{ "id": "p16022coll97:50", "object": "https://cdm16022.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getthumbnail/collection/p16022coll97/id/50", "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 Owen Marciano", "title_s": "Interview with Owen Marciano", "title_t": "Interview with Owen Marciano", "title_search": "Interview with Owen Marciano", "title_sort": "interviewwithowenmarciano", "description": "Owen Marciano is a white genderqueer person from Rochester, New York. At the time of this interview, Marciano was living in Minneapolis. In this oral history, Marciano speaks at length about coming out, white lesbian communities, mental health, family relationships, abuse, and gender essentialism within queer spaces. Marciano also touches upon transitioning, building community, dating, beauty, fatness, and chosen family within the Twin Cities.", "date_created": [ "2015-12-05" ], "date_created_ss": [ "2015-12-05" ], "date_created_sort": "2015", "creator": [ "Marciano, Owen" ], "creator_ss": [ "Marciano, Owen" ], "creator_sort": "marcianoowen", "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": "1:07:50", "subject": [ "White", "East Coast (United States)", "Midwest (United States)", "Coming Out", "Race", "Sex and Love", "Friendship and Community", "Mental Health", "Family Relationships", "Harassment", "Discrimination", "Health", "Gender Affirming Care", "Privilege", "Art and Creative Work", "Health and Healthcare", "Tretter Transgender Oral History Project Phase 1" ], "subject_ss": [ "White", "East Coast (United States)", "Midwest (United States)", "Coming Out", "Race", "Sex and Love", "Friendship and Community", "Mental Health", "Family Relationships", "Harassment", "Discrimination", "Health", "Gender Affirming Care", "Privilege", "Art and Creative Work", "Health and Healthcare", "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_tohp099" ], "dls_identifier": [ "tretter414_tohp099" ], "rights_statement_uri": "http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/", "kaltura_audio": "1_xv5ffalx", "kaltura_video": "1_zu9x3xk6", "kaltura_combo_playlist": "0_tae81kqe", "page_count": 0, "record_type": "primary", "first_viewer_type": "kaltura_combo_playlist", "viewer_type": "kaltura_combo_playlist", "attachment": "84.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": "Owen Marciano\nNarrator\nAndrea Jenkins\nInterviewer\nThe Transgender Oral History Project\nTretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nDecember 16, 2015\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 Owen Marciano -OM\n3\n4 AJ: So, hello.\n5 OM: Hi.\n6 AJ: My name is Andrea Jenkins and I am the oral historian for the Transgender Oral History Project\n7 at the Tretter Collection at the University of Minnesota. Today is December 16, 2015, and I am\n8 actually on the campus of the University of Minnesota and today I am talking with Owen\n9 Marciano. So, Owen, can you state your name, your gender identity, your gender assigned at\n10 birth, as well as your preferred pronouns?\n11 OM: Sure. My name is Owen Marciano and I was assigned female at birth and I currently identify as\n12 gender queer.\n13 AJ: Gender queer, wonderful. So, can you tell me what is your earliest memory? Like the earliest\n14 thing you remember in life.\n15 OM: Just in general?\n16 AJ: It doesn’t have to have anything to do with your gender identity, although if it is related to your\n17 gender identity, that’s absolutely fine too. But I just kind of want to know what’s the first thing\n18 you remember.\n19 OM: It’s a hard question to answer because I have a lot of really early childhood memories that\n20 flooded into my brain when you asked that question and I don’t know which came first but they\n21 all kind of entered my brain at the same time.\n22 AJ: OK.\n23 OM: One of my earliest memories is of being with my parents and my sister, who is about . . . well,\n24 she’s not about, she’s exactly 17 months younger than me, and my brother who is four years\n25 younger, and he was a baby at the time. We were at a K-Mart for a family photo, as was our\n26 annual Christmas tradition.\n27 AJ: Sure.\n28 OM: And my sister wasn’t smiling and my brother was crying and my dad pulled out a belt in the\n29 middle of the K-Mart to instill fear, enough fear to make everybody smile. It didn’t work and I\n30 remember that photo hanging on our wall forever and ever afterwards as an example of\n31 children defying their parents and it was often talked that way. Most of my early childhood\n32 memories are full of terror.\n33 AJ: Oh boy.\n34 OM: But in that photo, I am smiling. I think even by then I had learned how to play the game to avoid\n35 being punished and I remember trying to nudge my sister like, “You just have to smile even\n36 though you’re sad and then it will be over.”\nOwen Marciano 4\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nAJ: So you must have been about five then if your little brother is four years 1 younger and he was\n2 already on the planet.\n3 OM: Yeah, I was five or six at the time. So that’s the one that came into my brain.\n4 AJ: That’s the one that kind of sticks out for you.\n5 OM: It sticks out, yes.\n6 AJ: Where did you go to elementary school?\n7 OM: I went to a school called St. Lawrence, it was a Catholic elementary school in Rochester, New\n8 York.\n9 AJ: Oh, wow.\n10 OM: Which is where I’m from. Yeah, it was a pretty . . .\n11 AJ: How do you spell that?\n12 OM: St. Lawrence?\n13 AJ: Oh, St. Lawrence. It’s pretty easy to spell.\n14 OM: Yeah, not too bad. I talk kind of quickly though, sometimes people don’t understand what I’m\n15 saying.\n16 AJ: Yeah.\n17 OM: It was a pretty . . .\n18 AJ: So you went there all through elementary?\n19 OM: Kindergarten I went to a public school because there wasn’t space yet, I don’t think, in the\n20 private school that my parents wanted to send me to. I don’t actually know the story about\n21 that, I know they wanted me to go to a Catholic school. So 1st grade through 8th grade I was at\n22 St. Lawrence.\n23 AJ: Oh, wow – a good long time.\n24 OM: It was a long time, yeah.\n25 AJ: What was the experience like? You were born assigned female at birth, so you were probably\n26 socialized in that same way.\n27 OM: I was.\n28 AJ: How was that experience in Catholic school?\n29 OM: Are you asking in terms of gender specifically? Or do you want me to talk generally about what\n30 it was like?\n31 AJ: I guess generally but a lot of times people have . . .\nOwen Marciano 5\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nOM: Gender 1 is related for sure.\n2 AJ: Yeah, gender is related to those kinds of issues or concerns.\n3 OM: Before I answer your question, the reason that I asked that is because I don’t have a traditional\n4 narrative around my gender identity.\n5 AJ: That’s perfect.\n6 OM: So it was not an issue for me. OK. So my school was really conservative politically, as were my\n7 parents. And a very wealthy group of people, it was a high tuition school in a relatively wealthy\n8 suburb of Rochester. It was on the west side and more of the money was on the east side, so it\n9 wasn’t one of the fanciest, but for our side of town and for our community, it was a pretty . . .\n10 AJ: Relatively speaking.\n11 OM: Relatively speaking, it was a pretty wealthy group of folks. Our uniforms were red, white and\n12 blue – it was kind of gross . . . I didn’t know it at the time, but as I look back at it. I was really\n13 isolated. I was undergoing a lot of emotional and physical abuse at home that was unrecognized\n14 by anyone in a place of authority at my school.\n15 AJ: And you didn’t talk about it?