{ "id": "p16022coll97:169", "object": "https://cdm16022.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getthumbnail/collection/p16022coll97/id/169", "set_spec": "p16022coll97", "collection_name": "Tretter Transgender Oral History Project", "collection_name_s": "Tretter Transgender Oral History Project", "collection_description": "
The Tretter Transgender Oral History Project (TTOHP) collects, preserves, and makes accessible oral histories of gender transgression, especially as theyintersect with race, age, sexuality, citizenship, class, and ability. The project seeks to document the power and vision of trans movements for justice through the stories of activists working to imagine another world.
\n\nThe first phase of the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project was led by poet and activist Andrea Jenkins—who became the first Black transgender woman to serve in office in the US after she was elected, in 2017, to the Minneapolis City Council. This phase of the project sought to document the life stories and experiences of transgender and gender non-conforming people, with a focus on people living in the upper Midwest as well as those often excluded from the historical record, including trans people of color and trans elders.
\n\nThe second phase of the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project is led by trans studies scholar Myrl Beam. This phase of work seeks to document histories of trans activist movements and politics in the US, and is grounded in the belief that trans movements for justice are about more than rights: they are about survival, and about creating a new, more fabulous, more livable, and more expansive world––one not structured by racialized gender norms. The oral histories collected during this phase document the transformative power of trans movements, and the stories of trans activists who are building them.
\n\nFor more about the project, visit: https://www.lib.umn.edu/tretter/transgender-oral-history-project.
", "title": "Interview with Damion Mendez", "title_s": "Interview with Damion Mendez", "title_t": "Interview with Damion Mendez", "title_search": "Interview with Damion Mendez", "title_sort": "interviewwithdamionmendez", "description": "Damion Mendez is a Latino trans masculine identified person from St. Paul, Minnesota. At the time of this interview, Mendez was living in Minnesota. In this oral history Mendez speaks about transracial adoption, bullying, being raised in a primarily white family, his family relationships, bodily autonomy, masculinity, and transitioning. Mendez also touches upon access to medical care for transgender folks, police violence, racial violence within the LGBT community, accessible spaces, and his hopes for the transgender community in the future.", "date_created": [ "2017-06-17" ], "date_created_ss": [ "2017-06-17" ], "date_created_sort": "2017", "creator": [ "Mendez, Damion" ], "creator_ss": [ "Mendez, Damion" ], "creator_sort": "mendezdamion", "contributor": [ "Jenkins, Andrea (Interviewer)" ], "contributor_ss": [ "Jenkins, Andrea (Interviewer)" ], "notes": "Forms part of the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project, Phase 1.", "types": [ "Moving Image" ], "format": [ "Oral histories | http://vocab.getty.edu/aat/300202595" ], "format_name": [ "Oral histories" ], "dimensions": "1:27:37", "subject": [ "Latinx", "Midwest (United States)", "Adoption", "Harassment", "Passing", "Race", "Family Relationships", "Health and Healthcare", "Policing and Prisons", "Racism", "Disability", "Activism, Social Movements", "Discrimination", "Gender Affirming Care", "Education", "Tretter Transgender Oral History Project Phase 1" ], "subject_ss": [ "Latinx", "Midwest (United States)", "Adoption", "Harassment", "Passing", "Race", "Family Relationships", "Health and Healthcare", "Policing and Prisons", "Racism", "Disability", "Activism, Social Movements", "Discrimination", "Gender Affirming Care", "Education", "Tretter Transgender Oral History Project Phase 1" ], "language": [ "English" ], "city": [ "Minneapolis" ], "state": [ "Minnesota" ], "country": [ "United States" ], "continent": [ "North America" ], "geonames": [ "http://sws.geonames.org/5037657/" ], "parent_collection": "Tretter Transgender Oral History Project", "parent_collection_name": "Tretter Transgender Oral History Project", "contributing_organization": "University of Minnesota Libraries, Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies.", "contributing_organization_name": "University of Minnesota Libraries, Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies.", "contributing_organization_name_s": "University of Minnesota Libraries, Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies.", "contact_information": "University of Minnesota Libraries, Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies. 111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, 222 - 21st Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55455; https://www.lib.umn.edu/tretter", "fiscal_sponsor": "This project is funded through the generous support of The TAWANI Foundation, Headwaters Foundation and many individual donors.", "local_identifier": [ "tretter414_tohp103" ], "dls_identifier": [ "tretter414_tohp103" ], "rights_statement_uri": "http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/", "kaltura_audio": "1_w4ol8yjf", "kaltura_video": "1_4strvp1r", "kaltura_combo_playlist": "0_dq5pvl0i", "page_count": 0, "record_type": "primary", "first_viewer_type": "kaltura_combo_playlist", "viewer_type": "kaltura_combo_playlist", "attachment": "153.pdf", "attachment_format": "pdf", "document_type": "item", "featured_collection_order": 999, "date_added": "2018-09-24T00:00:00Z", "date_added_sort": "2018-09-24T00:00:00Z", "date_modified": "2020-05-22T00:00:00Z", "transcription": "Damion Mendez\nNarrator\nAndrea Jenkins\nInterviewer\nThe Transgender Oral History Project\nTretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nJune 17, 2016\nThe Transgender Oral History Project of the Upper Midwest will empower individuals to tell their story,\nwhile providing students, historians, and the public with a more rich foundation of primary source\nmaterial about the transgender community. The project is part of the Tretter Collection at the\nUniversity of Minnesota. The archive provides a record of GLBT thought, knowledge and culture for\ncurrent and future generations and is available to students, researchers and members of the public.\nThe Transgender Oral History Project will collect up to 400 hours of oral histories involving 200 to 300\nindividuals over the next three years. Major efforts will be the recruitment of individuals of all ages and\nexperiences, and documenting the work of The Program in Human Sexuality. This project will be led by\nAndrea Jenkins, poet, writer, and trans-activist. Andrea brings years of experience working in\ngovernment, non-profits and LGBT organizations. If you are interested in being involved in this exciting\nproject, please contact Andrea.\nAndrea Jenkins\njenki120@umn.edu\n(612) 625-4379\n1 Andrea Jenkins -AJ\n2 Damion Mendez -DM\n3\n4 AJ: So, hello.\n5 DM: Hi.\n6 AJ: Today is June 17, 2016. I’m Andrea Jenkins, I’m the oral historian with the Transgender Oral\n7 History Project at the Tretter Collection at the University of Minnesota. I’m here today with a\n8 good friend and fellow advocate and transgender health advocate, Damion Mendez. Hey,\n9 Damien, how are you?\n10 DM: I’m good.\n11 AJ: Yeah. Hey, Damion, can you just introduce yourself – state your name, spell it for us, what was\n12 your gender assigned at birth, how do you identify your gender today, and what pronouns do\n13 you use?\n14 DM: Awesome – yeah. So my name is Damion Mendez. D-a-m-i-o-n M-e-n-d-e-z. I use he/him\n15 pronouns and I was assigned female for my sex at birth. Now I identify as male, but with the\n16 understanding that to be a male does not mean, you know, that you have to have certain body\n17 parts or you have to have certain mannerisms, you don’t have to follow expectations around\n18 masculinity but you can still identify as male.\n19 AJ: I love that, I love that. And so male pronouns then.\n20 DM: Yeah, he/him pronouns.\n21 AJ: Damion, tell me what is your earliest memory in life? What’s the first thing you remember?\n22 DM: I have very vivid memories of not ever fitting in with the people around me, maybe because of\n23 the toys I wanted to play with, or the clothes I wanted to wear, the hairstyles I wanted to have.\n24 I can remember one Christmas I received a dress and I was very unhappy and was really\n25 confused. And then my cousin opened up his present and it was a Batman onsie and I took it\n26 from him and I didn’t give it back.\n27 AJ: Oh wow, really.\n28 DM: And I said that I would not have the dress, that that was not what I wanted – yeah, that’s what I\n29 wanted for Christmas. And those very vivid memories, yeah – just stick with me as kind of a\n30 reminder that the sex that I was assigned at birth was not right, and nor should it have been\n31 made for me because I think that with time I would have made my own choices had those\n32 choices not been forced upon me by society, and also by my parents who, lovingly, let me play\n33 around with gender. But when I told them at a very young age that I wanted to have a sex\n34 change, they sent me to the Human Sexuality Program . . . I think I was maybe five or six and I\n35 got diagnosed and the Human Sexuality Program told my parents that I should wait to do\n36 anything as far as me transitioning or doing anything like that.\n37 AJ: Any medical interventions . . .