You Can Have A Happy Life
- Marienza Miserere
- Nov 15, 2024
- 14 min read
Updated: Sep 18
Transgender Joy, Hope, and Pride in San Francisco, 1967
Writer: Marienza Miserere, M.A
A few weeks back, I was scrolling on Instagram. I was procrastinating writing this article, actually. For someone who decided to dedicate their current academic career to writing on queerness and activism, I had a difficult time deciding what to write for my contribution on LGBTQ+ history. I knew that my publication date would fall during Transgender Awareness Week, but I just didn’t know what I wanted to talk about. I didn’t lack direction; I lacked inspiration.
I’m not trans; I'm a cis-woman. I'm also not a historian of transgender history, specifically. But with that being said, it would be impossible for me to write about North American queer liberation movements while ignoring the importance of trans and gender-non-conforming people who played critical activist roles in the urban cities I study. My method of picking research topics is perhaps uncommon amongst my peers. I don’t ask myself what I’m interested in researching, but rather, I look through primary sources, and I let the past queer communities tell me what they want me to write. Following this method, my procrastination ended up proving useful because the comment section of an Instagram post that day told me what to write about.
I came across a video by Spencer Bergstedt, a sixty-one-year-old trans man who bares his title of “Trans Dad” proudly [1]. If you haven’t had the pleasure of stumbling onto his account, picture a modern-day Viking (or, as some of his followers describe him, Odin) giving life advice. His content ranges from explaining queer history to the leatherman community and personal life coaching. While his videos themselves are touching and thought-provoking, it was the comment section for his video about gender-affirming surgery that made me stop [2]. Below are only a few of the over one thousand comments left on this particular Instagram Reel:
“You are the first older trans person I have ever seen. From a transman [to another] you are so important to me.”
"Can we just talk about how it's so important for young trans/queer people to see older trans/queer folk? It fills me with so much hope and joy to see older trans & queer people."
"We're allowed to grow up?"
"We get to live?????"
"We get to be old?"
"I wish there was more elderly trans representation, but I know why there isn't."
The more comments I read, the sadder I became, faced with the brutal reality of many trans people today. As one commenter put it, “I’m scared I won’t live long" [2]. It was this comment that inspired this timely article for Transgender Awareness Week.
As a historian of sexuality and activism, I have found that scholarship is overly saturated with stories of trauma, pain, and suffering. Queer and trans people are passively told by academia that their history is one of violent oppression, rooted in struggle, and relegated to footnotes. Heavy focus on topics such as police brutality and the AIDS Epidemic have coloured the way scholars shape queer and trans history. While these topics cannot be ignored because of their importance, queer history doesn’t have to be limited to the ‘queer struggle.' We can, should, and must elevate stories of their joy, love, and happiness. Even Western popular culture has been a proprietor of the trauma narrative, in which queer characters, especially lesbian couples, are more likely to die on screen than experience happily-ever-afters. In an attempt to study this pattern, media studies professor Teresa Caprioglio compared three major TV show franchises featuring queer-identifying characters and concluded that queer characters consistently endured targeted trauma relating to their queerness as if to correlate queerness to inevitable trauma [3]. The internet, and now academics, have dubbed this plot archetype as the ‘bury your gays’ trope [4]. So, when scholars and even our favourite TV shows are guilty of portraying the lonely, depressed, and violent queer experience, how are young trans kids supposed to feel about themselves?
Wanting to bring something more positive to the trans community, this article will not focus on violence, transphobia, or trauma. Instead, this article will serve to exemplify joy so that those who identify as trans can see themself represented in the past as living, existing, and thriving people. And so that those who aren’t trans can see the very same thing and understand that trans history is colourful, vivid, and more nuanced than just ‘liberation.’ This article is not meant to mitigate past or current trans struggles. It is also not meant to look at history through rose-tinted glasses. But hopefully, by the end, it will show the positivity people found during difficult times.
The following three subsections will look at a letter, an interview, and a poem that were published in an underground, queer San Franciscan zine called The Vanguard Magazine in 1967. The interview was conducted by the zine with a local Tenderloin District resident, while the letter and poem were submitted to the editor by readers. I mention this only to emphasize that these were everyday, regular people. To you and me, they will now be larger than life– historical actors, preserved by the archive, activists for having the courage to publish their trans experiences in 1967. To the rest of history, they were ‘nobodies,’– no one you would find listed in an LGBTQ+ encyclopaedia or on a blog's Top 100 List of Trans Icons. The following three trans voices belonged to ordinary people, in a small San Francisco neighbourhood, with friends and mundane dreams, who worried about the cost of living, and wondered what to make for dinner every night.
