{ "id": "p16022coll97:90", "object": "https://cdm16022.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getthumbnail/collection/p16022coll97/id/90", "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 June Taylor", "title_s": "Interview with June Taylor", "title_t": "Interview with June Taylor", "title_search": "Interview with June Taylor", "title_sort": "interviewwithjunetaylor", "description": "This video features an interview with two people who are good friends––June Taylor and Isabelle Wedin. June Taylor is a white trans woman from Winston-Salem North Carolina, and Isabelle Wedin is a white woman from Long Island. They both discuss their childhoods, the realizations that they were transgender, and how their wives supported them with their transitions. They talk about how they became friends online. They discuss the broader issues trans people face accessing medical care, and how LGBT groups often disenfranchise trans people. They discuss the different ways they give back to the community, Taylor by being on the Trans Advisory & Action Team at the University of Minnesota and helping Allina with their guidelines for trans care, and Wedin by giving trans women free voice lessons.", "date_created": [ "2016-10-31" ], "date_created_ss": [ "2016-10-31" ], "date_created_sort": "2016", "creator": [ "Taylor, June" ], "creator_ss": [ "Taylor, June" ], "creator_sort": "taylorjune", "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": "1:47:56", "subject": [ "Drag", "Crossdressing", "Passing", "Trans Celebrities", "Race", "Friendship and Community", "Sex and Love", "Family Relationships", "Privilege", "Gender Affirming Care", "Tretter Transgender Oral History Project Phase 1" ], "subject_ss": [ "Drag", "Crossdressing", "Passing", "Trans Celebrities", "Race", "Friendship and Community", "Sex and Love", "Family Relationships", "Privilege", "Gender Affirming Care", "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_tohp168" ], "dls_identifier": [ "tretter414_tohp168" ], "rights_statement_uri": "http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/", "kaltura_audio": "1_3tzgc3cr", "kaltura_video": "1_qx912t7m", "kaltura_combo_playlist": "0_rbcb79xz", "page_count": 0, "record_type": "primary", "first_viewer_type": "kaltura_combo_playlist", "viewer_type": "kaltura_combo_playlist", "attachment": "68.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": "June Taylor and\nIsabelle Wedin\nNarrators\nAndrea Jenkins\nInterviewer\nThe Transgender Oral History Project\nTretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nOctober 31, 2016\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 2\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\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 June Taylor -JT\n3 Isabelle Wedin -IW\n4\n5 AJ: So, good morning. My name is Andrea Jenkins and I am the oral historian for the Transgender\n6 Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota. Today is October 31st, it’s Halloween.\n7 JT: Yeah.\n8 IW: So it is.\n9 AJ: And I am here today on the campus of the University of Minnesota with June Taylor, wave June.\n10 JT: Hello.\n11 AJ: And, Isabella . . .\n12 IW: Isabelle.\n13 AJ: Isabelle Wedin.\n14 IW: That’s correct, Isabelle Wedin. Hi.\n15 AJ: Yeah, so how are you ladies this morning?\n16 JT: We’re doing great. We had a wonderful weekend.\n17 IW: Yeah, it’s been really great. I’m really happy to be here.\n18 JT: Yes.\n19 AJ: Cool. So, before we dive deep into the interview, I’m going to ask you, June, if you would\n20 introduce yourself, state your name and spell your name just so we make sure we get it all\n21 correct, your gender identity today, your gender identity assigned at birth, and the pronouns\n22 that you use. And then, Isabelle, I’m going to ask you to do the same thing afterwards.\n23 IW: Sounds good.\n24 JT: My name is June Taylor, spelled J-u-n-e T-a-y-l-o-r. My gender identity is female or trans\n25 woman, depending on context. I was assigned male at birth and I use she and her pronouns\n26 today.\n27 AJ: Perfect, thank you. Isabelle.\n28 IW: I’ve been misspelling your name, I’ve been doing it e-r.\n29 JT: I don’t know that you’ve ever spelled my last name for any reason. Anyway, it’s o-r.\n30 IW: Anyway, I am Isabelle Wedin, that is I-s-a-b-e-l-l-e W-e-d-i-n, as in Nancy. I was assigned male at\n31 birth but I am a woman and my pronouns are she and her and etc . . . you know, I’m kind of\n32 nervous.\n33 JT: She and hers.\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 4\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\n1 IW: Yes.\n2 AJ: Wow, well thank you both. So, one of the things that I like to do just to kind of get us in sort of\n3 recollection mode is to start with a question about your earliest memory. So, June, why don’t I\n4 start with you. What is your earliest memory in life? It doesn’t have to be related to your\n5 transgender identity, although if it is, that’s perfectly fine. I just want to know what’s the\n6 earliest thing you remember in your life.\n7 JT: I was actually telling Ibby this story because I was . . . my earliest memory is of my dad throwing\n8 me up in the air and catching me.\n9 AJ: Wow, you remember that.\n10 JT: I do. I was like two, I guess. It’s weird. It’s not that I remember everything from then forward,\n11 it’s just that that’s my earliest impression.\n12 AJ: Right, but you remember that – yeah.\n13 JT: Yeah. It came up this weekend because I was playing with our kids and similar age right now for\n14 my youngest.\n15 AJ: So, you guys have children?\n16 JT: I have three kids and they’re 1, 3, and 5 years old, so it’s a good spread.\n17 IW: I don’t have any kids, but after hanging out with your kids for a weekend . . . yeah, I have to have\n18 a conversation with my wife when I get home.\n19 AJ: No, you said you were hanging out with our kids, you made it seem . . . so I just want to clarify\n20 that for the camera.\n21 IW: I wish they were my kids.\n22 JT: You’re like an aunt.\n23 IW: Sure.\n24 AJ: Isabelle, what’s your earliest memory?\n25 IW: Gosh, I don’t know. I remember . . . I think I was sitting on my mother’s lap in the kitchen, at our\n26 dining table. She was wearing her robe, which she always wore in the morning . . . I must have\n27 been like two, maybe a little bit older. I’m trying to remember . . . I was very, very jealous of my\n28 younger brother at that age, he’s almost two years younger. I don’t remember if he was around\n29 yet, but I would have been very young . . . something like that. That’s the rough outline – sitting\n30 on my mom’s lap.