\n16 OM: I didn’t talk about it; I didn’t know that it wasn’t normal. I thought that that was how dads were,\n17 just in general, so I assumed that my experience was shared amongst my classmates. And so I\n18 didn’t understand why they all thought I was so weird. I don’t know exactly what I was doing\n19 that made me feel so weird to them, but I was really an outcast in my class for I don’t know\n20 what reasons. Some of them might have been I’ve always been kind of heavy, so I remember\n21 being made fun of for being fat, I remember being made fun of for being poor – I was on a\n22 scholarship. Our family was, by no means, poor, but you wouldn’t know that based on how\n23 relatively we were to . . .\n24 AJ: To the rest of the community.\n25 OM: Yeah, the community at my school. And I didn’t have the right clothes and I didn’t have\n26 whatever. Our teachers were very strict about following rules and there was a huge, huge, huge\n27 emphasis on our grades from before I can remember. I remember feeling a lot of pressure\n28 around performing academically and I would get punished at home if I got anything below an\n29 “A”. So I worked really hard to get straight “A’s” as much as I could, and I did most of the time.\n30 AJ: Sure.\n31 OM: So that . . . it was hellish, honestly. It was horrible.\n32 AJ: And it had nothing to do with gender expression or gender identity or any of those things.\n33 OM: I didn’t start expressing my gender as anything other than traditionally feminine until I was in\n34 graduate school. At that time . . . and I didn’t experience any gender dysphoria until I was an\n35 adult. So, what I mean when I say I don’t have that narrative is I didn’t grow up with any\n36 weirdness about my gender. I did feel weirdness about my body, in general, in terms of its size\nOwen Marciano 6\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nand what I could and couldn’t do with it. I felt that around wealth and class 1 stuff and not having\n2 the right clothes, that kind of stuff.\n3 AJ: Sure.\n4 OM: I can go back in my memory and recognize ways my gender had been policed and encouraged to\n5 move toward feminine, but it was not in congress for me at the time.\n6 AJ: Got it.\n7 OM: So that wasn’t a source of pain or anything. Where I was feeling like I was failing as a human\n8 being was if I didn’t get an “A” or if I didn’t get invited to the party or if I didn’t . . . that was kind\n9 of where the pain was for me.\n10 AJ: Some of the other issues that many of us experience growing up related to social standing and\n11 relationships.\n12 OM: Yes. I do remember, there was a boy, named Mike . . . I won’t use his last name, who I was close\n13 friends with in very early years – 1st grade, 2nd grade, and it turned out in later life that he did\n14 come out as gay. When we were friends in school, we didn’t know that about one another, but\n15 we both liked to play with Barbies and neither of us liked the physical activity stuff that\n16 everyone else was doing. We were both kind of outcasts, so he was certainly outcast from boys\n17 because of gender things – he was not interested in the things that they were interested in and\n18 then he would rather do “girlie” things. So he and I used to hide from the other children and\n19 play Barbies together under the jungle gym where they couldn’t find us or that sort of thing. I\n20 do remember, when I’m thinking about – in like trainings that I’ve done about gender or\n21 whatever, my earliest lesson about gender roles, I remember a time where they found us, the\n22 other boys who were playing football, found us and pulled him out physically and started\n23 beating him up because he wasn’t playing. And after that, he no longer hung out with me and\n24 started to try to fit in with the boys. I remember feeling deep, deep loss and I still feel sad about\n25 it. He was one of my only allies in that place and then because of gender violence, I lost my\n26 friend. And so, for me, that is probably my earliest and most vivid memory of what it means to\n27 go outside of those gender norms.\n28 AJ: Those gender norms, so to speak.\n29 OM: And what the consequences are for that.\n30 AJ: So talk about the first time that you realized you were different from the gender you were\n31 assigned at birth.\n32 OM: It wasn’t until I was in my early 20s and I moved to New York City to start a graduate program in\n33 higher education.\n34 AJ: New York City?\n35 OM: That’s right. I actually like that commercial. So, before that point I knew that I was different\n36 politically from my entire family and that I was an ally to LGBT people, was kind of what made\n37 me different from the rest of my family. And I had come out by that point as . . . I didn’t use the\nOwen Marciano 7\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nword queer, but as a queer. So I’d come out as a lesbian first and then bisexual. 1 It was because\n2 I didn’t know what those words meant or what the language meant. So . . . I can’t remember\n3 what I was talking about.\n4 AJ: You were in graduate school; you came out to your family.\n5 OM: Yes, that’s right.\n6 AJ: You had various identities.\n7 OM: So my graduate program . . .\n8 AJ: Where did you go to graduate school?\n9 OM: It was NYU and it was in the Steinhardt School of Education, higher education program – student\n10 personnel administration was what it was called. At that time, I don’t know if it still is but at\n11 that time, it was a practicum-based program. So I was admitted academically but then I had to\n12 go on to campus and interview for a job in a student affairs position and I also had to get a job. I\n13 was admitted academically and then I had to get hired in order to go into the program, so that\n14 was kind of how it worked. I had never . . .\n15 AJ: And then you had to have a job beyond that too?\n16 OM: No, I lived on credit cards.\n17 AJ: OK.\n18 OM: The program paid my tuition so the only expenses – and books. So the only expenses that I had\n19 were housing and food really. I did get a stipend for working my 20 hours a week, so I got paid\n20 but it wasn’t enough to live on.\n21 AJ: Not in New York.\n22 OM: I did end up, toward the end of my time there, getting a job at an LGBT bookstore, actually, in\n23 the village and tried to supplement my income a little bit. I’m still paying off the debt from living\n24 in New York City and that will be forever, I’m pretty sure.\n25 AJ: Yeah, that’s an expensive adventure.\n26 OM: So anyway, I didn’t . . . I had some friends who are LGBT and I had come out, but I hadn’t been in\n27 any kind of queer relationships. I had always only dated cis men at that point. But clearly I\n28 knew I was attracted to, and was curious about, other genders and so I used these words to\n29 describe myself but I had not done anything.\n30 AJ: Sure.\n31 OM: So I didn’t consider myself to be an activist either, at that point. So NYU changed a lot for me.\n32 So, when I went for my interviews, I came out – the LGBT Services Office was one of the places\n33 that was hiring the practicum students and I didn’t know what to say to them, so all I did was\n34 say, “Well, I’m bi,” and I just talked about being bi, which I was making up on the spot – I had\n35 never even talked about myself that way before.\nOwen Marciano 8\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\n1 AJ: Yeah.\n2 OM: And they were not on . . . so we had this process where then, as candidates, we got to say which\n3 were our top choices for the sites we wanted to be placed at, and they did the same and then\n4 there was a matching process. I didn’t list the LGBT Programs Office, or the LGBT Student\n5 Services Office, on my top 3, but I was their top choice and so they hired me, so I ended up\n6 being there. I was like, “Mmm, OK.” That was when I met queer, gender queer and trans\n7 people for the first time and I was in charge of advising this student group called, “Fluidity,” that\n8 was about gender and sexuality, in terms of non-binary kinds of things.