The Vanguard Magazine
As mentioned above, the following submissions were published by The Vanguard Magazine, an underground zine from San Francisco's Tenderloin District. The Tenderloin District is a roughly thirty-one-block neighbourhood in the Bay Area, whose radius has fluctuated over the decades. While there is no definitive border, the current Tenderloin is mainly agreed to be located between Van Ness and Mason streets, north until Geary Street, and south to Market Street. For many Americans and foreigners, especially in the mid-twentieth century, San Francisco quickly became a beacon of anonymity and queer kinship. By the 1960s and 1970s, many queer and trans individuals moved from all around the country to join neighbourhoods like the Tenderloin District to seek refuge and partake in the developing culture. Transgender activist Tracie Jada O’Brien exemplified this migration pattern when she explained how she moved from Missouri to the Tenderloin District “because I needed to live my truth. I needed to be who I was…” [6]. Like O’Brien, the many LGBTQ+ people who flocked to the Tenderloin for a new life began growing into a visible minority that city officials and the San Francisco Police Department [SFPD] took a particular interest in. Joseph Plaster makes a note of this in his book Kids on the Street, writing that “the Tenderloin was the epicenter of San Francisco’s public queer life and the kids who gathered there were among the most visible manifestations of gender and sexual dissidence" [7]. In turn, while San Francisco became a queer oasis for many, the stark reality was one of discrimination, police brutality, queer and transphobia, and sexual violence. But in the face of this reality, the Tenderloin residences refused to be anything but themselves. Today, the Tenderloin has been designated the city's Transgender District.
The Vanguard Magazine was published, edited, and contributed to by Tenderloin locals looking to create a community voice. The magazine's parent organization, Vanguard Inc., was an activist group out of the Tenderloin neighbourhood. Its president at the time, Jean-Paul Marat [alias], started the zine in August 1966 before leaving the organization entirely by that winter [8]. A few months after its inaugural issue, Keith St. Clare took over as editor in cheif and separated it from the activist group in 1967. From then on, he ran Vagnuard Magazine independently from Vanguard Inc. until 1978. The zine’s history is far too long to talk about in this article, but what is important to make clear is that Vanguard was not a transgender publication. Even Vanguard Inc. was not known for being the most diverse despite its fight for equality. According to the founder, Adrian Ravarour, “Most of the Tenderloin Transgender, street queen, or hair-fairie population were not members of Vanguard. A couple of years ago I asked… Felicia Elizondo why she had not joined Vanguard in 1966. Elizondo replied that she, ‘felt that she would not have been welcome because everyone knew that Vanguard was a white male organization'" [9]. With this being the case, one can assume that the magazine (which began as an extension of the organization) was also predominantly white, cis-male run [10]. However, that does not mean they didn't publish a diverse range of content, including works by trans locals. There were some transgender writers, and, of course, it's impossible to know how many anonymous poems, stories, and op-eds were contributed by non-cis people. The following letter, interview, and poem are just three examples of trans represenation in the zine.
Letter: "Tenderloin Transexual"
In 1967, the ninth issue of Vanguard, volume one, published what has now become the most mentioned submission amongst the zine’s scholars, “Tenderloin Transexual" [11]. The two-page letter was submitted to the Vanguard and details the personal life of a local, self-identified transexual woman. It begins with the statement, “I am a resident of a Tenderloin hotel. I live constantly in the clothes of a woman although I am a biological male" [12]. She then states her reason for the letter, explaining that “I want to give moral support to anyone who may want to do what I’ve done,” referring to her decision to live authentically [13]. She goes on to tell her story about how she spent her life not knowing who she was. She details her search for identity, her love of theatre as an outlet of expression, her conversation with doctors, and her move from New York to San Francisco in search of herself. There, she found community. She outlines her daily routine of getting up, attending college, studying, and doing homework and chores. “Sounds dull?” she wrote. “To someone who hasn’t had the dullness of a normal growing-up, it sounds wonderful” [14]. Her letter is inspiring. It was brimming with hopefulness, encouragement, and pride. She wanted to grow up to become a philosophy teacher. She was Christian, went to church, built meaningful relationships with others, and had hopes and dreams. Her story not only emphasized her happiness but demonstrated that trans life was not limited to struggle and trauma. The moral of her story is that life is what one makes of it.