\n31 AJ: Sitting on your mom’s lap.\n32 IW: Yes.\n33 AJ: Where did you grow up, Isabelle? And, I should say . . . because you are referring to Isabelle as\n34 Ibby . . .\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 5\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\n1 JT: Oh, sorry.\n2 AJ: That’s fine, I just want to clarify for our transcriptionist, Ibby is I-b-b-y.\n3 IW: That’s correct.\n4 AJ: So, you told me about your earliest memory, sitting on your mom’s lap. Where are you from?\n5 IW: New York, Long Island . . . Brentwood, specifically, which is like a really un-important town in the\n6 middle of the island. Yeah, I was there, we lived in the same house and I stayed there until I was\n7 18 and then I moved away to college and right after college, got out of that house and moved\n8 into an apartment with my wife in Queens. She wasn’t quite my wife yet.\n9 AJ: But, you guys have been together . . .\n10 IW: We’ve been together . . . 13 years. Something like that? And married for a little over eight.\n11 AJ: Wow.\n12 JT: My wife and I had our ninth wedding anniversary just earlier this month.\n13 AJ: And, that’s June and her wife.\n14 JT: June and my wife, Mary.\n15 AJ: All right, wow. Long-term relationships. I want to get into all those a little bit.\n16 JT: It’s kind of awesome.\n17 IW: It really is.\n18 JT: But, just back to you, Isabelle, were you out before you . . . out as a trans person before you met\n19 your current wife?\n20 IW: Yeah. That’s actually a bit of a complicated story. So, I went away to college, that’s where I met\n21 my wife – freshman year. I’d been crossdressing since I was like 12 or 13, and maybe a little\n22 younger, but it was always a really private thing. I didn’t feel comfortable sharing it with\n23 anybody. And then I got to college and I was out of the house and I was fairly open with all of\n24 my friends there, so she knew and that was a thing we did together once in a while, not often. I\n25 would get all dressed up and she liked that, she’s always been really accepting.\n26 AJ: So, yes, and she knew.\n27 IW: Yeah, I guess I didn’t know . . . I thought that this wasn’t possible. I thought I was just a\n28 crossdresser and I would grow up to be a miserable old man.\n29 AJ: Wow.\n30 IW: And then just . . . this happened. I guess we’ll talk about that later.\n31 AJ: OK. Where did you grow up, June?\n32 JT: I grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Do you need me to spell that or is that OK?\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 6\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nAJ: I think we can probably figure out Winston-Salem, 1 North Carolina.\n2 JT: I don’t know, yeah – just a fairly normal childhood. I don’t know.\n3 AJ: Yeah, what kind of town is Winston-Salem?\n4 JT: It’s kind of small.\n5 AJ: Tobacco . . . is that Tobacco Road?\n6 JT: RJ Reynolds Tobacco is the main thing there, or it was at some point. That kind of is a dying\n7 industry, it’s a lot of biotech now. It’s very southern, very conservative. There’s pockets of\n8 liberal things, but mostly conservative.\n9 AJ: So, what was school like for you there? You grew up there your entire childhood?\n10 JT: Yeah, I went to high school there and I did go away for college, but school was . . . I had nothing\n11 as far as . . . like Ibby was saying about crossdressing, it was just kind of . . . just getting through\n12 things.\n13 AJ: Just normal – yeah, that’s cool.\n14 JT: In retrospect, it seems like there was a lot of depressive stuff, but at the time it didn’t seem that\n15 way. Now, I can look back on it and kind of reflect on it as not so great.\n16 AJ: OK. You’ve got to say more now, you kind of opened up a can here.\n17 JT: Sure.\n18 AJ: What made it not so great?\n19 JT: Well, the experience of learning about trans people and gender as a thing later in life was\n20 something that was useful for looking back on how was gender described and imposed in family\n21 and school and all those things where it was really discouraged to not be cis and heterosexual in\n22 a lot of little ways and big ways, I guess. But, those were so not apparent, it was just the way it\n23 was. So, weirdly, nobody in my family was gay and nobody in my family was . . . that’s just\n24 improbable to just think that through all of the social interaction that you never have experience\n25 with queer people is not normal. So, looking back on it, that seems really weird, but it didn’t\n26 seem weird at the time.\n27 AJ: I would say the majority of people in this country identify as heteronormative, cis gender . . .\n28 you kind of have to be lucky to run into a queer person . . . not necessarily but . . .\n29 IW: I would say lucky.\n30 JT: Yeah, definitely – let’s go with lucky.\n31 AJ: It’s not the norm.\n32 JT: No, it’s not, but it was so far out of acceptance.\n33 AJ: So, you weren’t out, June, as a young person?\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 7\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\n1 JT: No.\n2 AJ: When did you first realize that you may not be the gender you were assigned at birth?\n3 JT: That’s such of a kind of . . . it’s such a long span, because there are moments of recognition of\n4 different experiences, but they don’t all fit from a single point in time. I can point to as early as\n5 maybe 13 or something, where it’s like something is weird, something is different and what is it\n6 and trying to find anything that’s like that in the world is really difficult in the 1990s. So, I guess I\n7 come to coming out around two years ago from now, but it was a long process of internal\n8 exploration and thinking and reading and learning and trying to figure it out.\n9 AJ: So, yeah, I understand that it’s a process and a journey, but was there . . . there was never a day\n10 where, even prior to coming out, said, “Wow, I think I may be different from other little boys.”\n11 JT: Yeah, I guess . . . I mean, it goes way back to 13 or 14, but I didn’t have words for\n12 it. Like Ibby was saying, if you don’t even know that trans people exist, as a concept, then what\n13 are you going to . . . you have nothing to attach to.