\n9 AJ: Even though you really didn’t have language and/or real lived experiences.\n10 OM: Correct, that is correct. It was a crash course. Luckily I was an open person and was excited . . .\n11 AJ: Thank God for all of that training of studying hard as a kid.\n12 OM: That’s right. I just did a lot of listening as an advisor to that group, and really my role as an\n13 advisor was just to make sure that they got resources that they needed and help them navigate\n14 the university. So that I could do easily, and then just tried to form relationships with the\n15 younger folks who weren’t that much younger than I was at that time in my life – just to learn\n16 about what that whole world was like. When I heard the word gender queer and understood\n17 what it meant, I was like, “That’s me.” I had had no questioning about my gender until I heard\n18 the word and heard how people described it. The way they described it was that I just don’t\n19 want . . . what I heard most from that was people just didn’t want to feel like they needed to fit\n20 into a masculine or a feminine box and wanted to recognize that actually we all have this\n21 freedom to kind of move around in our bodies and to move around gender and to question it. I\n22 was like, “Cool, that is the coolest thing. I’ve never questioned my gender before, I’ve never\n23 even thought about this for myself,” and I totally began this process of really thinking about who\n24 I am in the world, what I want to look like. I had just kind of accepted that this was my body and\n25 it was not . . . that it was immutable. I had accepted that it was immutable so it was something\n26 that I hadn’t put any thought toward.\n27 AJ: Something which 98% of the people on the planet do, right?\n28 OM: Correct. And my experience of gender . . . I mean I had been working . . . I had sort of come to\n29 identify myself as a feminist, I understood that gender essentialism was fucked up, I had these\n30 kind of understandings, but I also was sort of around a lot of people who . . . a lot of white\n31 lesbians, who identified as women who had this, “We are women and we can be whatever we\n32 want, we can express our femininity and whatever.” So for a while that was great and that was\n33 enough for me, but then when I learned about gender queer and this whole world opened up to\n34 me, of freedom – that I could just sort of explore what it was like to wear masculine clothing and\n35 see how I felt and I realized that I really enjoyed it and that I actually felt stronger and more\n36 powerful and I didn’t know I could. And so, that sort of began this physical transition, which I\n37 didn’t start taking hormones until I moved here to Minneapolis in 2004.\n38 AJ: 2004.\nOwen Marciano 9\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nOM: And I changed my name in 2005, legally. So it happened kind of quickly and I just 1 . . . to get what\n2 I want, or need, out of the binary systems that exist around us, I present pretty masculine in\n3 public, but I don’t actually identify as a man and I kind of don’t feel comfortable in all male\n4 spaces or men’s spaces, generally. So I would rather occupy a space that Is not either end of\n5 that gender spectrum.\n6 AJ: So how do you feel when people refer to you as sir or him or . . .?\n7 OM: The only way I can describe it is that it feels more accurate than ma’am or she.\n8 AJ: That’s . . . I get it, I totally get it.\n9 OM: Literally when people ask, “What’s your preference?” It’s my preference, but ideally we\n10 wouldn’t be gendered the way that we are.\n11 AJ: Just be Owen.\n12 OM: I would just be Owen – yeah.\n13 AJ: Wow, that’s pretty fascinating. So you’ve kind of talked about how your terms have changed\n14 over time, I think I had a question related to . . . prior to you hearing the term gender queer,\n15 were you . . . I think I heard you say you were identifying as lesbian, bisexual . . .\n16 OM: Yes.\n17 AJ: . . . in the feminist community. Were you sort of presenting as what we call a butch dyke or\n18 more masculine?\n19 OM: I went back and forth, honestly. So when I was an undergraduate, my first two years were at a\n20 community college and I had to live at home with my family. And then my second two years I\n21 went away, to Binghamton. When I went away to Binghamton, I shaved my head immediately.\n22 It was a little bit like . . . a lot of the young white lesbians that I knew at the time were copying\n23 Ani DiFranco and shaving their heads.\n24 AJ: That’s right.\n25 OM: So it felt like a gender statement but it didn’t feel like a statement of masculinity.\n26 AJ: Sure.\n27 OM: But I definitely cut my hair and started to wear much more masculine clothing. I never enjoyed\n28 dresses so even though I was pretty femme when I was a kid, people did have to wrangle me\n29 into really traditional . . .\n30 AJ: Ruffles and . . .\n31 OM: Yeah, that was never stuff . . .\n32 AJ: Patent leather shoes and . . .\n33 OM: I loved the color pink and I still like it, but I didn’t like wearing dresses and I didn’t like dressing\n34 up in general – I honestly still don’t like dressing up, I’d rather be comfy in my jeans. So I did\nOwen Marciano 10\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nstart to wear more masculine clothing but it didn’t feel like a conscious 1 choice that I was\n2 becoming more masculine in that moment or trying to. It felt, within the context of the\n3 community that I was in, like I want to express a different kind of femininity and I want to\n4 challenge what the ideas of femininity are by doing this stuff. I started having short hair then\n5 and then I grew it out and wore a dress once to a party and then I cut my hair again and wore a\n6 suit to the next one. There was a period of a few years during undergraduate and into graduate\n7 school where I was, actually, fluid about my gender and I just didn’t know that that’s what I was\n8 doing.\n9 AJ: The language didn’t exist.\n10 OM: I didn’t know how to talk about it.\n11 AJ: Right, exactly.\n12 OM: Or that there were others that were doing that outside of the white lesbian feminist, the\n13 handful of them that I had kind of found community with.\n14 AJ: What challenges have you experienced as you have begun to, or since you’ve begun to express\n15 an alternate gender? And I only use the word alternate because, as we’re talking about\n16 language there’s not a really super-appropriate word for that right at this moment.\n17 OM: Yeah, I totally get it.\n18 AJ: So I’m not trying to be . . .\n19 OM: I get that, that’s OK.\n20 AJ: . . . defensive or derogatory or anything like that, it’s just . . . yeah.\n21 OM: Yeah.\n22 AJ: Or I could say your true gender identity, but I feel like gender is still fluid and in flux.\n23 OM: Yeah, I really want to hang to . . .\n24 AJ: So maybe your true gender today but tomorrow it may be something different.\n25 OM: I really want to hang on to my right to change my mind. One of the things that I find\n26 troublesome about some of the ways that trans activism is happening on a national scale, it\n27 does feel like it still looks very binary – trans women and trans men, who kind of embody their\n28 new gender in a way that looks traditional for that gender.\n29 AJ: Yeah, Caitlyn Jenner just said . . .\n30 OM: Yes.\n31 AJ: What was the quote?\n32 OM: Something essentialist, I don’t remember.\nOwen Marciano 11\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nAJ: Yeah, essentially trans women . . . some trans people can make cis 1 gender people feel\n2 uncomfortable by presenting like a man in a dress. She used the blasphemist term, “man in a\n3 dress,” in a Time magazine article.\n4 OM: We don’t need that for our community.\n5 AJ: So very much a binary sort of affirming, or conforming, statement.