\nDamion Mendez 4\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nDM: Any medical stuff, right – until I hit puberty, because when I hit puberty 1 then somehow that\n2 would be a defining factor and my knowingness, whether or not that was some kind of\n3 childhood . . . just make believe kind of a thing. Which is unfortunate, because I think that they\n4 were very wrong and I think that . . . we can always say that if we did things differently, different\n5 outcomes would happen, but I think that the way that my life is and the way that it happened,\n6 happened for a reason. And so, things would have been different, but they weren’t and now I\n7 have the experience that I have because of that – because I didn’t get that intervention.\n8 AJ: Wow. So, where did you grow up, here in Minnesota?\n9 DM: So, I was trans-racially adopted from Colombia, Bogota – which is the capital, from an\n10 orphanage called Ayudame.\n11 AJ: Can you spell that?\n12 DM: You know . . . a-u-damay. It’s “help me” in Spanish.\n13 AJ: OK. So it’s a Spanish word, don’t worry – we’ll figure it out.\n14 DM: And actually I’ve met a lot of people who have been adopted from that same orphanage.\n15 AJ: Is that right?\n16 DM: Yes. Well my two cousins were adopted from the same orphanage a year before me, one of my\n17 family friends they adopted a young boy from that same orphanage, and then I’ve met lots of\n18 people in community who have been adopted from that same orphanage.\n19 AJ: Here in Minnesota?\n20 DM: Minnesota . . .\n21 AJ: So there was like a pipeline almost.\n22 DM: Minnesota is a hub for trans-racial adoption because the U of M started trans-racial adoption.\n23 I’ve done some research on this. It is typical for Minnesota residents to adopt from Korea and\n24 from Colombia, those two countries are the main source of where we get our folks from trans-25\nracially. So, at six months, my parents went to Colombia and then met me and took me back to\n26 America, but at that time they were living in Boston, Massachusetts. So all of my identification\n27 is in Boston. My dad is an architect and my mom was, at the time, a hair stylist. Boston had a\n28 huge financial crisis around 1989, so a year after I was brought there, and my dad lost his job –\n29 they lost everything. So they moved back to Minnesota, which is where my mother’s family is\n30 from. My dad is from Scotland.\n31 AJ: OK, wow. So he’s an immigrant too.\n32 DM: He is an immigrant too, absolutely - very interesting experiences as well. I grew up in, for a\n33 while – before my parents were divorced when I was nine, in St. Paul right by . . . what is that?\n34 Like Macalester College, in a very white, affluent, upper . . . I would say upper class\n35 neighborhood, in a very nice home. It was like three or four stories, I was in all sorts of clubs, I\nDamion Mendez 5\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nwent to camps, I experienced, throughout my life and especially in the beginning 1 years of my life\n2 when my parents were together, a very nice life, a very cushy life.\n3 AJ: Oh nice.\n4 DM: And, I still always felt different, I always felt out of place. Although I went to a Spanish\n5 immersion school for a couple of years, I still was one of the only few people of color, interesting\n6 enough.\n7 AJ: They were speaking Spanish but they weren’t . . .\n8 DM: . . . necessarily . . .\n9 AJ: Latino or Latina or . . .\n10 DM: Absolutely. And certain people are afforded those kinds of special schooling. Then my parents\n11 got divorced and then . . .\n12 AJ: When you were nine, you said?\n13 DM: Yeah. My mom and dad had been married for 25 years.\n14 AJ: Wow.\n15 DM: My mom met my dad in England when my mother was 17, with my grandmother when they\n16 were on vacation, and she didn’t come home.\n17 AJ: Oh really? She stayed?\n18 DM: Yes, she stayed. And so, my mom literally kind of . . . very early on attached to this person and\n19 then kind of they were just together, and then when they broke up, or when they ended the\n20 marriage, she was on her own.\n21 AJ: Was she devastated?\n22 DM: She was . . . absolutely, oh my God – yes, absolutely. It took her . . . oh my gosh, almost a whole\n23 year to really kind of pull it together, unfortunately. She’d never done any of the things you\n24 have to do when you’re on your own.\n25 AJ: Yeah.\n26 DM: So she brought me to Arizona because she wanted to get the heck away from him, from\n27 Minnesota, from her family. She just wanted to get away. And so I moved with her, my dad\n28 stayed in Minnesota – which was hard, I lost all of my friends. I was really close, at the time,\n29 with a lot of my family, my mom’s side of the family. I went from going to a Spanish immersion\n30 school to going to probably one of the worst schools in the United States of America. Arizona\n31 has the worst educational system and so . . . and it was English. I went from Spanish to English.\n32 Through that I’ve not only lost a lot of my Spanish, I’ve also gained learning disabilities in\n33 English. I have a hard time spelling words, I can read pretty well but it’s more the spelling that\n34 seems to be an issue, and then Math – I have a disability in Math. That year was just . . . yeah,\n35 just a very interesting year.\nDamion Mendez 6\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nAJ: What 1 part of Arizona?\n2 DM: Tucson.\n3 AJ: Tucson.\n4 DM: Yes, I lived right across the street from Sabino Canyon, which I later on found that while I was\n5 living there, at the same time, many immigrants from Latin America, where crossing the desert\n6 of Sabino Canyon to come into America.\n7 AJ: Oh, so you guys moved to almost one of the entry points of people coming from South America.\n8 DM: Yeah, which is really interesting if you think about the correlation of why I’m here in America\n9 and the fact that had these lovely, wonderful white people not come and “rescued” me, that\n10 could have been my reality, that could have been my entry point.\n11 AJ: Absolutely.\n12 DM: And so it was very much of a juxtaposition. I never thought about that until around a year ago\n13 when I was taking a class at MCTC and it was like, The Process of Othering, specifically around\n14 immigration and immigrants and not just how we perceive immigrants from a white lens but\n15 also white immigrants coming to Ellis Island and how certain groups of white folks were put in\n16 the “othering” category and were reduced to all of these different medical treatments and\n17 things to make sure that they weren’t diseased and how we have that conversation now when\n18 we talk about immigrants coming from Latin America and them not being vaccinated or all of\n19 these things, when really they have the highest rate of vaccination. Anyway . . . so yeah, just at\n20 that point in that year it was very hard, I was very angry. I think I went by . . . no, I remember\n21 going to several different therapists with my mother. Me and my mother have always had a\n22 very . . . I don’t know, a volatile, loving, hating relationship. There’s always been kind of some\n23 issues and I think that I was really mad at her for moving me to Arizona, I was mad that my\n24 parents were divorced – so yeah, I was just really mad. And then she started dating other\n25 people when she was in Arizona, and then I got really mad because I was like, “No, that’s not\n26 happening.” And I think even in that moment I felt a sense of my dad is gone and so I must take\n27 the role and the responsibility of my father and that is to almost protect my mother. And so\n28 when these men would be around, I would just puff my chest up and just get in their face and\n29 say probably some not very nice things – because I didn’t want them there, that was my job,\n30 they shouldn’t be there. There was only a couple but they were . . . yeah, annoying enough to\n31 where I remember them quite distinctly. And then . . .\n32 AJ: Did you have siblings?\n33 DM: No, I’m an only child.\n34 AJ: An only child, OK.\n35 DM: Which is interesting – that’s a whole other interesting way of growing up and not really having\n36 anyone else to talk to about some of these things or deal with some of these things. I never\n37 really talked with my two cousins who were adopted from Colombia trans-racially, they seemed\nDamion Mendez 7\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nto very much assimilate into white culture even though they’re darker than 1 me, which is quite\n2 interesting.\n3 AJ: Oh, that’s interesting.\n4 DM: All three of us are in relationships with white people, they’re both married to white people and\n5 have mixed-raced children.\n6 AJ: So you guys are still close?\n7 DM: Not at all, I don’t talk to them. No, I don’t talk to them. I don’t talk to anyone on my mother’s\n8 side of the family. After my grandmother passed two years ago, I vowed to not speak to them.\n9 AJ: Is that related to your gender identity?\n10 DM: No, not at all – not at all. They’re transphobic, but that’s not it – I could care less, you can think\n11 whatever you want to think. “I thought Courtney was trans because trans people only date\n12 trans people.” That kind of weird stuff.\n13 AJ: Oh, OK.\n14 DM: Just this really ignorant . . .\n15 AJ: And Courtney is your partner?\n16 DM: Right.\n17 AJ: Yeah.\n18 DM: Not that I wouldn’t date trans people but just for you to make that assumption that we just\n19 group together or whatever. I was just like, “Wow, you’re unbelievable.” No, it’s really because\n20 they’re just really racist. They think they know everything because they have lots of money and\n21 because they knew Paul Wellstone and whatever, whatever, whatever. I don’t . . .