gay man, who's your husband, and I'm sure that people are saying, wow, now there's a whole lot of different sort of gender issues and relationship issues, and coming to grips with issues. - We have an open relationship. I encouraged him to be the gay man that he was 'cause he's a major bottom. I'm a major bottom, don't work right, (Sheila laughing) but we loved each other and respected each other for who we were as human beings, and as Bruce and I, that's my husband, my boo bear, as we've been together for these coming up 13 years, I gave him that permission that society never would give me to be just as nelly a gay man as you wanna be, and he has grown, just grown in his nellyness and is so happy and secure. So it's been a delight to give my gift of self-acceptance to him. - Well, it just completely explodes the mythology of duality, doesn't it? Because you are a lesbian and a gay man and a heterosexual all at the same time. - I've been all those things. (Sheila laughing) I've been all those things. I can't even really figure out, I pretty much got my gender down. I'm not man, not woman, but I couldn't tell you what my sexual orientation is, 'cause I've enjoyed human beings in their expressions of sexuality from all walks of life, straight women, straight men, gay women, gay men. - So if you had a lesson that you wanted to give or just a piece of advice that you wanted to give to the probably thousands of people watching this at the moment, what would you say to them? - Absolutely, unequivocally let no one allow you not to be yourself. Be yourself. It's the most important lesson we can learn. It's the most important thing we can do, and we all know who ourself is if we'll listen to the quiet still voice inside, not that committee up in your head 'cause they make a lot of noise, but all of us, I think, have that quiet, still spiritual voice that tells us how to be ourselves, and I ask folks to just listen to that and you have to practice and become studied at it before you can hear the voice 'cause we try to discount it and you know, nah, nothing like that exists, but it does exist, and it exists in all of us and it'll guide us through every path we need to take. - Connie, thank you so very much. Thank you all for being with us. Hope you enjoyed the show. Hope you'll stay with us through the rest of the year and remember whatever it is, we ask you to do, "Get Used to It." (cheery music) ♪ There are boys ♪ ♪ All ready for kissin' ♪ ♪ And I mean to kiss me a few ♪ ♪ Well those boys don't know what they're missing ♪ ♪ I've got a lot of livin' to do ♪ ♪ And there's steaks all ready for tasting ♪ ♪ And there's Cadillacs all shiny and new ♪ ♪ Got to move 'cause time is a wasting ♪ ♪ I've got a lot of livin' to do ♪ ♪ There's music to hear places to go people to see ♪ ♪ Everything for you and me ♪ ♪ Life's a ball if only you know it ♪ ♪ And it's all just waiting for you ♪ ♪ You're alive so come on and show it ♪ ♪ There's such a lot of livin' ♪ ♪ Such a lot of livin' ♪ ♪ Such a lot of livin' ♪ ♪ Livin' livin' livin' to do ♪ (audience applauding) (audience cheering)