\n6 OM: That’s what it feels like is more assimilationist and conformist than radical in terms of . . . we\n7 actually don’t have to interact with each other this way, we don’t have to set these kinds of\n8 strict standards for beauty or professionalism. There’s lots of different ways in which the\n9 gender presentation is policed in different classes and different communities, but it is in every\n10 class and community policed, it does look different in every one of those places. So challenges I\n11 think was your question since presenting my gender differently. I have a bit of a unique story, I\n12 think, because my coming out as trans and gender queer – I do identify with the term trans as\n13 part of a broader community, so I do sometimes use that.\n14 AJ: Sure.\n15 OM: But it’s always been in the context of an office or service specifically for LGBT people and so the\n16 LGBT Student Services Office was where I learned about gender queer as a word and what that\n17 meant, so my beginnings of experimenting . . .\n18 AJ: And that was at NYU.\n19 OM: At NYU I was surrounded by people who that was their work and that was what they did, and so\n20 I have these sort of arms around me. And so then . . .\n21 AJ: So that was a welcoming environment.\n22 OM: Mostly, yes. And then my next job after graduate school was at Colgate University where I ran\n23 their LGBT program as well, I was the first person to be paid to do LGBT work professionally on\n24 their campus, with LGBT students. And that was a super isolated place, I was really isolated\n25 there as a queer person, which was both good and bad. It was hard, I was lonely, I had\n26 depression pretty hard – I had a couple suicide attempts that year. But, it was also because I\n27 was sort of disconnected from NYU community, from my community in Rochester. I felt really\n28 free to just be who I was. I didn’t feel like I was beholden to a former version of me or that I had\n29 to explain myself in any way. So in a lot of ways, that one year that I was at Colgate in Hamilton,\n30 New York, was actually really freeing when I look back on it, because I did a lot of\n31 experimentation with binding and with my hair and using different names and just acting like\n32 that had always been my name. There were ways that I could . . .\n33 AJ: There were no constrictions, no constraints.\n34 OM: Exactly. So I did a lot of experimentation that year, which that was challenging given the\n35 environment – it’s a pretty conservative school, there’s a lot of Greek life, there’s a lot of white\n36 conservative money that funds the school and so it reflects the values that . . .\n37 AJ: Is that a private school?\nOwen Marciano 12\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nOM: It is a private school. And so, I felt a lot of backlash for the work I was trying 1 to do on that\n2 campus and I think that that’s how people expressed their frustration with me and my gender,\n3 was through what I was trying to use resources for to do on campus that was counter to the\n4 conservative politics of the institution. But it wasn’t directed about my presentation personally,\n5 it was because of . . . so, again, I had this experience of like . . . I’m pretty sure if I wasn’t doing\n6 LGBT-specific work and I was just walking around Hamilton, New York, like playing with gender\n7 that way, the heat I would have gotten would have been personal – it would have been personal\n8 about me. But because I was this sort of public figure there, doing this work that had not been\n9 done before, and that people were not in agreement with, that was where the backlash or the\n10 challenges were focused – around the work. And then coming here . . . in 2004, I came here to\n11 the U of M to work in the GLBT Programs Office, I was the Assistant Director under B. David Galt,\n12 who was the director right after Beth.\n13 AJ: Under who?\n14 OM: B. David Galt was his name.\n15 AJ: B. David Galt, OK.\n16 OM: So he was the second director.\n17 AJ: G-a-l-t.\n18 OM: That’s right. He was the second director after Beth Zemsky left the position. And so again, I was\n19 surrounded by a community of people that understood that our work is about gender and\n20 sexual revolution or liberation in some way. And so again I felt those arms around me and I\n21 came and joined Gender Blur almost right away when I moved here. I found the queer, radical\n22 artists that I wanted to know and that was great.\n23 AJ: What’s Gender Blur? Tell me about Gender Blur.\n24 OM: Gender Blur was a queer arts organization that was in existence for a few years before I even\n25 moved to the Twin Cities. So when I came, I came for kind of the end of Gender Blur. But the\n26 mission was an anti-oppression mission about working . . . I can’t remember the language, I used\n27 to know it by heart. But working toward creative spaces that were free from all forms of\n28 oppression and it mostly focused on performance art. So we did a lot of cabaret shows where\n29 we brought . . . we tried to focus on queer artists, artists of color, gender queer or trans artists\n30 as well, and create spaces where we could gather and engage with creative work that was being\n31 made in our communities. I loved it, it was great. I met most of my friends, who are still my\n32 friends, from Minneapolis – they were somehow connected to Gender Blur in some way.\n33 AJ: I remember this woman Andrea Jenkins . . .\n34 OM: Yeah, she used to perform sometimes in her sexy boots, I remember. It was good times.\n35 AJ: Wow, that’s fascinating. So, you’ve had a not so challenging sort of history.\n36 OM: It’s not really the case though. So I did have . . . there were a couple of instances that I was\n37 working in the Programs Office where . . . one time I answered the phone and there was\nOwen Marciano 13\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nsomeone, who I assume was a cis gender man – probably white, on the 1 other end of the phone.\n2 I don’t know those things for sure, but that’s my guess. I answered the phone, “GLBT Programs\n3 Office, this is Owen, how can I help you?” And he was like, “Owen?” I was like, “Yup.” He was\n4 like, “That’s a boy’s name.” I was like, “Uh-huh, can I help you?” He was like, “Well I don’t\n5 understand why your name is Owen and you’re obviously a girl.” I was like, “Let me just back\n6 up, you called the GLBT Programs Office.” He was like, “Yeah.” “Do you know what those\n7 letters stand for?” And he said what they stand for and I was like, “So you heard that last one –\n8 transgender.” And he was like, “Ohhh.” But I had to go through that – and he wasn’t the only\n9 one, but that’s the one that I remember most. And so there were some things like that, but also\n10 because of early childhood trauma from abuse from my dad and neglect from my mom, I had\n11 attempted suicide five times and the last time was right before my first testosterone shot. So it\n12 was in my first year here in Minneapolis, in that year 2005. It wasn’t until I made the decision to\n13 completely cut off contact with my family all together that I was able to move out of suicidal\n14 state and start to really deal with depression and the effects that that early childhood trauma\n15 has had, which is something that I’m dealing with still. I think gender is definitely a part of that.\n16 I just was always different and weird and my dad didn’t understand me and I’m pretty sure he\n17 has some . . . something like bi-polar or something that’s undiagnosed and he was self-18\nmedicating and he was mean, he was mean. And so my challenges are big, but I don’t know that\n19 I could say that they’re about me being trans. I think that they are really connected to mental\n20 health stuff and family violence and all of that. And definitely some of the violence that I\n21 experienced from my dad was gender related, about me not adhering to gender roles, but those\n22 instances were minor compared to . . . it was mostly about my grades and whether or not I was\n23 being a good role model for my younger siblings and mostly whether or not I was interrupting\n24 his football game or whatever else was bothering him at the time.