Interview: "Interview with a Transexual"
In a segment titled “Interview with a Transexual,” the Vanguard sat down with a transgender woman from the Tenderloin, Louise Ann, and asked her questions about her life, asexuality, and gender. The transcript was meant to be educational and explored the idea of transgenderism and transitioning to perhaps the more intolerant reader. The Vanguard asked personal questions about her transition, her mental and physical wellness, her trials with doctors and medication, her sex life, and the theory that transgenderism is an illness. She speaks candidly, answering even the most philosophical questions like ‘Are you a good person?’ and ‘What is the dignity of a woman?’ In the end, Vanguard asked Louise what her purpose in life was, and she replied, “Life is a very wonderful experience. I hope to have my corrective surgery, marry and adopt children […] Nevertheless, I could remain happy [and] live contentedly in the manner my nature dictated" [15]. Her answer suggests a peaceful contentment in her life as she had come to terms with herself and was on the journey of self-fulfillment. While she mentioned society's intolerance, she did not dwell on it. Instead, she concluded her interview by preaching love and happiness, stating that when people become more educated and understanding, then “friendliness increases and life is more beautiful and bountiful" [16].
Poem: "Untitled"
Vanguard contributor Richard Sphor’s untitled 1967 poem is up for interpretation. Like all good poetry, perspective matters and its meaning is left up to the readers. I have chosen to include this poem because of its emotionality. Regardless of the writer’s gender, the poem is about being an outsider and the dreams of one day being free. In my interpretation, I see this poem as a representation of gender dysmorphia, feeling trapped and dreaming about the day when they can be their true self in every aspect of their life.
I am dead/but i am not dead for eternity/ i am dead for just awhile/but for NOW I AM DEAD/ and i am imprisoned/ and everyday from my cell/ i sit and i stare through the fire rimmed windows/to gay green lawn on the outside/and every night i sleep on the gold ground/and i cry/because my penis lays along side/limp/naked/alone/ and thin/ i know i am dead/but there is hope/ i may get a parole/ i may come alive/ i may be resurrected/ i will be created [17].
I have transcribed Richard’s poem here as it was published, with capitalization and emphasis included. If analyzed from a perspective of gender, the poem conveys a heartbreaking loneliness but ends with an empowering message of hope. The writer used the metaphor of being imprisoned to represent isolation and being stuck in one’s body. Staring out of the ‘fire rimmed’ windows then conveys longing. Despite Richard’s exploration of isolation, they end the poem with the emphasized line, “I will be created,” to express an undying optimism that remains [18]. This poem encapsulates the Tenderloin District and other queer communities. While the neighbourhood was faced with relentless abuse and neglect, especially trans and gender-nonconforming people, everyone remained resilient, optimistic, and authentically themselves. Their focus was on the ‘gay green’ grass, as Richard wrote, and just on the other side of that window was love, joy, and acceptance.
Conclusion
What was an average day like for a trans person in the Tenderloin? The “Tenderloin Transexual” letter is a powerful artifact for historians because it tells us what life looked like beyond what the textbooks may make one think. While most scholars dwell on the harm inflicted on communities like the Tenderloin District, the people who lived there were like everyone else. Of course, they were affected by police violence and queerphobia, but their lives didn’t only revolve around those things. Were the streets safe? No. Was it a risk to present as anything but your biological gender? Yes. Were there abuses, police violence, hate crimes, sexual assaults, unlawful detainments, street sweeps, transphobia, queerphobia, racism, sexism, drug abuse, homelessness, poverty, and injustices? Yes. But these things are still happening on our streets today. So, what happens when all we talk about are these traumas? What happens when historians don’t talk about the real, daily lives of trans and queer people, and only focus on the moments of suffering instead? Trans kids grow up to believe trauma is inevitable, death looms, and happiness isn’t attainable. When the anonymous ‘Tenderloin Transexual’ had breakfast, studied, went to college, sat for exams, had coffee with friends, poured over philosophy texts, worked hard to make money, she made it clear that she was doing them proudly as herself. This wasn’t a unique experience, perhaps just more privileged than those who didn’t live in such a diverse community. It may not even be too much of a reach for us to say this could have been an average routine for many Tenderloin District residents: wake up, go to school or work or search for employment, see friends, go on dates, party at gay bars, attend religious services, maybe even a homophile meeting, and then go to sleep. Queer and trans people had significant others, slept around, fell in love, and dreamt of becoming philosophy teachers like the "Tenderloin Transeexual," or getting married and having children like Louise Ann, or just being themselves, like Richard.
This week is Transgender Awareness Week, and we have to talk about the injustices and violence still afflicting trans people around the world. But it's not all we have to talk about. It’s also a time to reflect, learn, and celebrate. Spencer Bergstedt made a video when he turned sixty-one this past May. He said, “Today I’m sixty-one, and I feel pretty good about that. So, just know that you too can make it to this age and beyond," [19]. This sentiment is the conclusion of this article. Trans history does not have to only be about trauma. Past trans people weren’t just lonely, miserable, unhappy people who died young and alone. They had found families, community support, friends, lovers, and dreams. They grew up, aged, and were incredibly hopeful about their futures despite their circumstances and struggles. Through the many joyous, heartwarming, and humorous stories that appear in the Vanguard, it's clear that happiness and contentment were not out of reach for the Tenderloin District’s trans and queer community. They were people capable of living a happy life. As are you.