\n14 AJ: Absolutely, yeah.\n15 JT: It’s just this weird feeling of not fitting in.\n16 IW: Yeah, we’ve talked a lot about this. My experience was actually really similar where I can\n17 remember from a very young age wanting to be a girl but I never . . . it seemed absurd to say,\n18 “Well, if I want to, then I am.”\n19 JT: Yeah, that was just so not acceptable.\n20 IW: People told me I was a boy and I believed what adults said, so I believed them. And so, I just\n21 thought every boy, every young man, hated it. I was just like this whole masculinity thing is God\n22 awful and it’s transparently obvious to me, so everybody else must be feeling the same thing\n23 and we just must all be scared to even bring that up to say, “Yeah, actually, being a dude is\n24 horrible, it feels bad.” Now, I realize that actually for some people they really like it and it feels\n25 really good. I didn’t like it because it wasn’t, at all, the right thing for me.\n26 AJ: So, Ibby, were you ever ostracized or bullied in school? What was school like for you on Long\n27 Island?\n28 IW: Yeah, that’s what they said – it’s on, it is an island. Yeah, no, it’s so weird because I didn’t really\n29 understand that I was different. I kept all this secret, I didn’t tell anybody how I really felt about\n30 my gender, but all the other boys could tell and I was a target. It’s so weird – even into\n31 adulthood when I tried to assert myself in masculine ways, I would just get slapped down. They\n32 could tell, “No, you’re faking this, that’s not going to work.”\n33 AJ: Wow.\n34 IW: Yeah, but trying to not be masculine also gets you punished. Yeah, it was a bind, there’s no\n35 winning, you can’t be masculine because you don’t do it right and you can’t be feminine\n36 because that’s not allowed. So, yeah, I got picked on a lot as a kid. It didn’t really change until\n37 about high school when I got into the drama club and that was full of queer people and it was\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 8\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nreally great. I was starting to figure things out about myself and I could tell 1 something about\n2 this feels really good and I don’t know what. I thought for a while maybe . . . I knew I liked\n3 women, but I also couldn’t really identify with this queer thing in this really deep way that I\n4 didn’t understand. I thought maybe I’m bisexual, turns out I’m not. And so, yeah. I didn’t really\n5 figure it out then – it took me a long time after high school to figure it out but that’s when I\n6 really started to come into my own a little bit and started to feel comfortable with myself.\n7 AJ: So, you said you don’t identify as bisexual. What is your sexual orientation?\n8 IW: Women only, please. I’m just not . . .\n9 AJ: OK. So, do you identify as lesbian?\n10 IW: Yes – yeah, definitely. I guess in abstract, men are . . . I find some men attractive, I guess, and\n11 then they go and talk and then it’s like . . . yeah, not for me.\n12 AJ: OK. Well, you’ve been married, you said, for . . .\n13 IW: Eight years – just over eight years.\n14 AJ: Eight years . . . but you guys have been together longer than that, right?\n15 IW: Yeah, we were engaged for a year and a half and together for two and a half years before that,\n16 so that comes up to . . . I thought it was 13 but . . . anyway, I could do the math, since 2004.\n17 AJ: It’s 2016, so you’re going on 13 years.\n18 IW: 12. It was September 2004 – the start of sophomore year, so about 12 years.\n19 AJ: Wow. That’s awesome. It is a challenge for a lot of transgender-identified people to find love in\n20 their lives and I’m happy to hear that you’ve been able to find that. And you, as well, June.\n21 JT: Yeah, we’ve both been very lucky.\n22 AJ: You’ve been married for nine years?\n23 JT: Nine years, yes. And, I mean that was definitely one of the most stressful parts, for me, of\n24 coming out – was just knowing that that experience existed as far as trans people coming out to\n25 their family and friends and spouses and just being completely rejected. That was my prime\n26 fear and it took me a long time to come out to my spouse. And, it’s awesome. She’s been\n27 amazing and it’s been great.\n28 AJ: There was no indication prior to . . . you hadn’t had any kind of conversation with her before\n29 marriage or . . .?\n30 JT: No.\n31 AJ: It was kind of a big surprise . . . because you guys were clearly in the middle of your marriage.\n32 JT: Yeah.\n33 IW: Well, you’re forgetting some stuff though.\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 9\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nJT: I am forgetting 1 some stuff.\n2 AJ: You’re leaving out a lot of stuff here.\n3 JT: I am.\n4 IW: You told me you used to wear nail polish.\n5 JT: I did. I did a lot of feminine-coated things, in retrospect. I don’t know, it just . . . it wasn’t\n6 something that we really talked about that much. It was just, “Yeah, some guys do that, and\n7 whatever.” Which is not totally true.\n8 IW: It’s a little true.\n9 JT: A little true, obviously. But, we did not have a big conversation about it until it was imminent as\n10 far as, “I’m going to come out and do this thing and I don’t even know how to do that, but that’s\n11 what we’re doing, I guess.”\n12 AJ: How did you come out?\n13 JT: I wrote my wife a note because I had tried for about a week to tell her in person and it was just\n14 so anxiety ridden that it was easier to hand her a letter that told her that I felt like I was trans\n15 and I wanted to go to a therapist and work on this with her and I don’t know what it means, but\n16 I want to figure it out with her.\n17 AJ: So, you weren’t in therapy at that point in time.\n18 JT: No.\n19 AJ: But, you knew you were trans. Did you do research on the internet? How did you come to that .\n20 . .? Because first you told me that there’s no way, you never saw anybody that was trans and\n21 then you came to this conclusion that you’re trans . . . like you left out a lot in-between.\n22 JT: I did, I’m sorry . . . sorry. So, for years . . . from years prior, reading books by trans people, a lot\n23 of stuff on the internet as far as YouTube and discussion boards and groups, to see is this . . .