\n25 AJ: So what about involvement with institutions like the medical industry or the criminal justice\n26 institutions – or even educational institutions? You’ve had a pretty significant academic career\n27 and I know those places can be sort of rigid around identity too.\n28 OM: That’s true. Actually my legal name is not what’s on my diploma from NYU and I keep worrying\n29 about how I have to change that. I don’t remember what the requirements are but I keep\n30 looking it up and then being like, “Oh, that will be hard,” and then I forget what it is. So I’m\n31 pretty sure I’m going to need to do that at some point. But as a student, I didn’t . . . other than\n32 how gender is policed in general, I didn’t feel like I was targeted because of my gender\n33 expression or anything like that. Medically though, I could tell a story. It is a lifelong journey,\n34 this one. When I first started menstruating, I had a very irregular period – like maybe I got my\n35 period like three or four times a year at most, and when I did it was super heavy and really\n36 painful. There were days when I couldn’t walk, the pain was radiating down. My mom had\n37 ovarian cysts so I always assumed that I had something going on in there. Every time I went to,\n38 certainly before 18 but even after 18, every time I went to a gynecologist, and I always only\n39 went to women gynecologists, they would tell me that my period was irregular because I was fat\n40 and I needed to lost weight and they would sort of brush off any of my complaints about pain –\n41 especially when I was younger and it was a new experience. “It can be painful and\n42 uncomfortable and this is normal,” and all of that.\nOwen Marciano 14\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nAJ: This is 1 normal, this is how it is.\n2 OM: So again, I just thought it was normal and then I internalized all of that fat shame and felt afraid\n3 to ask about it to other providers and that sort of thing. But I forced myself to several times\n4 throughout the years because it really was a significant issue. When I did get my period, it was\n5 bad and I couldn’t function – I couldn’t go to work, I couldn’t go to school and I felt like there\n6 was something wrong with me because I couldn’t do those things. When I was 18, I started\n7 requesting a hysterectomy – at that point I knew that I didn’t want to birth children, I just knew\n8 that about myself. So whether or not that’s connected to my gender queerness or whatever,\n9 that was just a thing that I knew about myself and I was like, “I’m having all this pain, I don’t\n10 need this, take it out.” And no doctor would do that for me. They told me that I would change\n11 my mind later and they didn’t want to be responsible for that, and they just didn’t . . . they\n12 didn’t recognize my . . .\n13 AJ: There were no forms you could sign or anything?\n14 OM: Anything – I would get to a point where I would be talking in circles about what was happening\n15 and I’d keep getting back, “Well, you need to lose weight,” or whatever it was. And then even if\n16 I did, it didn’t change anything – whatever. But they were very quick to prescribe me hormones,\n17 right? Birth control to regulate all of this – so depo provera, lots of different kinds of hormones.\n18 AJ: Sure.\n19 OM: And they did work to suppress the periods, but usually not the cramping. So even though I\n20 wasn’t . . .\n21 AJ: The blood flow was lessened . . .\n22 OM: Yes, and I had a lot of . . . they were like high, high doses of estrogen, or whatever it was, and so\n23 I had a lot of shit going on in my brain about . . . because these hormones were all over the place\n24 and they kept changing them from year to year because it wasn’t addressing the issue. And all\n25 this time no one ever did an ultrasound or anything to figure out what was going on. Every time\n26 I would bring up that my mom had cysts, they would say, “That’s not it, it’s because you’re\n27 overweight.” Whatever. So just a couple of . . . just last year, after being on T for a long time,\n28 which had also helped with that and had alleviated . . .\n29 AJ: Testosterone.\n30 OM: Yup, testosterone, and had alleviated the cramping, they started to come back and I was at a\n31 point where I was getting two periods a week while on testosterone with a full beard. And, the\n32 cramping was . . .\n33 AJ: Two periods a week?\n34 OM: Yes. And the cramping was so intense that I was taking tons and tons of ibuprofen and self-35\nmedicating a lot, just to get to work or whatever. And so I finally did just take a deep breath and\n36 go to my new doctor and say, “Look, people have been telling me forever that I won’t be a\n37 candidate for a hysterectomy unless I lose 100 lbs and they won’t consider it,” and he just kind\n38 of was like . . . he’s the first male doctor that I talked to about this, and he was like, “That’s\nOwen Marciano 15\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nridiculous and none of that is true, and I’m going to refer you to this 1 gynecologist.” So then I\n2 went to a new gynecologist and it was the same sort of thing, but the opposite assumption. So\n3 she saw me looking like this and I said, “I’m thinking about a hysterectomy,” and she was like,\n4 “Well, of course you are, you don’t need that.” Like – you’ll never . . . so I never told her that I\n5 didn’t want to have children, but she just made the opposite assumption.\n6 AJ: Right.\n7 OM: But it was working for me in this case so I was like, “OK, great, take it the fuck out.”\n8 AJ: Right.\n9 OM: So we just scheduled it and did it, and that was in May. And so afterwards . . .\n10 AJ: This past May?\n11 OM: Yes, that’s right.\n12 AJ: Congrats.\n13 OM: Thank you – so much better now. But afterwards she told me that there was a growth on my\n14 ovary, as I had suspected, that was larger than the ovary itself.\n15 AJ: Oh my goodness.\n16 OM: That my uterus was three times as large and six times as heavy as it was supposed to be, and\n17 that I probably was infertile from the beginning of my life.\n18 AJ: And no one diagnosed this ever.\n19 OM: So I asked her, “Would doctors have been able to tell that from an ultrasound or any other kind\n20 of test?” And she was like, “Absolutely, all they had to do was an ultrasound and they would\n21 have been able to see what was going on in there.”\n22 AJ: And nobody ever believed you.\n23 OM: Nobody ever believed me, nobody ever looked at it, it was always just that I was too fat.\n24 AJ: That’s criminal.\n25 OM: And when I was presenting as a woman, I didn’t have the wherewithal to make that decision for\n26 myself, I would change my mind later and no doctor would be held responsible for taking my\n27 uterus away. And then when I went to a doctor and presented as a man, there was the opposite\n28 assumption – that I would never want to use that and, of course, we would take it out without\n29 even thinking about. So over a span of 20 years, yup.\n30 AJ: So in many ways, your gender expression helped you overcome this physical challenge that you\n31 were having, albeit in a very sexist and . . .\n32 OM: And accidental on my part. The two things were not connected to me so . . . yes.\nOwen Marciano 16\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nAJ: Wow. Well, I’m kind of speechless. I’m glad you were able to realize the hysterectomy 1 that you\n2 knew you wanted since age 18, but it saddens me to think that you struggled through that for\n3 many, many years without anybody ever really taking your own word for your own body.