\n22 AJ: So they’re super progressive.\n23 DM: Well, when it comes to white progressiveness, yes – they’re super progressive. They were\n24 thrilled that Obama became President and thought that we were in a post-racial society and I\n25 tried to tell them that some may say that yes, President Obama is Black but he did not grow up,\n26 necessarily, in the same ways that they would assume that he grew up in. They think that all\n27 Black people are the same, when they want to and when they don’t want to. It was just like . . .\n28 yeah, I don’t want to be around you, you’re not really good people. And so I just haven’t really\n29 talked to them since then.\n30 AJ: So, I just want to go back a little bit to . . . because you said you told your parents that you\n31 wanted a sex change. How old were you when you said that? And then . . .?\n32 DM: I have to tell you this story, because the story, I think, really just encapsulates so many things.\n33 So, I was probably six or seven, and I loved the TV show Baywatch.\n34 AJ: Baywatch.\nDamion Mendez 8\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\n1 DM: Baywatch.\n2 AJ: Pamela Anderson . . .\n3 DM: Pamela Anderson, I don’t even know. I was a swimmer at the time and I thought that maybe\n4 when I grew up I wanted to be a lifeguard or something like that – like on the beach, wouldn’t\n5 that be cool? There was an episode where they found this body in the ocean. They brought the\n6 body back to the autopsy room and the body was laying on the table and I just remember as\n7 they were talking, she looked like a woman . . . she looked like a woman, and what they found\n8 out was the guy who was doing the autopsy was like, “This isn’t a woman, this is a . . .” And I\n9 don’t remember the language, I don’t really remember . . . I’m sure it was probably very\n10 transphobic and probably like a transsexual or, “This used to be a man,” or something of that\n11 nature. But the idea that this person that was laying on this table, that they couldn’t tell up until\n12 that point, triggered me to be like this must be possible. If this is on TV, is this possible? And I\n13 went to my parents and I said, “I just saw this on TV, is this possible? Because I want that.”\n14 AJ: Right.\n15 DM: And they were like . . . my mom was OK with it at the time, which is super interesting because\n16 when I actually came out as being trans she freaked the hell out, and my dad freaked out when I\n17 told him when I was little and then he was fine when I came out later.\n18 AJ: Oh wow.\n19 DM: Yeah, I don’t know what that means – yeah, I don’t know. But yeah . . . and then they were . . .\n20 I’m sure my dad was concerned and my mother was like, “Calm down Michael, he’s just a kid,”\n21 that kind of thing. Whatever – both patronizing and real at the same time, but then was like,\n22 “OK, well let’s bring you to the Human Sexuality Clinic and get you tested,” or whatever. And I\n23 remember being there, I remember meeting with somebody and being in a room and them\n24 asking me questions, but I don’t really remember anything else.\n25 AJ: Sure, yeah – you were pretty young.\n26 DM: Yeah, and then nothing ever came of it. I remember after that, of course, always wearing boy’s\n27 clothes. I wanted to wear boy’s clothes, I asked to wear boy’s clothes, but for fancy things I was\n28 made to wear dresses and shoes, heeled shoes.\n29 AJ: Patent leather slippers.\n30 DM: Everything – slippers, whatever floozy my mom . . . I think my mom really wanted a girl and she\n31 wanted a girly girl, somebody that she could play dolls with and do her hair.\n32 AJ: She was a hairdresser and you were assigned female at birth.\n33 DM: Absolutely, yeah – but I was not about it. I was not having it, I made her cut my hair very short.\n34 It’s really interesting. I have pictures of me from when I was a baby up until right before I\n35 graduated from high school . . . no, actually the picture is from when I graduated from high\n36 school. It kind of goes like very feminine, because I was a baby and my mom dressed me – so\n37 pink and pink and pink. The minute I made my choice boy, boy, boy. And then when I hit about\nDamion Mendez 9\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\n. . . when I moved to Eagan for middle school, which is like 6th, 7th, and 8th 1 grade, you see this\n2 switch and I go from tomboy to femme, femme, femme. I’m wearing make-up, my hair is\n3 always done – it’s very long, I wear big hoops, I definitely tried to emulate, I think, like J-Lo . . .\n4 Latina women, because I just assumed that that’s what you do. That was when I was young,\n5 people always called me a tomboy, so I was just like, “Well, this must be when I remove myself\n6 from this.”\n7 AJ: So you were trying to conform?\n8 DM: Yeah.\n9 AJ: Were you bullied in school at all for dressing like a boy and wearing boy’s clothes . . .?\n10 DM: Yes.\n11 AJ: . . . or people were just cool with it?\n12 DM: No. I was absolutely bullied. I was called a lot of homophobic slurs like faggot, dyke, les – like\n13 lesbo or whatever the young people say. Or always . . . always, always, always asked, “Are you a\n14 boy or a girl?” That question . . . I cannot even tell you how many times I would come home\n15 from school and just cry because I didn’t understand – because why does it even matter? At\n16 that point, I didn’t even realize that I wasn’t a boy. I don’t think I’d really seen a lot of . . . I\n17 hadn’t been naked around a lot of people . . . yeah.\n18 AJ: Yeah, because you don’t have siblings or . . .\n19 DM: No, I didn’t. I just assumed that I was like everyone else and everyone else was like everybody\n20 else.\n21 AJ: Right.\n22 DM: And then like the bathroom stuff would kind of come up sometimes because I would go into the\n23 boy’s bathroom – I didn’t know what the hell the difference was, I didn’t care.\n24 AJ: Right.\n25 DM: I just . . . I was just me. I just was probably very much oblivious to really anything that was going\n26 on. Yeah, and then when I hit that puberty, I got . . . oh yeah, I hit puberty very young – when I\n27 was like . . . the summer before 6th grade, I got my period and it was horrible because I was living\n28 with . . . OK, so my mom stayed in Arizona and then I moved back to Minnesota and me and my\n29 dad were living in St. Paul and then he moved me to Eagan because there was good schools. So\n30 I was living with him and so when I got my period, I thought I was dying because I was bleeding\n31 and I had lots of pain.\n32 AJ: Right.\n33 DM: I had sex ed, but I didn’t assume that that horrible stuff was going to happen . . .\n34 AJ: Was going to happen to you.\nDamion Mendez 10\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nDM: We talked about tampons – we took one out and we put one in a glass jar 1 and watched it blow\n2 up and it was like, “That’s icky.” And I was hanging out with all the guys. I was like, “That’s\n3 gross.” And then it happened and my dad didn’t know what was happening either, he thought I\n4 was dying too.\n5 AJ: Oh my gosh.\n6 DM: And he was like, “You need to call your mom.” And I called my mom and I’m like, “Mom, I’m\n7 bleeding.” And she’s like, “You’re having your period.” And I’m like, “What is this horrible\n8 thing?”\n9 AJ: Oh my goodness.\n10 DM: “What is this? Why is this happening to me?” I just . . . yeah. So then when that happened and\n11 I definitely developed breasts very, very quickly and because . . . I’m 5’2”, I’m a very small\n12 person – same height as Prince.\n13 AJ: Yeah. Rest in peace.\n14 DM: Rest in peace, absolutely. Yeah, I had a very large chest, breasts – whatever you want to call it. I\n15 was a 36C.\n16 AJ: Yeah, for 5’2” that’s pretty good sized.\n17 DM: Yeah, and they came (snap) . . . probably in the middle of 6th grade, I was fully developed, so I\n18 was . . . yeah. So I was very much oversexualized by . . . ick, yeah, the people around me.\n19 AJ: Boys and . . .\n20 DM: Especially in an exoticized manner.\n21 AJ: Right.\n22 DM: Because I was . . .\n23 AJ: Latina.\n24 DM: I’d got a lot of the like . . . ick, the cat calling and all of that nonsense. But I was never . . . I didn’t\n25 really get affected by that necessarily. I did date one boy, his name was John Dugan. He’s gay.\n26 We knew he was gay – I knew he was gay, we all knew he was gay, and I think that’s probably\n27 why I was attracted to him.\n28 AJ: Right, right.\n29 DM: Whatever. And actually I saw him last year . . .\n30 AJ: The queerness, right.\n31 DM: . . . at the Mondo Queer Beach Party.\n32 AJ: Oh yeah.\nDamion Mendez 11\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nDM: Or not the beach party – the yacht party. He was on the boat. And I was 1 like, “Oh, look, there\n2 you are – oh, 6th grade coming back to me.” But I did, I absolutely . . .\n3 AJ: Did he recognize you?\n4 DM: Oh yeah. We didn’t say anything to each other. It was more like, “Hmm . . .” and then we both\n5 like walked away. I think it was just a little too much reminder of being in 6th grade and not\n6 really being yourself, I think – just trying to be what everyone else wanted you to be. And then,\n7 I eventually started having feelings about liking girls and I think that was like 7th or 8th grade.