\n24 does this fit? Is this what I’m feeling? And it ends up to be a pretty good match, but it took a\n25 long time to really believe that of myself because everything you deal with tells you that it’s not\n26 OK but that that’s really hard to get over.\n27 AJ: Yeah, society is pretty oppressive around gender identity and gender policing.\n28 JT: Yeah.\n29 AJ: How did your wife take it when you handed her the note?\n30 JT: She hugged me and said it was OK and the next day gave me an orchid and a beautiful note and\n31 then we set up appointments to do therapy together. I mean, it was a lot of . . .\n32 AJ: And then you guys started making babies.\n33 JT: We had already had our oldest . . . I guess we had two.\n34 IW: You already had Jade.\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 10\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nJT: Yeah, Jade . . . I think so. Yeah, we must have. Yeah, our oldest two. So, I mean, 1 yeah, we had a\n2 lot of hard conversations and a lot of late nights and just going over things and figuring stuff out\n3 and going to therapy together. But, we worked it out and it’s just amazing and I’m really\n4 impressed by her.\n5 AJ: That’s incredible, that sounds really sweet and lovely.\n6 JT: Yeah. I mean, I kind of feel guilty about it in some respects because we know so many people\n7 who don’t have that experience and it’s really sad.\n8 AJ: Sort of like survivor’s guilt, is it?\n9 JT: Yes.\n10 IW: Yes. Definitely, I would say for me – yes, absolutely.\n11 AJ: Isabelle. Wow. Say more about that, Isabelle. What does that feel like?\n12 IW: Sure. It’s actually . . . maybe I’ll work this in reverse. I’ll jump around . . . so, my wife, Maria, she\n13 is bisexual although definitely leans towards women. So, that’s obviously working in my favor –\n14 that was hugely advantageous to me in the end. To the extent that . . . so, there’s this format of\n15 essay which is the cis wife of a trans woman basically complaining about how horrible it is to be\n16 married to a trans woman and, “This happens and it destroyed our marriage and I had to do all\n17 this work to be a decent person to my wife.” And, Maria and I both find that particular attitude\n18 very . . . let’s say, grating – it’s very grating. So, she wrote one basically from the other\n19 perspective which is actually . . . her perspective was, “My wife came out to me and it wasn’t a\n20 big deal – yeah, there was stuff to do and certain things were a little bit hard, but actually I’m\n21 still the same person and we’re still the same couple and it’s still really good. In fact, my\n22 marriage is better than it’s ever been.”\n23 JT: I would say the same thing – absolutely. This is June. Because we had to have so many really\n24 deep conversations, we’ve been able to work on communicating way better. It makes it much\n25 easier to get through other things in our life. I absolutely think it has improved our marriage a\n26 lot since I came out.\n27 AJ: Yeah – I mean, I can only speculate but from my own experience, coming out you become a\n28 happier person.\n29 JT: For sure.\n30 IW: Yes – yes.\n31 AJ: Which, potentially, can make a relationship a little happier.\n32 JT: It was so much more work to make a good relationship good while also carrying all this weight\n33 and depression about gender. So, that being gone, and better, is much easier to focus on other\n34 stuff.\n35 IW: Yeah, Maria said the same exact thing. She said, “Well, yeah, our relationship is better – you’re\n36 happier now and that makes the relationship better.” So, yeah, I do feel really lucky to be\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 11\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nmarried to someone who is so open and so kind. Maria is one of the kindest p 1 eople you could\n2 ever meet, she’s so emotionally brilliant.\n3 JT: She’s awesome.\n4 IW: She really is. She’s a psychologist. So, yeah, I do feel like I lucked out – I picked a good one.\n5 Actually, my wife picked me but we also have all these friends whose marriages are getting torn\n6 apart and they’re going through expensive divorces and their parents are . . . yeah, basically\n7 they’re losing their whole family. Keeping the kids . . . you know, 50/50.\n8 AJ: When you say, “We have friends,” are you referring to other transgender people?\n9 IW: Yes, exactly – other trans women coming out right now or some who have been out for a while.\n10 AJ: I couldn’t tell you whether you were talking about you and Maria’s friends who have . . .\n11 IW: Yeah, Maria is friends with most of my trans friends. She gets along . . .\n12 JT: She’s like an ambassador.\n13 IW: A little bit, yeah. She’s like the good cis person.\n14 AJ: But, specifically, though we’re talking about transgender people who come out and then their\n15 families get torn apart.\n16 IW: Exactly, yeah – so many people.\n17 JT: It’s upsettingly common.\n18 IW: Yeah.\n19 AJ: Yes.\n20 JT: That was a really hard thing for Mary when I did come out to her and she was looking for\n21 support in the role of a spouse who is working on this topic. A lot of what’s available is either\n22 you find somebody who is a spouse of a trans person and went through something like this, and\n23 then suddenly their blog stops because they got divorced and things did not work out and it’s\n24 really depressing. Or, you find support groups that are kind of hyper focused on this terrible\n25 thing that’s happening to you and let’s help you get through this terrible thing, but also is\n26 terrible. Rather than . . . there aren’t a lot of . . .\n27 AJ: Let’s help you figure out a way to be in this relationship.\n28 JT: Yes, exactly.\n29 AJ: And, to focus on the positives.\n30 JT: The relationship takes a back seat to the support and that seems backwards.\n31 IW: Yeah.\n32 AJ: Yeah. It is sort of a trauma for people to work through in many, many cases. In your case,\n33 Isabelle, your partner, your wife already had some inklings so it wasn’t like a big huge surprise;\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 12\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nwhereas, you, June, said your wife had no idea and then was able to hear 1 and see you for the\n2 person that you really are. That’s wonderful.\n3 JT: Yes, it is.\n4 AJ: Do you still have the note that you . . .?\n5 JT: Somewhere. It’s actually . . . I gave it to her, so it’s her note.\n6 AJ: It’s her note.