\n4 OM: And I know that that is a common theme, not just . . . it’s a common thing among trans people,\n5 women, folks of color. I see that, I see the articles that people write about their experiences\n6 trying to get pain medication and then not being believed about the pain. I think that that is . . .\n7 it’s a specific way that I experienced what is clearly systemic and institutional in terms of sexism\n8 and transphobia being built into the medical system – for sure.\n9 AJ: Wow. What are some positive aspects, other than you got your hysterectomy?\n10 OM: Thank God for that. Positive aspects of being gender queer?\n11 AJ: Yeah.\n12 OM: I feel great about when I look at myself in the mirror, I feel good about how I look – that was not\n13 ever a thing. I always felt like I was critiquing. Not that I don’t still do that, I definitely still worry\n14 about making sure my beard is trimmed or whatever, but I feel freer. I feel . . . I don’t know how\n15 to describe it – it’s a lightness of being that is lighter than before. It’s like an affirmation of\n16 strength and the power that I have as just an individual human being in the world that I often\n17 feel stripped of but when I sort of assert my right to just wear what I want and walk in the world\n18 how I feel most comfortable that day, regardless of what comes at me, that is where I feel\n19 strongest and most powerful and most comfortable. And so I’m grateful to all of the young folks\n20 at NYU and here and at Colgate who continued to challenge me and talk with me about their\n21 experiences around gender – because that part of it as well, the community . . . that’s a thing\n22 that maybe I don’t talk about enough and didn’t really mention, but the taking on of the word\n23 gender queer, and even earlier taking on the word lesbian, had less to do with how I felt inside\n24 and more to do with, “This is the community I feel like I belong in.” And so when I . . . I think\n25 when I talk with young folks about identity, I feel like that is so valid, as valid as how we feel\n26 internally in terms of trying to find those words that describe us.\n27 AJ: Yeah.\n28 OM: And so for me, being around trans folks and activists around gender and being around people\n29 who care about working at intersections around justice, that is where I feel the most\n30 comfortable and most at home. And by understanding these words and understanding more\n31 about myself and how I wanted to be ideally in the world and kind of trying to work more\n32 toward that instead of just accepting what most people just sort of accept, the more people I\n33 found that sort of contradicted all of those early childhood things – from being outcast in school\n34 and outcast from my family and being the weirdo, like I found myself amongst a bunch of\n35 weirdos and we’re all weird together and we’re cool with it and we love each other for it. For\n36 me, that’s the most amazing thing about coming out and being a part of this community. That’s\n37 really what I love most.\n38 AJ: Wow, that’s beautiful.\n39 OM: Thank you.\nOwen Marciano 17\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nAJ: I think you’ve kind of touched on this, but describe your current relationship 1 with your birth\n2 family.\n3 OM: Yeah, it doesn’t exist really.\n4 AJ: Doesn’t exist.\n5 OM: So . . .\n6 AJ: Chosen family, have you . . .?\n7 OM: I have quite a large chosen family, sort of spread out across the country.\n8 AJ: Nice.\n9 OM: Yeah, so that . . . I didn’t really say this before, but coming to Minneapolis, I always intended\n10 that it would be temporary and that I would move back to the east coast at some point. But, I\n11 found such an amazing community of people here that they became my family and it’s very\n12 difficult to think about leaving because I’ve left my biological family and that is still a painful\n13 thing – every single day.\n14 AJ: Absolutely.\n15 OM: I work really hard to give as much as I receive in this community and so it would be really\n16 difficult to leave that. And that, I think, is a good thing – that I feel this sense of belonging, this\n17 sense of home that I was missing really throughout my childhood and my life up until that point.\n18 So . . . yeah.\n19 AJ: And then you’ve talked pretty extensively about medical interventions. Hormones, you\n20 mentioned. Hysterectomy.\n21 OM: So I’ve been on testosterone, I did the hysterectomy – thank goodness. And I’m still trying to\n22 decide if I want to have top surgery or not.\n23 AJ: OK.\n24 OM: And I go back and forth all the time and since I go back and forth all the time, I haven’t taken any\n25 steps toward doing it. Again, I feel like if I . . . I think that my resistance is I feel like if I made that\n26 decision it would be for other people’s comfort and not for me. That’s how it feels right now\n27 and so again, I’m resisting that and I don’t want to do it right now.\n28 AJ: Do you get crap for it at all?\n29 OM: No. I think because I’m larger . . . what I’ve heard from people I’ve been close to when I ask,\n30 “What do you think people think about me walking around like this or whatever?” What they’ve\n31 said is because I’m larger it just looks like a man with kind of fleshy breasts or whatever. And so\n32 I’m like, “OK, I can live with that, that’s cool.” I don’t really feel a lot . . . if I feel like my shirt is\n33 too tight, I get nervous or . . . I’m careful about what I wear and I do feel like I’m protective of\n34 this part of my body in terms of how people see me.\n35 AJ: Do you bind? Do you mind if I ask?\nOwen Marciano 18\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nOM: I used to, 1 but it so painful.\n2 AJ: It’s painful, it’s harmful – isn’t it?\n3 OM: It can be, I think it can be. And it’s annoying and I don’t like . . . I mean, I don’t like sweating and\n4 it makes you sweat. I just don’t like that extra layer of whatever. I did try to do that and was\n5 binding daily in my first couple of years – like Colgate and here, but it didn’t last. It was just too\n6 uncomfortable. So I understand that when people choose to do that it’s because it’s more\n7 comfortable than walking around without it, and I did not have that experience. For me, neither\n8 is comfortable, but this is more comfortable for me to not bind.\n9 AJ: Got it. How long have you been doing testosterone?\n10 OM: Since 2005.\n11 AJ: When you moved here.\n12 OM: I moved in 2004 and I was trying to get someone to give me testosterone for the first year – fat\n13 phobia in the medical industry, along with transphobia, meant I kept coming up against walls.\n14 But, after my suicide attempt, which was toward the end of 2005, I basically staged a sit-in in the\n15 psych ward and was like, “I’m not leaving until someone gives me testosterone.”\n16 AJ: Wow.\n17 OM: And they did – a day later, and then I left.\n18 AJ: Here at Boynton?\n19 OM: It wasn’t, it was at . . . not HCMC, Abbott Northwestern.\n20 AJ: Abbott Northwestern Hospital.\n21 OM: That’s right. And none of the doctors there felt comfortable prescribing it to me, and so I told\n22 them to call the doctor who had refused me a couple of times. And I was like, “Just call her, she\n23 knows what to do.” And she was like, “Fine,” and so she ordered a prescription for me and sent\n24 it in.\n25 AJ: Wow. So you talked a little bit about Gender Blur, which was an organization – an arts\n26 organization that really sort of grounded you in community and around gender identity. Are\n27 there other organizations that you’ve been a part of and, if so . . . like I know you’ve been a part\n28 of the Trans Commission here on campus?\n29 OM: Yup, and the Trans Health Coalition. I used to be on the board for the Trans Health Coalition.