\n8 Yeah, I didn’t really know what to do with that, but I knew that I was different and I knew that I\n9 started to dress more and more on the masculine side and started to really start to feel like I\n10 didn’t want to wear tight pants and tight shirts – they made me uncomfortable. I didn’t want to\n11 do my hair – and I couldn’t even do it well anyway. I really couldn’t – I couldn’t do make-up very\n12 well. I always poked myself in the eye when I would try and do anything around that area. I\n13 couldn’t wear heels and so eventually I just started . . . yeah, I went from kind of like . . . I went\n14 from like very feminine to punk, goth-ish, and so then there were ways for me to wear different\n15 kinds of clothing that would be more androgynous. And then, I think, I came out to my mom the\n16 last year of middle school, so 8th grade, and . . . I was starting to get bullied again about the\n17 clothing that I was wearing. I knew that it had to do with my sexual orientation, because the\n18 homophobic slurs began to come back up. And so, I was like, I need something. I was feeling\n19 depressed, I needed some things to make some kind of relationships with other gay people –\n20 youth. And so my mom . . .\n21 AJ: So you came out to your mom as a lesbian?\n22 DM: Yes, yes. And, my mom . . . because she’s just awesome like that and just has always been really\n23 good around mental health and self-care and getting therapy for me and stuff, she hooked me\n24 up with Face to Face on the east side of St. Paul where Janet was, Janet Bystrom.\n25 AJ: Janet Bystrom, yeah.\n26 DM: And, at the time, Janet Bystrom and Sarah and a couple other folks were doing the Pocketful of\n27 Queers, so I joined. It was an amazing, eye-opening experience, not only because I had lived in\n28 the suburbs, Eagan at that time, this was on the east side of St. Paul, so it was very different.\n29 There were people of color, there were expectations around how you talk to people as far as\n30 not only gender identity and sexual orientation, but also race and ethnicity and being culturally\n31 aware. This was very new for me. I didn’t even know this shit happened, we were supposed to\n32 be color blind and we were supposed to love everybody – it’s a small world after all. I\n33 remember all of these little lessons that I was taught. And, yeah, I loved it there. The\n34 interesting thing was, at the time there were a lot more cis gay men in the meetings that would\n35 happen and so I became friends with Jonathan and Miguel and David and all of my friends were\n36 gay white cis men. I loved it, I loved it. I had a great time, I love them all – they taught me so\n37 much about life, about . . . because at that period of time I began to become very . . . the anger\n38 and pushing away from my family was very, very real.\n39 AJ: So more politicized maybe?\n40 DM: Yeah, absolutely. And so a couple of times . . .\nDamion Mendez 12\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nAJ: Around social 1 justice issues.\n2 DM: Yeah, I think . . . unfortunately at the time it was around gay issues, because that was the circle\n3 of friends that I had.\n4 AJ: Yeah, that’s where you were.\n5 DM: And Miguel was also actually adopted from . . . I think Guatemala by a white family. So there\n6 wasn’t a lot of race involved, but I would get in trouble because I wouldn’t come home. And my\n7 mom, being a white mother – because brown mothers wouldn’t do this . . . p.s., and by the way,\n8 my mom called the police and had the police come look for me. That was the first beginning\n9 experience of a brown body being placed in a situation where the justice system, the police, the\n10 state, all of this, had become to be involved in where my body was and where I could and\n11 couldn’t be. I remember several times the police would find me, and I’d be hanging out at\n12 somebody’s house – like in St. Paul, in a very nice neighborhood, watching Queerest Folk,\n13 something so innocent. We weren’t smoking pot, we weren’t having sex – we weren’t doing\n14 anything. I was so good, unfortunately. And the police, we were walking into the house and\n15 they came, they showed up, they had their lights on and they started yelling at me and they\n16 were like, “You can’t be here, your mom . . .” I don’t even know. They were very angry and very\n17 . . . they put their hands on me, they told me to get in the car, and I was like, “Fuck you, don’t\n18 touch me.” As somebody who, at that time, still identified very much as white, I did not\n19 understand that what I was doing was putting myself in a lot of danger.\n20 AJ: Danger.\n21 DM: A lot of danger. I got in their face, I was like, “Don’t touch me,” and they handcuffed me and\n22 they put me in the back of the squad car and they drove me to my mom’s and they dropped me\n23 off. I was like, “Mom, how can you let them do this to me?” I remember being so mad at my\n24 mom and the cop was right there. I was like, “Don’t you see how they’re handling me?” And\n25 she was like, “Well, you shouldn’t have left,” or something like that and they would agree. They\n26 were like, “Listen to your mother,” or some crap like that. I was like something about this is so\n27 not right, I don’t know what it is, but it’s not right.\n28 AJ: Wow.\n29 DM: So, Jendeen from All the Pretty Horses . . .\n30 AJ: Jendeen Forberg, yeah.\n31 DM: Yeah, came to a meeting, to talk about being a trans woman. This is the first time since when I\n32 was whatever, like six or seven, that I’d heard any word like trans, that I’d seen a trans person in\n33 my purview. And then she spoke to the space about her experience and her process and within\n34 that 45 minutes, I came to the realization that I was trans.\n35 AJ: Wow.\n36 DM: It hit me like a lightbulb. I was like - oh my God, this makes so much sense, this makes so much\n37 sense of why I identify right now as a lesbian but it doesn’t feel right. I don’t have any lesbian\n38 friends, I have gay male friends. It didn’t make any sense. I didn’t feel like it fit – and this fit.\nDamion Mendez 13\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nAnd I walked out from that meeting, well first I thanked Jendeen and I hugged 1 her and I’m pretty\n2 sure I probably cried, and then I went upstairs, walked up the steps and came out and my mom\n3 was parked right out front of the building, she always picked me up, and I got in the car and I\n4 said, “Mom, I have to tell you something.” She’s like, “What?” I was like, “I’m transgender.”\n5 There is no way that I couldn’t have said it.\n6 AJ: And you’re like 13 or 14 years old?\n7 DM: Yeah.\n8 AJ: Wow.\n9 DM: Yeah, I was a baby. I was a baby – oh gosh. Yeah. My mom . . . she was not having it. She\n10 seemed a little supportive in the beginning, like when I kind of told her. She was like, “Oh, OK.”\n11 That kind of Midwestern, “Oh, OK.” And then it was like, “Why can’t you just be a lipstick\n12 lesbian? Why can’t you at least just look like Janet? Do you have to chop your breasts off,\n13 you’re going to mutilate your body?” I was at the point, obviously, where anything that she said\n14 was not going to affect me – the letter had been signed and sealed my friend, it was going\n15 down. I was like, “Where did you take me when I was young?” And they were like, “The Human\n16 Sexuality Program,” and I was like, “OK, I’m going there, that’s where I’m going.”\n17 AJ: Wow.\n18 DM: And so I started going to the Human Sexuality Program when I was 16.\n19 AJ: Wow.\n20 DM: And because I was underage, under the age of 18, I had to wait until I was . . . I had to wait for a\n21 certain amount of time until I could do anything medically or surgically.\n22 AJ: Sure.\n23 DM: So I saw Dr. Zamboni for therapy.\n24 AJ: Brian.\n25 DM: Brian Zamboni, yes. And I was a part of the support group with . . . oh, what’s the guy’s name\n26 that was extremely influential in the Human Sexuality Program?\n27 AJ: Walter . . .\n28 DM: Yes.\n29 AJ: . . . Bockting.\n30 DM: Bockting. I was in Bockting’s support group and I had to take the MMPI, the MM . . . whatever,\n31 those two tests I had to take, and I had to take them like 15 times and they’re both like 500\n32 questions, 800 questions or something like that. I remember spending a whole day in that\n33 waiting room and they used to have these little cubicle desks that you could sit in and do your\n34 little bubbling.\n35 AJ: The ovals, yes.\nDamion Mendez 14\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nDM: Yeah. And it really dates me when I say that because people . . . 1 a lot of people don’t think\n2 about the old way of transitioning or these very rigid expectations, because I was ready. I had\n3 been ready . . . I mean, I found some of the things that I talked with Zamboni about to be\n4 helpful, but really why I do what I do now is because of what happened, because I don’t think it\n5 was good. I don’t think that all of it was necessary, there was a lot of waiting, there was a lot of\n6 waiting for the monthly case consultations where all the providers got together and would open\n7 your case file up and talk about you, and then they would all decide whether or not you were\n8 applicable to start hormones or to have surgeries. I was not interested in any of the support\n9 groups and eventually just stopped going, and then got in trouble for that and was told that if I\n10 didn’t go back, that I wouldn’t be able to start hormones. So I had to go back . . .\n11 AJ: So sort of like a gatekeeper kind of . . .\n12 DM: Absolutely. That just all absolutely leads into exactly why I believed in informed consent around\n13 reduction and advocacy around hormone care because I think that so many people are placed in\n14 these positions where - yes, I think that support is absolutely helpful and key, but there’s a\n15 difference between holding somebody and squeezing the life out of them just to get what you\n16 need to hear out of them. There was a lot of . . .