\n7 JT: I’m sure it is in some box at home.\n8 AJ: Wow. So, what terms, and this is for you, June, and ultimately for both of you guys, but what\n9 terms have you used to describe yourself over time and how has that changed?\n10 JT: Do you mean gender terms?\n11 AJ: Gender, sexuality. I mean, when I ask this question, some people say, “I came out as gay and\n12 then I realized that that wasn’t really who I was.”\n13 JT: Yeah, OK. So, being assigned male at birth and having people tell me that this is what guys do\n14 and this is what being a man is, I identified that way in however that works in a non-committal\n15 kind of, “OK, this is the default, I guess, that’s great.” So, that was the first part of my life. I\n16 identified as straight and attracted to women, and I’m still attracted to women. I identify as a\n17 woman now and as a trans person, as a queer person, as a lesbian, and that’s kind of really\n18 comfortable for me.\n19 AJ: Yeah, there are no right or wrong answers here, so please don’t . . .\n20 JT: I mean to say that in the sense that the primary identifications were not correct, they didn’t\n21 totally feel like my own and now it does and that’s great.\n22 AJ: No – yeah, that’s the whole point of the question is to try to get at that. You said you kind of\n23 thought about, “Maybe I’m bi, but not really.” What terms have you used to describe yourself\n24 over time, Isabelle?\n25 IW: Sure. Yeah, so going back to middle school or so when I first started having sexual feelings and\n26 also crossdressing. I was 12 or whatever, everything I did was sexual, so, of course,\n27 crossdressing was sexual. So, just inside a cultural fog – my word for myself was . . . I didn’t dare\n28 use a word for myself. It would have been pervert or something; I really internalized that.\n29 AJ: Wow.\n30 IW: Then high school came around and I came out to some people as bi before realizing that didn’t\n31 really fit. Sometime in college, when I was a little more free to express my gender and go out on\n32 campus in weird halfway . . . slacks and heels or a skirt over my jeans, I was . . . I dressed pretty\n33 openly queer in high school too, but always in terms of details – like hair accessories and things,\n34 but boy clothes. So, in college I started playing around with describing an experience of gender\n35 fluidity even though I didn’t have the word for that all the time. And then I got out of college\n36 and I got a job and I got busy, and then I guess my word for myself, at that point, was just\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 13\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\ncrossdresser. And then we moved to Miami for a year for my wife’s post-1 doctoral fellowship at\n2 the Miami VA.\n3 AJ: Ooh-la-la.\n4 IW: Yeah, it was part of the whole Ph.D. process.\n5 AJ: So, does that mean no laying on the beach, no fun on the beach.\n6 IW: No, actually Miami was pretty crazy – that was a really crazy year in my life where I was . . . I\n7 kept the same job so I was working from home a lot, working remotely from Miami for a\n8 company mostly in New York. So, I would just dress however I wanted, all day.\n9 JT: That’s really cool.\n10 IW: And then it came to a point where I said to Maria, it was like three in the morning, and I’m trying\n11 to work the courage to tell her this. I’m holding her in bed and my heart is pounding – it was\n12 pounding so hard it wakes her up and she turns around and she looks at me and she says, “What\n13 is it?’ I’m like . . . what I said was, “Sometimes isn’t enough,” meaning I can’t just . . . I can’t only\n14 express my true gender, my true self at home, this needs to be me forever. I’m a woman, I need\n15 to do this. And what she said to me, “I know, can I go back to bed.” She just . . . she figured it\n16 out before I did, basically. So, yeah, that was sort of the last shift. That was a couple years ago\n17 where it was like, “Yeah, I’m trans, I’m a chick, I’m a lady, this is cool.” And then, I bought a\n18 bathing suit and we went down to the pool. Finding a bathing suit that takes breast forms is\n19 actually really hard when that will take the forms and the cover up down to here. So, yeah, it\n20 was a really crazy experience. Everything was just so sudden – just one day she was like, “OK,\n21 put on this dress, we’re going to go shopping.” And I’m like, “Holy shit.” And I got three hours\n22 getting myself together and then we went shopping and nothing bad happened. And then a\n23 couple weeks later, it was Thanksgiving, we had some of Maria’s work friends over who I wasn’t\n24 out to and I was dressed as a guy and trying to enjoy my turkey and I was so miserable. So then\n25 that night I told my wife, “Yeah, tomorrow I’m going full-time.” And I just did it. It took me a\n26 while to come out at work, but socially I spent that entire year in Miami very nearly . . . just,\n27 yeah – it was really wild. I was not on HRT yet and I was getting done up and going out – not\n28 even done up, jeans and a t-shirt and going to board game socials.\n29 JT: You kind of dove right in.\n30 IW: I kind of dove right in, I can’t believe I did that.\n31 JT: It’s really intensive.\n32 IW: So, that’s . . . yeah, that’s the entire arc of my identity, I guess.\n33 AJ: Wow. What has been some of the more positive aspects of expressing your true gender\n34 identity, Isabelle?\n35 IW: Wow, OK. I mean, just in general trying to operate within the bounds of masculinity, I felt\n36 diminished. One of the biggest freedoms that I found is the freedom to be expressive, to\n37 express myself, to have facial expressions, to not have to tuck my hands under my legs, to really\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 14\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nengage with people. It’s really hard to keep this huge secret and actively 1 misrepresent yourself\n2 and still be close to people. It was really fraught.\n3 JT: Yeah.\n4 IW: I would say that’s it – the social comfort of just being able to relax in front of the people that I\n5 love and just be myself. It’s just so emotionally freeing.\n6 JT: Yeah.\n7 AJ: June, what would you say have been some of the biggest challenges since you’ve decided to\n8 express your true gender identity?