\n30 The Transgender Commission here at the U of M, I was working in the GLBT Programs Office the\n31 year that Anne Phibbs formed it, that was in 2006. I’ve been a member of the commission,\n32 basically ever since – I’m not always active, but I’m on the email list. I was a co-chair with an\n33 undergrad student, a couple different undergrad students, for a couple of years.\n34 AJ: What kind of accomplishments has the Trans Commission achieved on campus?\nOwen Marciano 19\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nOM: Kind of a lot, they’ve done a lot of really great work. I think we 1 credit the Transgender\n2 Commission with definitely the health insurance package that covers trans-related care for\n3 students, including both undergraduate and graduate students. And then also, once that was in\n4 place, the Trans Commission pushed for increasing the caps regularly so that more and more\n5 kinds of procedures or surgeries would be able to be covered through that. The Transgender\n6 Commission started the gender neutral restroom work that’s been going on on campus, it\n7 started the mapping project and created the map for that, and has tried over the years, to\n8 various degrees of success, to partner with facilities folks, facilities staff and administrators\n9 around making decisions . . . so we did win the construction guidelines for new constructions\n10 and remodels include one gender neutral restroom per blah, blah, blah – people who would be\n11 in the building over time. So we were told that, but every time I try to find it in writing, I’ve not\n12 been able to find it. You should maybe ask Stef if they’ve been able to locate that in writing. So\n13 I feel like, “Sure . . .” but we did that push well before the TCF Stadium was built and we did win\n14 a bunch of gender neutral restrooms, so you can see a lot of gender neutral restrooms in the\n15 TCF Stadium.\n16 AJ: Oh cool, that’s awesome.\n17 OM: So that was, I believe, the first building . . . one of first, or at least the first major building, that\n18 fell under that new construction policy for gender neutral restrooms. We still have a long way\n19 to go with that.\n20 AJ: Isn’t there like a wing of a dorm, or a dorm that’s . . .\n21 OM: Yup. So this fall, I think it was Fall 2014, was the first term . . . no, Fall 2015, was the first term\n22 that undergraduate students have a gender neutral . . . I can’t remember if it’s gender neutral or\n23 gender open, what the language is, but a housing option where gender is not one of the criteria\n24 used in roommate matching. So I’m not sure how big it is, how many beds it is – I can’t\n25 remember off the top of my head, but that happened as part of . . . it was actually a person\n26 named Ben Nielsen who was a hall director in Housing and Residential Life, who really wanted to\n27 work on that and joined the Transgender Commission for some support. We worked together\n28 with Ben to make that happen. And so, I believe that the number of beds will be expanded\n29 going into next fall and, at some point, they’re going to allow incoming freshmen that option.\n30 So the compromise that was made in the first year was that this option would only be available\n31 for returning undergraduate students, not for undergraduate students coming directly from high\n32 school – which I don’t understand that distinction but that was what it was. So I believe that in\n33 the coming years that also will be taken away and it will be an option for incoming freshmen as\n34 well.\n35 AJ: Wow, cool.\n36 OM: Yeah.\n37 AJ: That’s a lot of great work.\n38 OM: And there’s more that I’m not thinking of right now. And Max Gries was one of the first co-39\nchairs, along with Karin Anderson.\nOwen Marciano 20\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nAJ: 1 Karin Anderson, yeah.\n2 OM: So they will have a lot to say about it.\n3 AJ: Oh absolutely. I’m looking forward to speaking with both of them about it.\n4 OM: MJ Gilbert has been a part of the Transgender Commission since its inception as well.\n5 AJ: MJ works here on campus.\n6 OM: She does, she’s in Social Work – she’s over on the St. Paul campus in Peters Hall.\n7 AJ: So, we’re at the love and relationship question now. How has your gender identity/expression\n8 impacted your romantic life?\n9 OM: Well, I feel like the first thing I would say is coming out as gender queer and coming into a trans\n10 and gender queer community really opened up my options.\n11 AJ: Oh wow, OK.\n12 OM: Actually quite a bit. And I’ve started . . . my last relationship was a nine-year relationship that\n13 just ended a year ago with another gender queer/trans masculine person. And so, yeah. I\n14 started dating trans people, I guess, is kind of what happened, that was one of the things. I feel\n15 like my romantic relationships or sexual relationships are kind of all over the place and that’s a\n16 residual from trauma from growing up. And so, there is a lot to say about that but I’m very\n17 reserved and so I’ve always been the kind of person who I really need to know someone before\n18 I’m going to get there, so I’ve never been quick to get in bed with someone or date someone.\n19 I’ve always known them for a while first. I sometimes just . . . we’re really great friends and\n20 sometimes I’ll have sex with my friends, but I have to really trust the person with my body and\n21 so in that way, I think, gender but also my size and just mental health stuff, I’m super careful –\n22 probably to a fault, and I end up feeling lonely a lot. It’s not easy for me to be vulnerable with\n23 other people. I’m sure that some of that is about my gender identity but it’s also all of these\n24 other kinds of things.\n25 AJ: Right, how do you separate your body image from your gender identity from your physical\n26 health issues – or whatever? Yeah.\n27 OM: And I think also because I moved here from the east coast and now I don’t have contact with my\n28 family there anymore, my high school experience was much better than my grade school\n29 experience, but I’m not super in touch with . . . and most of the folks I am still in touch with that\n30 I went to high school with, don’t live there anymore. So I’ve had this complete sort of\n31 separation from the community of people that knew me before I was trans. And so I don’t have\n32 this experience that I hear some of my friends having about past partners getting freaked out\n33 because the gender is different and what does that mean about them. That might be happening,\n34 but I don’t know those people anymore and I don’t have that communication or those\n35 relationships. Sometimes I think about it and wonder – like, “What does so-and-so think about .\n36 . .?” Because I dated mostly cis straight men when I lived there and I often wonder what so-and-37\nso would think about this sort of thing, but I don’t actually know. What feels to me like my adult\nOwen Marciano 21\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nrelationships started here in Minneapolis and really have been with other queer 1 folks and other\n2 trans folks for the most part.\n3 AJ: Wow, that’s awesome – but at the same time, there’s some challenges there too.\n4 OM: Well, right now the challenge is that I’ve been single for a year and I don’t know how I feel about\n5 if I want to date someone or not, but I would like to explore the possibility and I have no idea\n6 how to start. So, that I think is a challenge. I’ve tried to . . . people are always telling me, “You\n7 have to do it online now.” So I’ve tried to create profile pages on dating sites and my gender\n8 stuff trips me up. It’s not my . . . the way that I have to conform to their things.\n9 AJ: Right, to their forms.