\n17 AJ: I’m sorry to interrupt, but can you just define informed consent?\n18 DM: Absolutely. So, for me, informed consent really looks like a situation where someone can come\n19 in for hormones and use their own inner knowledge and wherewithal to justify and to give the\n20 realness to the fact that you need this, there is no therapy letter, there’s no doctor, there’s no . .\n21 .\n22 AJ: Testing.\n23 DM: Nobody needs to give you a diagnosis for you to tell me who you are – that makes no sense.\n24 AJ: Sure.\n25 DM: I just feel like that . . . it just opens people up to have a more autonomous relationship with this\n26 process to where they are making their own choices and they have the power and the control as\n27 to how they take their hormones or when they take their hormones or how much. If they\n28 decide they’re more like gender non-conforming, that they can . . . they don’t have to follow\n29 with these specific understandings of how hormones are supposed to be given to people, or that\n30 you need to have surgeries, or you need to be on hormones or any of these things. So it really\n31 just gives people – yeah, this ability to speak from their own perspective and have that only be\n32 the justification for why we do things. And then also making sure that . . . I have not met one\n33 patient who has not spent, or person for that matter, who has not spent years on the internet or\n34 in books depending on the generation that you come from, reading about transsexualism, trans\n35 . . . all of these things, long before you ever said that you were trans – you know what hormones\n36 do, you know what hormones are going to do that’s going to make you feel good, and the things\n37 that could be a problem. We have been told these things over and over and over again – liver\n38 disease, high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes. If you’re obese these things go up, these are\n39 all things that we know and we’ve known for a long time. So I don’t really think that you need\n40 to go over the steps with people, but just to like kind of make sure that they know what they’re\nDamion Mendez 15\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\ndoing – but again, that comes with what they say. You don’t even 1 need to . . . because I\n2 remember going through the checklist when I was at the Human Sexuality Program of like,\n3 “you’re going to lose five years of your life because of testosterone, you are going to die earlier\n4 than you . . .” Just all of these super morbid, and sometimes not necessarily true, statements.\n5 We don’t need to do that. I always ask folks that are in this space when I’m talking with them –\n6 like, “Do you have specific questions? Are there things that you’re concerned about or that you\n7 want to just discuss around hormones and the possible side effects and the things that you’re\n8 going to see from them, as far as the positive?” And people are very forthcoming in things that\n9 they’re concerned about when you ask them what they’re concerned about, not when you tell\n10 them. Then they say, “Well, my mom had a blood clot because she was on birth control and I’m\n11 about to be on feminizing hormones, is this something I should talk about with my doctor?”\n12 Absolutely, that’s really important, because then . . . not that we’re going to deny you hormones\n13 but we’re going to make sure that we set you up with good primary care so that you’re getting\n14 tests and you’re getting the preventative care that you need so that you don’t ever have to deal\n15 with what that would be like if you were to have something happen and then end up in the\n16 hospital being a trans person – because that’s never fun. So like, those kinds of ways of doing it\n17 just to me seem just way better in the way of actually touching the person and getting them to\n18 hear what you’re saying and also hear what they’re saying, and that back and forth just creates a\n19 more open environment for where I have people calling me just to say, “Hey,” or to let me know\n20 that they did something really cool that weekend and they just wanted to share with me, or\n21 they want to stop by and sit on the couch and just talk about how they’re doing.\n22 AJ: Yeah, because being trans is more than just medical . . . but speaking of medical, what medical\n23 interventions have you personally undergone to date?\n24 DM: Yes. So in 2006, I actually had top surgery before I was on hormones.\n25 AJ: Really?\n26 DM: Yes, which is not typical.\n27 AJ: Right.\n28 DM: Not a lot of people do that, and I would also say that through my own experience, if you can be\n29 patient enough to wait . . . I don’t like that, take that back. If you feel that your dysphoria is not\n30 great to the point where not having that surgery until later on, you can do that. It just seems to\n31 work better as far as the results that you get. A lot of my tissue has changed since then, I’ve had\n32 re-growth of tissue, breast tissue. I actually just saw Dr. Buckley a couple weeks ago because I’m\n33 having weird pain in my chest area and when she looked at it she said it was right in the area\n34 where you cut and cut away the skin from the actual tissue. So, I don’t know – I’m hoping to get\n35 a revision, because I would like to just . . . yeah, pick some of that skin up and put it back in\n36 place.\n37 AJ: OK.\n38 DM: But that was in 2006.\n39 AJ: Wow.\nDamion Mendez 16\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nDM: I was 17, it was right before Christmas. I was too young to even realize 1 what I was getting\n2 myself into – and not that it was a bad thing, but I don’t necessarily know if I fully was in the\n3 process. I was just so excited and so ready for them to be gone that . . . it just was a very\n4 different experience from when I got my hysterectomy in 2014. I was very nervous in 2014, I\n5 was worried, I felt more anxious whereas when I 17, I was like, “Let’s do this, stick needles in\n6 me, take it out – just get it out.”\n7 AJ: Just do it.\n8 DM: And it was a great process, I extremely love Dr. Buckley over at the U of M, big shout out to her\n9 – she does great work. She’s very professional, she’s kind, she’s caring, she’s a human – which is\n10 very hard to find in the medical community – to have somebody who is not plastic, and she’s not\n11 plastic. She’s about . . . just about being a friend and a caregiver and also your surgeon at the\n12 same time. She made it possible for me to not have to pay for my surgery, my surgery was\n13 completely covered because she put it under breast reduction – she put it under like a breast\n14 reduction code so I didn’t have to pay for it. She’s totally about that because she knows that the\n15 system has been using us and our bodies and why not use the system to help us.\n16 AJ: Did she do the hysterectomy too?\n17 DM: No, that was Dr. Thorpe over at Park Nicollet.\n18 AJ: OK.\n19 DM: And that was a . . . yeah, I think that was just a more invasive . . . more public or personal\n20 surgery. You have to be completely undressed. She uses the DaVinci method, which means she\n21 uses the robotic . . . it’s like a machine.\n22 AJ: Laser?\n23 DM: No, it’s endoscopic, so there’s little things . . . but she’s in the corner on a computer and the\n24 machine is doing all of the work, which is just creepy to me.\n25 AJ: Medical technology.\n26 DM: Yeah. With that surgery I ended up having a complication because I tore one of my stitches. I\n27 actually felt it when it happened. I was at the Ball, it was one of the only Balls that I went to and\n28 it was in that space where it was a dance studio by Hennepin, off of Hennepin. I was sitting on\n29 one of the chairs watching people do their thing . . .\n30 AJ: So like a Vogue Ball?\n31 DM: Yeah, and I even walked on that, I walked that night – which was just a horrible idea.\n32 AJ: Yeah, you had just had a hysterectomy.\n33 DM: Yeah, exactly – who the hell does that? Billy was like, “Come, come – you’ll be fine.” Yeah, uh-34\nha. I remember sitting down on the chair and just feeling this . . . like, pftt. I don’t know, that’s\n35 all I felt – it was like a twinge. It didn’t hurt, but I felt it. I woke up the next morning alone in my\n36 bed in a puddle of my own blood – just everywhere. I went to the bathroom and I pretty much\nDamion Mendez 17\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nwas peeing blood. So I called the nurse and was like, “What is this? What 1 does this mean?”\n2 And she was like, “How much blood?” I’m like, “What do you mean, how much . . .” “Well is it a\n3 teaspoon, is it a tablespoon?” “Let me collect the blood for a minute and find out, I’m freaking\n4 out here. It’s a lot.” And she’s like, “OK, well if it’s a lot, you need to hang up and you need to\n5 call 9-1-1 because you’re going to pass out from the loss of blood and then you’re going to be in\n6 big trouble.” “I’m not going to call 9-1-1, I’m not going to get into an ambulance – I’m not, I’m\n7 not going to do that, there’s no way.” I called Billy, Billy lived like a little ways away – this was\n8 when I lived in Minneapolis off of 17th Avenue, like Steven’s Square. Billy showed up and was\n9 about to take me to the hospital and then Courtney showed up and then me and Courtney went\n10 to the hospital and I spent like five hours in the waiting room waiting for them to bring me into a\n11 room. I was going to the bathroom every 10 minutes to pee blood and then was wearing big ass\n12 pads to collect the blood. Then I finally got into the room, they laid me on the bed and they\n13 gave me a huge mat. By that time, it’s so gross – the blood started already coagulating, so it was\n14 like . . . yeah, it was bad. I’m pretty sure I passed out because I don’t remember very much after\n15 that, and then I woke up and it was like 12 o’clock at night, so I had been there the whole day.