\n9 JT: I guess . . . I mean, there’s a large amount of time spent on bureaucratic and red-tape things\n10 right now for me. I’ve been out for two years now, but I’m still working on legal stuff like name\n11 changes on different records and systems and interacting with medical systems is kind of\n12 annoying sometimes – even in the best cases, it’s just kind of weird. I guess the biggest thing\n13 that’s been a challenge for me has been my family where I grew up has been just awkward and\n14 strange and strained since coming out. And there have been points when it seemed like it was\n15 getting better and then it kind of rolls back. So, that’s been really emotionally hard to come to\n16 terms with. Otherwise, before, having this really close relationship with family and feeling like\n17 that’s solid, and then that’s just not there anymore. Even though I’ve got great people here in\n18 Minnesota and have built a network of friends and chosen family that are awesome, it’s still\n19 really hard to kind of reflect on that birth family kind of thing that’s just not the same as it was.\n20 AJ: Yeah. So, are your parents still alive, both your parents?\n21 JT: Yeah, they are.\n22 AJ: Do they want to have a relationship with the children?\n23 JT: They do, on their terms, which often doesn’t include recognizing me as me. So, that makes it\n24 kind of difficult for us to do normal stuff – like have regular visits or consider holiday things since\n25 it’s been so weird and so not normal and not loving for a long time.\n26 AJ: Oh, wow – I’m really sorry.\n27 JT: It’s OK, thank you.\n28 AJ: But, it sounds like you have found support in chosen family.\n29 JT: Oh, my gosh – yes.\n30 IW: I can vouch for her chosen family. I’ve been meeting all of them this weekend and they’re\n31 amazing people. They’re the best – some of the best people I’ve ever met. They’re so warm\n32 and just really brilliant and . . . yeah, they’re great.\n33 AJ: So, tell me about you guy’s friendship. How did you meet? How long have you been friends?\n34 IW: Do you want to do it?\n35 JT: You should probably do it.\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 15\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\n1 IW: OK.\n2 AJ: OK, so you’ve got to say a name.\n3 IW: OK, this is Isabelle, and I’m going to at least start off this story. So, there’s a website called\n4 MetaFilter, it’s basically a discussion . . .\n5 AJ: MetaFilter?\n6 IW: MetaFilter, yes. It’s basically a discussion board, but it’s one of the better places on the internet\n7 because it’s moderated so you’re able to . . . at least I felt . . . I discovered it a couple years ago\n8 while I was starting to figure out my gender, before we moved to Miami.\n9 JT: That was one of the first places, this is June speaking, that was one of the first places I came out\n10 online.\n11 IW: Yeah, me too.\n12 JT: And was interacting as me.\n13 AJ: OK.\n14 IW: So, one time there was this discussion about men wearing make-up. It was a video or\n15 something of men getting make-up put on them. And, I chimed in to be like, “Yeah, I’ve been\n16 doing that at work sometimes.” At the time, I’d been going to work in make-up and it’s really\n17 weird, because people don’t notice, they just compliment you – they’re not like, “Hey, are you\n18 wearing make-up?” They’re like, “Hey, did you get some sun?” It was a wild experience and so I\n19 posted about it there on the discussion . . . this big three paragraph ramble and June sends me a\n20 message to be like, “Oh, my God, can you tell me more about this? I want to do this.” We\n21 exchanged a few messages a couple times a month maybe and it was always me going, “Hey, did\n22 you go buy make-up yet?” And she was always like, “No, I’m too scared.”\n23 JT: I wasn’t out and it was just this thing that I kind of maybe wanted to do, but I couldn’t figure out\n24 a way to do it and be safe or possible. It just felt like this huge thing that was impossible and\n25 you had done it and it was just so impressive and I was really interested in how you\n26 accomplished that, fit it into your life and were OK with it. So, not just the practice of wearing\n27 make-up, that’s kind of trivial in itself, but this sense of ownership that you had over who you\n28 were and asserting that publicly was really inspiring to me.\n29 IW: So, Isabelle again in finishing the next part of the story, I contacted you around Thanksgiving of\n30 last year because your mom was visiting and I wanted to make sure you were OK. We weren’t\n31 really friends yet, we were acquaintances, so you thanked me and said that you would tell me\n32 how things went after Thanksgiving – and then you didn’t.\n33 JT: I’m so sorry.\n34 IW: You didn’t follow-up, that’s OK.\n35 JT: That’s because it was a terrible week.\n36 IW: Yeah, I know, but you should have told me about it.\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 16\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\n1 JT: I should have.\n2 IW: Yeah, well – you didn’t know. So, then in February, just this past February . . . what, eight\n3 months ago? Yeah, I sent you another message and then we started talking and chatting online\n4 in Google Hangouts.\n5 JT: Instead of doing the message board thing where you kind of have an inbox, I was like, “We\n6 should just chat on our phones, that would be cooler.” And we did, and it was just amazing\n7 because we had so much in common to share and talk about and explore. It was my first\n8 experience talking with another trans woman in a really deep sense and kind of bouncing ideas\n9 off each other and talking about stuff that I didn’t know – whether it was just me in my history\n10 that I was experiencing and was totally foreign, or was it something that was more normal. And,\n11 at the time that I had messaged you, I had come out and I had sent letters to my family and all\n12 that stuff; I had checked off all the coming out stuff, but I still felt really not great. I felt like I\n13 didn’t really know what to do and how to do this and Ibby was just really inspiring to help that\n14 feel OK.\n15 AJ: Oh, wow. So, you’ve been sort of like a big sister . . .?\n16 JT: A huge mentor. Yes, absolutely a mentor.\n17 IW: You’ve helped me too, you really have. That first week, when we first started chatting, and we\n18 couldn’t stop.\n19 JT: I know it was all day.\n20 IW: All day, every day, to where it got to be sort of a problem with our wives.