\n10 OM: To their forms, I haven’t been able to complete one yet because I haven’t figured out how I\n11 want to present in that kind of a virtual space. You have to answer questions about who do you\n12 want to have access to your profile – men, women, both, queer people. And I’m like, “Well, it\n13 depends.” I don’t even know how to like answer those questions. It’s a challenge in that way,\n14 trying to figure out how to get out there, I guess.\n15 AJ: What about women? Are you interested in dating women at all?\n16 OM: Yes, and I have dated . . . so the LGBT folks who aren’t trans that I’ve dated since I moved here\n17 have been femmes – women femmes for the most part. And physically my attraction leans\n18 pretty heavily toward queer femmes.\n19 AJ: OK.\n20 OM: I’m feeling weird that this is on camera all of a sudden.\n21 AJ: This is really fascinating stuff, and it’s so nuanced – we don’t hear these stories, it’s just not a\n22 part of our lexicon, if you will.\n23 OM: Yeah, that’s true.\n24 AJ: So thank you.\n25 OM: Yes.\n26 AJ: When you think about the relationship between the L, the G, and the B, and then the T, what do\n27 you think about? What is the connection?\n28 OM: The communities?\n29 AJ: Yeah. Because you use the term queer, which in many ways sort of encompasses all of those.\n30 OM: That’s my intention with the word.\n31 AJ: Exactly.\n32 OM: And anyone who identifies as not straight and maybe not with those words. I understand, also,\n33 that some people are offended still by the word queer and that’s not my intention to offend\n34 anybody, I’m not trying to call anybody a queer, but queer feels, for me, like the most\nOwen Marciano 22\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\ncomfortable and most accurate kind of word to describe who I think of when 1 I think of an LGBT\n2 community – it’s bigger than LGBT to me. So, I believe that all of our oppression stems from the\n3 same place, it stems from sexism. I understand and live that queer, that trans people\n4 experience, that oppression, in a very different way and we’re under a microscope and our\n5 visibility as queer, as trans people, becomes a target for that kind of oppression. But I do\n6 believe that all oppression experienced by queer people, it comes back to gender oppression.\n7 What I believe is that homophobia is an expression of sexism because it is a gender expectation\n8 that a woman will be attracted to a man, that is part of her role as a woman is to have sex with\n9 and be in relationships with men. And so when that doesn’t happen, that is defiance of a\n10 gender expectation. That is transgender to me. If I were to define the word transgender, that’s\n11 not an identity – not the identity transgender, but to transgress gender, that is what’s\n12 happening when someone is a lesbian or someone is gay, even if they are cis. And so to me, the\n13 tension between . . . I’m going to say LG and then trans folks, and possibly also bi folks and trans\n14 folks, feels really divisive to me. That tension feels like it’s about a tension between wanting to\n15 assimilate or conform to be able to gain access to privileges and power that might be withheld\n16 from LGBT folks versus working to challenge that power and privilege would be held for some\n17 people but not for others. So that is, to me, essentially what that tension is about, even if we\n18 don’t always talk about it that way or name it that way. So I think that in a lot of ways,\n19 especially visibly trans folks and gender queer folks, visibly gender queer folks, sort of challenge\n20 the work that mainstream, wealthier white lesbian and gay activists are trying to do because\n21 really we’re fighting against those systems and other folks are fighting to join those systems.\n22 AJ: Even though they, as you stated, many of the issues that those folks experience is related to\n23 gender and sexism.\n24 OM: Right. And so if the work that I and others that I work with are trying to do around gender\n25 liberation overall, if that work is successful then all of that oppression will kind of dissipate,\n26 including the homophobia, because we’ll recognize that it’s not OK to put people in those boxes\n27 by gender in any way, to any extent.\n28 AJ: Yeah.\n29 OM: So, for me, that’s what makes the most logical sense.\n30 AJ: I love it. So, last question Owen. I love this expression of working towards . . . I think gender\n31 liberation, you said. Where do you see the transgender community, if one exists, 50 years from\n32 now?\n33 OM: That’s such an awesome question. I think there are multiple transgender communities and . . . I\n34 mean my hope . . . my hope in 50 years is that we, as trans and gender queer people, can be\n35 integrated into work that is happening across lots of other forms of oppression as well and that\n36 we can be seen, that our history of work and leadership in those struggles can be seen, by the\n37 larger communities, that’s one hope that I have. For example, the Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P.\n38 Johnson folks who really sparked, and the folks at Compton’s Cafeteria who really were trans\n39 women of color, for the most part, who were fighting to survive on the streets in major cities –\n40 that we can really recognize and honor that the work that folks like that have done and continue\n41 to do is really revolutionary work that crosses all of those boundaries, that really seeks to\nOwen Marciano 23\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\naddress things like racism and classism simultaneously with things like gender 1 and sexuality. So\n2 one hope that I have is that we’ll be seen and recognized and celebrated - within ourselves,\n3 within our own communities, within LGBT communities more broadly, and with just the world in\n4 general. That our histories will be able to be recognized and validated and seen, that is one\n5 major hope that I have for us. So this project is really important to me.\n6 AJ: I think that’s a big part of helping to create that.\n7 OM: I think that you’re right, I think that we . . . it’s in some ways on us as trans folks to try to be\n8 more visible, but in other ways we don’t always have the power to do that because we don’t\n9 control those processes.\n10 AJ: Sure.\n11 OM: Yet. Not that I’m seeking to take control, I’m just seeking for shared power.\n12 AJ: Absolutely.\n13 OM: That’s another hope that I have. And I hope that we will be able to just stop categorizing people\n14 in only of two ways. I think it’s ludicrous to think that of all of the billions of people on earth\n15 that all of our bodies, as vastly different as they might be from one another, have to conform to\n16 one of two gender categories. I mean when you really think about that . . . so my hope is that\n17 our systems will change a little bit to reflect the diversity that already exists and has always\n18 existed among human beings across the world.\n19 AJ: Always existed.\n20 OM: So that’s another hope I have is that not only we will be recognized but we’ll be counted, we’ll\n21 count. I would like that for us.\n22 AJ: Owen, I just want to say thank you for taking the opportunity to sit down and share some really\n23 deeply personal things but some really important, I think, ideas and issues and particularly\n24 information around some of the work that’s been happening here on campus and the work that\n25 you’ve been doing on other campuses around the country. Thank you so much.\n26 OM: Thank you for the opportunity. I really appreciate it. I hope someday I get to turn the camera\n27 around on you and hear all this about you.\n28 AJ: One day.\n29 OM: One day.\n30 AJ: All right.", "_version_": 1710339105424932864, "type": "Moving Image", "collection": "p16022coll97", "is_compound": false, "parent_id": "50", "thumb_url": "https://cdnapisec.kaltura.com/p/1369852/thumbnail/entry_id/0_tae81kqe", "thumb_cdn_url": "https://dkp5i0hinw9br.cloudfront.net/0d076cb73e6f1f7cd529926d62541eda2eea0e6a.png", "children": [ ] }