\n16 Dr. Thorpe couldn’t come so it was going to be another surgeon that was going to do my surgery\n17 and they were going to see if they wouldn’t have to do another surgery, but they had to because\n18 there was too much blood, they couldn’t see anything.\n19 AJ: Oh wow.\n20 DM: So I went into surgery around 12:30, I had a blood transfusion because I lost so much blood, and\n21 they fixed the spot, they got it all back up and then yup, I woke up and then I was in the hospital\n22 for a couple of days because they didn’t want me to pop it out again.\n23 AJ: Go to a ball.\n24 DM: Right. Well, it’s interesting too – I think that there’s something else to this around the friability\n25 of tissue after testosterone.\n26 AJ: The what?\n27 DM: Friability.\n28 AJ: OK, what is that?\n29 DM: This is a medical term that I’ve been told by Dr. Thorpe and a couple other doctors – doctors\n30 that work gynecologically around how testosterone causes the tissue inside to be so thin that\n31 it’s very easily broken and so that could be also something that played into the fact that it just\n32 popped.\n33 AJ: That played a role.\n34 DM: Because I’d had the surgery . . .\n35 AJ: Because you were on . . . OK, I’m sorry, go ahead.\nDamion Mendez 18\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nDM: I’d had the surgery like two or three weeks before the ball – it wasn’t like it was 1 the day after. It\n2 was like a certain amount . . . I wouldn’t have just . . . and I wasn’t dancing around, I just walked\n3 but you know . . .\n4 AJ: But hysterectomy patients, they do say you should probably chill out for about 6-8 weeks.\n5 DM: And they’re right – they’re right. So I always tell . . . “Don’t do what I did, don’t do it. Keep your\n6 butt on the couch, get people to wait on you hand and foot, because you deserve it and don’t\n7 rush it, because that can happen.” Not only because of that, but also, like I said, because of the\n8 friability of the tissue. I think that might mean that maybe we need to be even extra careful\n9 because of that.\n10 AJ: So you didn’t have hormones before you had your top surgery, but you were on hormones when\n11 you had the hysterectomy.\n12 DM: Yes. So in 2007, about six months after my surgery . . . no, that’s not true. Actually, no – that’s\n13 so interesting – now I remember. So I had my surgery, then it was Christmas and then I started .\n14 . . I went back to school, because I was in high school. This was my senior year of high school.\n15 AJ: Wow.\n16 DM: Ahhh, oh my gosh. About a month after, I started on the AndroGel. Dr. Feldman, obsessed with\n17 AndroGel, loves the AndroGel – has the AndroGel stickers, pads, pencils, pens – everything. I\n18 don’t like it, I hated it.\n19 AJ: What’s AndroGel?\n20 DM: It’s a topical . . . like testosterone . . .\n21 AJ: A patch?\n22 DM: No, it’s a lot like the alcohol . . . the stuff that you put on your hands.\n23 AJ: Oh, antibacterial . . .\n24 DM: Yeah, it’s like that. And they actually use it now a lot for cis gendered men who have low\n25 testosterone, but that’s a whole other conversation. And I hated it, it didn’t work very well. I\n26 was on it for a year, I didn’t see very many changes at all – except for maybe gaining weight and\n27 getting a lot of acne, which was very attractive by the way. And yeah, I . . .\n28 AJ: Yeah, just what you need in high school – more acne, right?\n29 DM: Right, totally. And let’s put it on every morning because that’s really fun – not. Oh, and then it\n30 transferred and then I met Courtney, my partner that I’m still with now, and it transferred on to\n31 her and she grew three very lovely whiskers and she said, “Either you get off that shit or we’re\n32 done.” I was like, “Baby.” I went to Feldman and I was like, “I just gave my partner testosterone\n33 poisoning, you need to switch me on to an IM injection and she did.\n34 AJ: That is hilarious.\n35 DM: No . . . yeah, it happens actually more often than you would think.\nDamion Mendez 19\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nAJ: Although it’s 1 really, really scary.\n2 DM: It is scary, because it happens with the patch too.\n3 AJ: And they didn’t warn you?\n4 DM: No.\n5 AJ: “Hey, don’t hug pregnant women or . . .”\n6 DM: Don’t sit on a couch, don’t give somebody your sweatshirt that you wore – even if you had a\n7 shirt on because it can go through the shirt and on to your sweatshirt and if that person puts it\n8 on their sweatshirt it will get on to them.\n9 AJ: Yeah.\n10 DM: Your towels, your bedsheets – everything is contaminated. So if you’re with somebody who is\n11 trans feminine, that’s not cool.\n12 AJ: Right, that’s not cool.\n13 DM: That’s not cool – and yeah, pregnant women too, you don’t want to do that. So yeah, I was like,\n14 “I’ve got to get off this.” And then within a month of being on the IM injection, everything\n15 changed. My voice dropped, my body . . . like my muscles popped – everything . . . I grew so\n16 much more hair, which I’m still growing hair. I don’t think it ever stops. Yeah, it was just a very\n17 different experience from the AndroGel – very different.\n18 AJ: Wow. Man, so what have been some of the challenges that you’ve faced since you’ve come out\n19 as transgender?\n20 DM: I think, as I’ve come out as transgender, it’s been around the world and why the world doesn’t\n21 like people like me has always been something that’s always been on my mind. When I\n22 identified as lesbian, I was very much . . . not that I’m still not, but a very avid fighter for gay\n23 rights. That was important to me, and then I was trans now and now came the, “Now where do\n24 I stand? Do I fight for gay rights?” I absolutely do but there was this point of, “Do I fit in that\n25 category anymore? Do I belong there?” Some people told me I didn’t and then . . . yeah, what\n26 was important for me for the gay community was absolutely not at all relevant to the trans\n27 community. We were not worried about marriage or any of those kinds of things that were\n28 happening when I was first transitioning. And yeah, just discrimination around your gender\n29 expression. I think like for a good . . . I don’t know, two years of being on hormones, I was very\n30 much in that androgynous space and so you could flip a coin and somebody would call me he or\n31 she, ma’am or . . .\n32 AJ: Really? So mis-gendered – like every day?\n33 DM: Every day, constantly. I remember I worked at Subway and every different person that I would\n34 make a sandwich for would call me something else.\n35 AJ: Wow.\nDamion Mendez 20\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nDM: And I worked in a shop where I didn’t know anyone that I was working with, 1 so you can imagine\n2 how awkward that was.\n3 AJ: Yeah.\n4 DM: It was just, yeah – not understanding why . . . I knew who I was, why can’t you see that in me\n5 regardless of this other stuff. And then there was this need for me to feel like I needed to pass.\n6 AJ: Pass? What does that mean? What does pass mean?\n7 DM: So to not get mis-gendered, to not be read as . . . I think in that space, as trans. I think there was\n8 a part of me that was very much believing in this idea of once you’re on hormones, once you\n9 have surgeries – then you can become invisible, like that was the goal. That’s not the goal\n10 anymore. I am way more like the opposite now. No, people can make their own individual\n11 choices, but I’m not about the life where you just go and you don’t . . . no, I have to be involved;\n12 I cannot not be involved. And I pass very well now. I think I very, very seldomly get mis-13\ngendered – it’s usually by some stupid person about my height, my hand size or . . .\n14 AJ: People who knew you from the past?\n15 DM: No, just random people. I’ve gotten mis-gendered like at the bar, someone will be like, “You’re\n16 so short, you must be a girl,” or something like that. Whatever. Or my hand size – I’ve been\n17 told, “Oh, I never would have known you were trans, but then I saw your hands and they’re\n18 really small.” And I’m like, “OK, thanks. I think that’s just a complete backwards asinine\n19 compliment, but thank you.” And then when I talk on the phone I get mis-gendered sometimes,\n20 which is so funny. I just kind of laugh about it now because what are you going to do.\n21 AJ: What have been some of the joys since you’ve come out?\n22 DM: Community, community, community, community, community . . . um, community. Yeah. Janet\n23 introduced me to Roxanne and then Roxanne introduced me to the world.\n24 AJ: Roxanne Anderson.\n25 DM: Yes – oh yes. Roxanne Anderson. I would say that the two people that I owe everything to are\n26 Janet Bystrom and Roxanne Anderson.\n27 AJ: Wow.\n28 DM: Yeah, absolutely without a doubt. Janet has done so much for me and my emotional mental\n29 health, coming to terms with the fact that I’m a brown person and really, I think, helping me in\n30 that space to be OK with being mad at my parents or being mad at society or being mad at the\n31 world for being fed a lie my whole life, which was that I was not a person of color and that we\n32 don’t see race – which is a bunch of hogwash. And the anger that came from that – and that’s\n33 why Janet was like, “You need to go talk to Roxanne Anderson, because Roxanne understands\n34 trans-racial adoption, understands what it’s like to live in multiple worlds all at the same time\n35 because of gender, race, sexual orientation . . . all of these different things.” It was just perfect,\n36 Roxanne was like . . . and we have the same birthday.