Endnotes
[1] Spencer Bergstedt (@daddyspencer), Instagram Account, https://www.instagram.com/daddyspencer?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==\
[2] Spencer Bergstedt (@daddyspencer), "One of you lovely viewers asked me to share my top surgery results..." Instagram Reel, June 7, 2024, https://www.instagram.com/reel/C77uXVBv9CT/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
[3] Teresa Caprioglio, “Does ‘Queer Narrative’ Mean ‘Trauma Narrative’ on TV? Exploring Television’s Traumatized Queer Identity,” Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 22, no. 4 (2021): 462.
[4] Rob Cover and Cassandra Milne, “The ‘Bury Your Gays’ Trope in Contemporary Television: Generational Shifts in Production Responses to Audience Dissent,” Journal of Popular Culture 56, no. 5–6 (2023): 810.
[5] According to Allen Irving, all ‘Tenderloin Districts’ including those in San Francisco, Chicago and New Orlens, appropriated their name from New York’s Tenderloin, which originated in the 1880s to refer to the vice district on the west-side of Manhattan; Irving L. Allen, The City in Slang: New York Life and Popular Speech (Cary: Oxford University Press, 1995): 4 & 178. For more information on the San Francisco Tenderloin/North Beach/Chinatown sex work district and its interesting history on the transition from theatre life, to burlesque shows, into prostitution, read Josh Sides, “Excavating the Postwar Sex District in San Francisco,” Journal of Urban History 32, no. 3 (2006): 355-379.
[6] Tracy Jada O’Brien, Interviewed by Alex Miller Pastore. Lambda Archives of San Diego, November 11, 2007, https://archive.org/details/casdla_000178
[7] Joseph Plaster, Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco’s Tenderloin (Durham: Duke University Press, 2023) 17.
[8] “Vanguard LGBT Youth Movement, 1965-1967.” Adrian Ravarour Papers. Collection Number: 2019-51. GLBT Historical Society: 15.
[9] Ibid, 15.
[10] While Vanguard Inc., tried to support everyone in the fight to make the Tenderloin a better place, the organization and staff were not as diverse. Plaster writes that, despite being known for representing the marginalized underdogs, the Vanguard was made up of the most privileged Tenderloin residents, white, cis gay men, with at least some college experience. So, although the zine incorporated trans voices, the organization and the zine itself were not exclusively transgender, nor did it set out to represent a racial or queer diversity; Adrian Ravarour Papers, 15 & Plaster, Kids in the Street, 140.
[11] Historian Susan Stryker and Plaster both include the first page of “Tenderloin Transexual” as photos in their respective books Transgender History and Kids on the Street
[12] “Tenderloin Transexual,” Vanguard Magazine 1, no. 9 (ca. July 1967).
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] "Interview with a Transexual," Vanguard Magazine 1, no. 8 (ca. June 1967).
[16] Ibid.
[17] Richard Sphor, "Untitled Poem," Vanguard Magazine 1, no. 8 (ca. June 1967).
[18] Ibid.
[19] Spencer Bergstedt (@daddyspencer), "This is 61," Instagram Reel, May 15, 2024, https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7At9A0RNKN/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Bibliography
Primary Sources
O’Brien, Tracy Jada. Interviewed by Alex Miller Pastore. Lambda Archives of San Diego, November 11, 2007, https://archive.org/details/casdla_000178.
“Vanguard LGBT Youth Movement, 1965-1967.” Adrian Ravarour Papers. Collection Number: 2019-51. GLBT Historical Society.
Vanguard Magazine (San Francisco, CA)
Volume 1, no. 8 (ca. June 1967)
Volume 1, no. 9 (ca. July 1968)
Secondary Sources
Allen, Irving L. The City in Slang: New York Life and Popular Speech. Cary: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Caprioglio, Teresa. “Does ‘Queer Narrative’ Mean ‘Trauma Narrative’ on TV? Exploring Television’s Traumatized Queer Identity.” Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 22, no. 4 (2021): 452–64.
Cover, Rob, and Cassandra Milne. “The ‘Bury Your Gays’ Trope in Contemporary Television: Generational Shifts in Production Responses to Audience Dissent.” Journal of Popular Culture 56, no. 5–6 (2023): 810–23.
Plaster, Joseph. Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. Durham: Duke University Press, 2023.
Sides, Josh. “Excavating the Postwar Sex District in San Francisco.” Journal of Urban History 32, no. 3 (2006): 355-379.
Stryker, Susan. Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution. Second ed. New York: Seal Press, 2017.
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