\n21 AJ: Yeah.\n22 JT: Yeah, “Come to bed, it’s 2am.”\n23 IW: Yes. We just burned so bright and it’s never really stopped. I just really feel like I’ve really come\n24 up with you. Those first conversations on MetaFilter where I was like just starting to dip my toe\n25 in and you were there, I thought you were too cool for me.\n26 JT: I don’t know why.\n27 IW: Because you’re so cool.\n28 JT: Whatever.\n29 IW: Oh, my God, you’re so brilliant, you amaze me – you really do. I felt like, “Oh, I’m not cool\n30 enough to talk to this person.” And now that’s all we do. You’ve been like an inspiration to me,\n31 you’ve helped me so much. Yeah.\n32 AJ: Wow, OK. Lovefest 2016 going on here. All right, to the extent that you’re comfortable and this\n33 question is for both of you but maybe we’ll start with you, June, and then Isabelle you can chime\n34 in. What medical interventions have you undergone on your journey towards expressing your\n35 full female identity?\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 17\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nJT: HRT, so testosterone suppressant 1 and estra.\n2 AJ: OK.\n3 IW: Yeah, same for me.\n4 JT: Oh, and laser hair removal.\n5 AJ: OK. Oh, and . . . just kidding.\n6 JT: Yeah, I don’t know why I forget that sometimes.\n7 AJ: It’s certainly is a medical treatment.\n8 JT: Yeah.\n9 AJ: So, what’s that experience been like for you? How has hormones been for you?\n10 JT: Really interesting. It’s been a fascinating experience. There’s not enough that’s written about it\n11 from the perspective of emotions and outlook on life . . . it’s just . . . it’s very medicalized right\n12 now. There’s the sense of here’s the physical changes that happen and all that stuff is kind of\n13 what you have from a doctor’s office, but there’s so much more to it in terms of feeling better\n14 and feeling normal, for me at least. So, that’s been a big part of it for me. And until meeting\n15 you, there was no one to talk about that with or explore that with.\n16 AJ: What about you, Isabelle? What medical interventions have you undergone?\n17 IW: Similar. I didn’t do laser hair removal, I did IPL at home.\n18 AJ: IPL?\n19 IW: Intense pulsed light. It’s the same basic principle – use light to get the hair follicle really hot and\n20 hope it dies. So, yeah, I got a home machine because I needed to do it on the cheap and it turns\n21 out that’s a much cheaper way to do it. It’s been pretty effective for me. I actually started with\n22 IPL well before I started on HRT . . . like seven months or so before. I was just like, “Get this shit\n23 off me.” I had always been really . . . my body hair has bothered me since it started growing in\n24 and my facial hair was constant discomfort and there was no way that I ever got it to work until I\n25 just zapped it off. So, yeah, after about seven months of that, I started on spiro and estrogen.\n26 AJ: Spiro . . . like spironolactone.\n27 IW: Sorry, yes – should I be more explicit?\n28 AJ: You know, I’m just helping out . . . just keep talking.\n29 IW: Spironolactone, sublingual 17 beta estradiol, finasteride, progesterone. I’m a very . . .\n30 everything and the kitchen sink, just try it all. It’s been really good.\n31 AJ: Injections? Pills?\n32 IW: Oh, yeah, pills – sublingual.\n33 AJ: Pills, OK.\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 18\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nIW: You tried 1 patches for a while.\n2 JT: I did try patches, they were OK. It was hard to get stable blood levels so I did switch to\n3 sublingual, oral, estradiol and that seems to be better. But, maybe I’ll try injections if somebody\n4 figures out how to make enough so that people can have a supply of it.\n5 AJ: Ahh, yes. Speak about that – what’s going on?\n6 JT: So, there is . . . right now there is an issue with . . . a supply issue with the people who\n7 manufacture the ingredients that go into the injectables. I’m not really sure where it stands\n8 right now, last I checked there was an FDA approval awaiting a second supplier so that there\n9 could be more in the U.S. I don’t think it’s like a global thing, it’s just a U.S. thing. So, injectables\n10 are not really available widely right now.\n11 IW: Although, this is Isabelle, the shortage has been specific to estradiol valerate, right?\n12 JT: Yes.\n13 IW: I know some people . . .\n14 AJ: Estradiol . . .?\n15 IW: Valerate.\n16 AJ: Valerate.\n17 IW: Is that right? Yeah. But, there is another form that’s actually available and Georgia just started\n18 on it, she was telling me about it . . . I forget what it’s called, but it’s better in some ways – and\n19 you can actually get it, which is really important.\n20 AJ: I know there’s a lot of concern because of . . . a lot of people feel like the injectable hormones\n21 are more effective in terms of . . .\n22 JT: Yeah, I mean, there’s not a lot of . . . this is June speaking. There’s not a lot of data about the\n23 different forms that is like well-respected in medical communities, but anecdotally, certainly,\n24 there’s a lot of experience that the injectables are better. Maybe not even with effectiveness\n25 but, for instance, if you’re in a situation where you’re on a dose that’s going to require you to\n26 take a lot of pills per day, that can feel kind of weird as well as potentially out you, so people\n27 who are on injectables can take them less frequently and it’s just less of a burden in their life\n28 than other forms. So, it does kind of . . . it is feeling for a lot of different reasons than just that\n29 it’s more effective.\n30 AJ: Any plans for any additional medical interventions.\n31 IW: This is Isabelle – and yes.\n32 AJ: And yes, she says.\n33 IW: We’ve talked a lot about this. I went back and forth for a long time about genital surgery,\n34 vaginoplasty, and for a while I’m like, “Well that just seems like a huge pain in the ass.”\n35 AJ: No pun intended.\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 19\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\n1 IW: Oh, yeah.\n2 AJ: A pain just below the ass, I would say.\n3 IW: This is true. Bowel prep also doesn’t seem super fun. So, yeah, but I’ve just kind of . . . I don’t\n4 know, I’ve just sort of had this shift with that where I’m like, “OK.” But tucking also really sucks\n5 and spiro also really sucks and so worst case, I have to dilate 15 minutes every day. I spend at\n6 least 15 minutes waiting to finish peeing because I need 300 milligrams of spiro every day and . .