\n37 AJ: Is that right?\nDamion Mendez 21\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nDM: 1 Yeah, October 10th.\n2 AJ: Oh wow.\n3 DM: They’re like 30 years older . . . like 20 years older than me . . . 30. I don’t know, but the same\n4 birthday.\n5 AJ: Same birth date – birthday twins. Cool.\n6 DM: It is cool, it’s really cool. And Roxanne really helped me . . . yeah, with the anger and with the . .\n7 . Roxanne, I remember . . . I don’t know what came up, something about how I was back when\n8 they first met me, but Roxanne will tell you I was angry. I was angry at the world – I hated\n9 everything, I hated everyone. I didn’t have anybody. I didn’t have community, like that – like\n10 brown, trans, queer community. And without that, being a brown trans queer person, I don’t\n11 know how one can survive without completely imploding in some manner or form.\n12 AJ: Wow. Man, you talk about this identity of being brown and trans and queer, and we’re at the\n13 end of a very, very sad week in brown, trans and queer history. A week where we have seen our\n14 brown, Black, trans and queer family slaughtered in Orlando, Florida at the Pulse nightclub. As a\n15 Latino trans masculine identified person, what are your thoughts around that?\n16 DM: So I actually didn’t even find out that it happened until Monday. My mother, my white mother,\n17 which I was very surprised about, texted me and said, “Did you hear about what happened in\n18 Orlando?” I was like, “What happened in Orlando?” I had no idea what happened and she was\n19 like, “Ahh . . .” She said something about people were murdered, there was a mass shooting. I\n20 was like, “Of course there was.” So I went online and I just very briefly looked at kind of what\n21 was going on on the Google feed, just very, very briefly. I saw that there was a shooting, I saw\n22 that it was the LGBT . . . well, no – in that article it was very much gay, it was that the gay\n23 community had been affected. I did not realize at that time that they were brown, they were all\n24 brown.\n25 AJ: Right.\n26 DM: And that they were all either very much Latino or Afro-Latino. I did not know that. And so I\n27 said, “ That’s sad,” and then I went on with my day.\n28 AJ: Sure.\n29 DM: The next day I came into work and EJ Olson, our community operations director here at Family\n30 Tree Clinic, had made an altar on the front desk – candles, asked if people wanted to put\n31 personal objects on the altar, and then had put a list of the names of the individuals that had\n32 lost their lives. So I went over there and I read the names and it all just hit me in that exact\n33 moment – these are all Latino names, all of these names. And then I was like, “OK, now I need\n34 to look more into this, now I need to know more.” And so I went online and I looked and I read\n35 articles and I . . . we had KFAI on and we were listening to the all talk. I think I went through a\n36 moment of just . . . of immediate shock and numbness, so I was really sad, but there was\n37 nothing there. I wasn’t feeling anything. I was sad, but that was it. And then Wednesday it hit\n38 me. I got to work, I don’t remember what happened – something happened where I was on\nDamion Mendez 22\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nFacebook and someone posted something and I had to leave, I couldn’t 1 even be at work\n2 anymore. I just couldn’t. And I went home and I cried the whole day, just about the sad . . . the\n3 horrific nature in which this happened. I thought about the ways in which these people had lost\n4 their lives and what they experienced – like right before they passed and horrible that must\n5 have been and how alone they felt and the families that are left behind, who are mourning the\n6 loss of these folks and have no real understanding of who to blame . . .\n7 AJ: Right.\n8 DM: . . . as far as who is responsible, and then it turned into this Islamaphobic debate and I really\n9 don’t think that we need to be discussing that at all. I don’t think that that is relevant. I think\n10 that his religious . . .\n11 AJ: Because it was a Muslim shooter, right?\n12 DM: Right. I don’t think that his faith necessarily has anything to do with what happened. I think\n13 that what happened could very well have been the effects of society on this person as possibly a\n14 gay person. I know that I’ve read some things that he had a Grindr account, that he identified as\n15 gay, and that he also frequented that club on a regular basis.\n16 AJ: Right, it’s sort of humorous in many ways.\n17 DM: It is, in many ways. And I find that we need to talk more about mental illness within our\n18 community, I think we need to talk about the lack of infrastructure for brown people – brown\n19 queer trans people, to receive any type of culturally competent mental health services, inner\n20 homophobia, inner transphobia, inner racism. I think all of these things are in the root cause of\n21 this horrific event. It does not excuse his actions, but it speaks to a larger problem in our\n22 community which is brown people fighting other brown people, queer people fighting other\n23 queer people – like what is . . . we need to do some research on that, something about that,\n24 because I’m really sick and tired of white gay lesbian, even sometimes bisexual people, that\n25 have been posting about this issue and talking about things like how they’re affected by it. I’ve\n26 read one specific quote from someone who was talking about how they have a physical\n27 reaction, like a bodily reaction when they’re in public and they try and hold their boyfriend’s\n28 hand and how upsetting that is for them, and how this incident reminded them of how they’re\n29 not safe. But something that Saul said last night really impacted me in a way, because I was\n30 raised by white people and I don’t experience these things on a daily basis, but for some of our\n31 community, or some of our African-American, Afro-Latino community members, this is a daily\n32 thing.\n33 AJ: Right.\n34 DM: Death, murder, violence towards bodies that look like you are a daily event, so for these folks to\n35 just . . .\n36 AJ: Yeah, I think I actually said that.\n37 DM: Yeah – no, I think you’re right. I think both of you did – yeah. The commodification, the usage\n38 of this horrible thing, this tragedy that happened, to talk about your injustices in the world,\nDamion Mendez 23\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nmakes me . . . want to throw things because I’m just . . . I’m done. I’m sick 1 of you using and\n2 exploiting our pain and our loss to say that you understand and that you are Orlando. This\n3 #IamOrlando, please stop. Please stop. Because the people who are Orlando and who were\n4 Orlando, if they would have gone to those organizations, they would have never received any\n5 actual services.\n6 AJ: Sure.\n7 DM: So it’s just unfortunate and it definitely affected me as far as my anxiety and my depression –\n8 they have been very high. I don’t really want to be out in the world, I found myself just going\n9 right back to Eagan, right into my little cocoon, and I just watched Netflix.\n10 AJ: Are you going to go to Pride?\n11 DM: Yes – yeah. I’m going to go to Pride in very specific ways. I want to be there to just be a witness\n12 to things that are happening for my community, because we all know that every year there is\n13 always an incident between our fabulous brown indigenous queer trans LGB folks having conflict\n14 with either police, Pride guests, security, people who think they’re security because they’re\n15 drunk – whoever the hell feels like being the hall monitor that day, and we have to deal with\n16 that. I think that as community we need to show up, if we can . . .\n17 AJ: If we can.\n18 DM: . . . for people to, again, be a witness. So if you see something that goes down, you pull out\n19 your damn phone, you call whoever you need to call, and you get a group of 300 brown people\n20 in that space so that this can be witnessed. We cannot allow these things to continue without\n21 someone having some fricking responsibility. Jamar, Trayvon, all of these folks that have lost\n22 their lives and there has been no . . . and we know this, there is not going to be any\n23 accountability. But I’m done with that and we need to figure out how to change that because I\n24 need some accountability.\n25 AJ: Yes, yes – I hear you. I’m with you.\n26 DM: Some people think that brown people are angry, I think that they’re right. I think that we are\n27 really angry and I think that we are very justified in our anger and I think that we need to have\n28 some accountability because I don’t . . . since the Orlando shooting, and prior to the Orlando\n29 shooting, two other African American trans women were murdered and no one is talking about\n30 it.\n31 AJ: Yes.\n32 DM: That’s a problem to me, that we can bring up and uplift brown people but through the uplifting\n33 of certain brown people, Black people are othered – and that’s my problem. If we want to come\n34 together, we need to be talking about all of these things and we need to be just having genuine\n35 conversation and the one group of people that I find to be having the best type of conversation\n36 around the othering of Black people by other brown bodies, is Dark Matters.\n37 AJ: Yeah, Alok Vaid.\nDamion Mendez 24\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\n1 DM: Yes.\n2 AJ: And . . .\n3 DM: Yeah, their names . . . but yeah, I truly . . . when I heard that I was . . . I was just so enlightened\n4 by that because we talk about how white people take up space, we talk about how cis people\n5 take up space, but I think there’s also something to be said about masculine-identifying people\n6 taking up too much damn space and about . . . that there is a reality around skin tone and skin\n7 shade and sometimes lighter folks, and especially folks who pass as white, sometimes need to\n8 take a back seat because it’s not that . . . we don’t do that. We have different understandings\n9 and realities because of that and it’s not fair and that doesn’t mean that I’m ever, “Oh, you’ve\n10 suffered more than me,” or, “That’s not fair because . . .” It’s not any of that, it’s more like,\n11 “This is the reality and we need to be held accountable and we need to let the people who need\n12 to speak, and who never have their voices uplifted, be uplifted.” And if that means you need to\n13 shut up, then you need to shut up. And that’s where I’m at these days I’m just trying to . . .\n14 when I’m in brown space, I’m very, very aware of that.\n15 AJ: Wow.\n16 DM: And I’m also aware that I was raised by a white family and I’m very real about that. It took me a\n17 long time, I was very afraid to be real about that – that people wouldn’t want me in space, but I\n18 think that by being real and by being truthful about your identity and where you come from and\n19 the experiences that you have, people have . . . hopefully, a more trusting sense of you because\n20 you’re upfront.\n21 AJ: Sure. Yeah, I think that’s the reality of being authentically trans too. Right?\n22 DM: Right. Absolutely – they’re so parallel.\n23 AJ: Where do you work? Tell me a little bit about what you do.\n24 DM: So, I definitely first want to mention that I started out in community at the Minnesota Trans\n25 Health Coalition. I have been volunteering there for five-plus years.\n26 AJ: Shot collar.\n27 DM: Shot collar. I speak on behalf of MTHC at schools, classrooms. I’ve gone to the U of M and\n28 talked to up and coming medical students.\n29 AJ: Right.\n30 DM: I’ve gone to clinics, I’ve gone with Roxanne Anderson and Alex Iantaffi to Bemidji and we talked\n31 to some doctors up there – we’ve done a lot of stuff and I think it’s really important that we\n32 have a brown and also gender identity diverse group of people speaking on behalf of the trans\n33 community because not one of us completely encapsulates our community and so we have to\n34 show that we are very different in all of our ways.\n35 AJ: Absolutely.\nDamion Mendez 25\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nDM: And then through being at the Minnesota Trans Health Coalition and Roxanne 1 Anderson being\n2 badass, I was eventually kind of linked into the process of Family Tree Clinic, using that space as\n3 a space to not only train some of the Family Tree Clinic staff by going and shadowing people at\n4 Shaw Clinic, which is the time when we give trans and gender non-conforming folks hormones\n5 that they are prescribed if they don’t like to give themselves an injection. And then they also\n6 had a community listening session there and I met Alissa Light, which is the executive director of\n7 Family Tree Clinic, and also Erin Wilkins, who is now my supervisor.\n8 AJ: Oh wow.\n9 DM: With Roxanne’s pushing and emailing and texting and probably bothering the shit out of Alissa, I\n10 got an interview.\n11 AJ: Oh wow.\n12 DM: I’m very humbled by that and I’m also humbled by the fact that CeCe McDonald and Kaya . . . of\n13 course I’m not going to remember Kaya’s last name . . . both African American trans women, as\n14 far as this position – they were also interviewed.\n15 AJ: Oh really.\n16 DM: Yes, and it was between the three of us and I received the position. And candidly, I think that\n17 there are probably very real reasons why I got the position over them. And no, I don’t\n18 necessarily think that it makes me happy all the time to know that I took a position that should\n19 have been for a trans woman of color because we know that trans women of color are the folks\n20 who are experiencing all of the inequalities, experiencing the least amount of proper care within\n21 the medical system around hormones or around anything. But I also think that, unfortunately, it\n22 takes a certain type of person to do this job because you are in a space where . . . for a while\n23 there, I was one of maybe two or three trans people that worked in the organization and one or\n24 two of the brown people that worked in the organization, predominantly white cis female.\n25 AJ: Yes.\n26 DM: There were days, Andrea, when I did not want to be here and when I did not think that we were\n27 going to able to do this – where I thought that there was no way that a brown person could be\n28 seen here without having some kind of just horrible traumatic experience. There was a lot of\n29 conflict between myself and the providers, not Yukiko, but the cis white female providers.\n30 AJ: Yukiko . . . Y-u-k-I . . .\n31 DM: Y-u-k-i-k-o.\n32 AJ: K-o . . . Yukiko, just like it sounds.\n33 DM: Yeah. And yeah, I don’t know . . . and then on top of that, we were also beginning to centralize\n34 racial justice and anti-oppression work at Family Tree.\n35 AJ: So maybe what you’re doing is you’re making this place more accessible so that CeCe and Kiana\n36 or . . .\nDamion Mendez 26\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\n1 DM: Kaya.\n2 AJ: Kaya, could potentially work here in the future.\n3 DM: That’s where I’ve come to – the conclusion that . . .\n4 AJ: Because they may not have . . . given the environment that you described, they may not have\n5 been successful in that environment.\n6 DM: No, I think they would have had a lot of emotional, spiritual, physical bodily reactions to\n7 sometimes the things that happened in the past year. I do agree, I think that . . . I want\n8 absolutely, and I’ve told them from the day that I have gotten here, that I want to see a trans\n9 woman of color, specifically Black, to come into this space and have a position of power - please\n10 and thank you. Whether that means they’re another trans health advocate, whether that\n11 means that we create another position, I don’t care – but we need that because there are very\n12 few spaces in which there are Black trans women who have positions of power, and of actual\n13 power. And so, that will happen.\n14 AJ: That’s awesome.\n15 DM: Oh yeah – it will, it will. We’ve got to get more funding, we’re doing it and we have some grants\n16 on the way, we’re going to do what we can so that we can get that. I know that although I’m\n17 doing a good job at what I do, I am not a trans woman so I can’t do very much for the trans\n18 women that I’m seeing. I can . . . from a trans perspective, but not from a feminizing\n19 perspective. I don’t know what feminizing hormones do to my body. I know what they do, but I\n20 didn’t like it and so I probably just pushed it out of my brain.\n21 AJ: Exactly.\n22 DM: I don’t know what the hormones that you put into your body, that are feminizing do, or the\n23 experiences or the emotional, physiological changes – all of these things, that is not my\n24 experience and so I cannot . . . I can’t speak to that, and that’s not OK. It’s not OK, it’s never\n25 been OK. I have lots of feelings about it – you know, when I go into spaces and I do trainings, I\n26 always say we need to get a trans woman in here as well because I cannot do that and it pains\n27 me that the people that really need to be speaking on these subjects, who would do a way\n28 better job, aren’t here and aren’t being paid for that. So yeah, it is my goal to absolutely make\n29 this space accessible for those people so that we can start seeing more African American trans\n30 women as clients.\n31 AJ: Wow. Man, Damion, this has been a fascinating discussion. I’m so grateful for the opportunity\n32 to sit down with you. I have about three minutes worth of battery life and tape left here, so tell\n33 me where do you think the trans community is going to be in the next 50 years?\n34 DM: Where we’ve always been – front and center for whatever happens, for whatever community\n35 we’ve always been. That’s historical. Trans women, African American and Latina trans women\n36 have always been at the forefront of anything, and I think that will absolutely continue. I think\n37 that the things that are happening are going to continue to push our community to get more\n38 and more angry and to get more and more ready to see some change, and if that means civil\nDamion Mendez 27\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\ndisobedience or . . . I don’t know, mass sit-ins, mass bathroom-ins, I don’t know 1 – it’s going to go\n2 down.\n3 AJ: Right.\n4 DM: And we will be there.\n5 AJ: Wow.\n6 DM: Because that’s what we do.\n7 AJ: That’s powerful.\n8 DM: It is.\n9 AJ: That’s the perfect place to end. Thank you, Damion.\n10 DM: Thank you.", "_version_": 1710339102988042240, "type": "Moving Image", "collection": "p16022coll97", "is_compound": false, "parent_id": "169", "thumb_url": "https://cdnapisec.kaltura.com/p/1369852/thumbnail/entry_id/0_dq5pvl0i", "thumb_cdn_url": "https://dkp5i0hinw9br.cloudfront.net/38195999e0855bdc220d552d7fb15707ca3dc5fe.png", "children": [ ] }