\n7 . yeah.\n8 AJ: So, it makes you urinate a lot?\n9 IW: A lot, and it takes a long time. Yeah, it’s a real pain. And honestly, for a while, I’m like . . . I’ve\n10 been on HRT for shit . . . for a while, like over a year. And honestly, it’s cute . . . my junk is cute,\n11 but objectively I think OK, something that cute should exist in the world but it doesn’t really\n12 need to be attached to me, I don’t have . . . no, no. I remember, as a child, just wondering like,\n13 “Hey, what is this and where is the real thing? Where’s my fucking vagina? When is that going\n14 to grow in?” So, why fuck around with what I have when I can have something better. So, yeah,\n15 I’ve come around and I’ve discovered that there is a capable surgeon not far away from my\n16 home in New York City and I’ve been meaning to give the office a call, I just haven’t yet but I will.\n17 AJ: Yeah. Will your insurance at your job cover that?\n18 IW: Yes. I mean that’s basically required now – even if policies say they don’t cover it, they all pretty\n19 much do.\n20 AJ: Well, you have to go through some legal haggling to make it happen.\n21 JT: Yes, a lot.\n22 AJ: But, for the most part, many will cover it.\n23 JT: It’s getting better, for sure.\n24 AJ: How about you, June? What’s your plans for the future if you don’t mind discussing?\n25 JT: I’m not as sure, but we’ll see. I don’t know – I’m not sure yet.\n26 AJ: OK. Have either of you experienced any challenges with institutions, the criminal justice system,\n27 schools . . . I don’t know, at the restaurant? Have you experienced street harassment or\n28 violence or anything like that?\n29 IW: Do you want to go first?\n30 JT: This is June speaking. I wasn’t out publicly until I moved here to Minneapolis and . . .\n31 AJ: When did you move to Minneapolis?\n32 JT: I moved here in July of 2015.\n33 AJ: Where did you move from?\n34 JT: I moved from North Carolina.\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 20\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nAJ: OK, so you’re a very 1 new Twin Citian?\n2 JT: Yeah, a fairly new resident. I don’t have that much experience with street harassment, in\n3 general, but certainly it seems like Minneapolis has been a pretty good spot for queer people, so\n4 far. Or, I’ve just found pockets that are good. I work with amazing people and it was my first\n5 job interview out and it was really hard to get through, but it was amazing. They’re awesome,\n6 and the university has been awesome.\n7 AJ: So, where do you work?\n8 JT: I work at the Minnesota Population Center with the University of Minnesota.\n9 AJ: OK. What’s your job?\n10 JT: I work as a systems administrator in the IT, Information Technology, group. Keep the servers\n11 running.\n12 IW: You do more than that.\n13 JT: I do.\n14 AJ: For the University or just for MPC?\n15 JT: Just for MPC.\n16 AJ: That’s awesome.\n17 JT: And your help with policies and what not has been hugely and personally helpful with the\n18 University system.\n19 AJ: Well, I’m glad that I could help, that’s what we’re here for. Any challenges at all in your life,\n20 Isabelle, around institutions?\n21 IW: Sure. I mean, I’m pretty lucky in that most people mistake me for a cis woman.\n22 AJ: You have very much what we call passing privilege.\n23 IW: It’s true. It’s true. That’s definitely a thing. I don’t know, it’s weird because it is a very\n24 conditional privilege and I do feel kind of uncomfortable about keeping that a secret, but in sort\n25 of casual situations, obviously I’m not going to out myself to every stranger. But, yeah, so most\n26 of the shock, most of the problems that I’ve encountered have been as a woman rather than as\n27 a trans woman, including street harassment and . . . you know, many different forms of street\n28 harassment – cat calling and men leering and leaning and getting very close and not knowing\n29 when to leave me alone. I’ve had drunk men walk up to my wife and I having brunch and try to\n30 hit on us and we’re like, “Well, actually we’re married.” And he was like, “Oh, so both of you\n31 then.” And I’m like, “Dude, go away.” And, of course, that doesn’t work. Institutionally, I’ve\n32 had some borderline shitty experiences with the Post Office trying to get my passport changed.\n33 Nothing that put me at risk, but just ridiculous. I walked up to hand the guy my application and\n34 he’s like, “Oh, so you’re transgender.” And I’m like, “Yes,” and he says, “Good job.” And I’m\n35 like, “Good job at what? Not being too tall?”\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 21\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\n1 AJ: Right, yeah.\n2 IW: But, for the most part I’ve been really, really lucky with that.\n3 JT: Yeah, I would say the same.\n4 AJ: No negative police interactions, no negative medical doctor interactions?\n5 IW: I’ve had doctors say dumb things, but I always get the care that I need. And we’re white, so\n6 being white kind of makes it a lot easier with the police, in particular.\n7 AJ: Ahh, yeah. Speaking as a Black trans woman, I think I can say that it’s a different challenge for\n8 women of color . . . trans women of color.\n9 IW: Definitely.\n10 AJ: Wow. Speaking of that, what do you think some of the challenges for the broader transgender\n11 community are? And maybe we’ll start with June.\n12 JT: I have been really impressed with younger trans people, like now teens and early 20s age kids\n13 now have so much more as far as information and access to other queer people. So, trans\n14 people today have just been so impressive to me and the stuff that they are able to talk about\n15 openly with each other. That makes me feel really hopeful for the future of transness, at least in\n16 America. I’m cautiously optimistic about policy and legal improvements, but it seems like it’s\n17 always on a knife’s edge and there’s always this constant throwback to public referendums on,\n18 “Should trans people even be trans? What do we think about that?” That’s just really\n19 exhausting. But, I’m really, really hopeful that that’s getting better and there’s just so much\n20 more as far as groups working on stuff and political action committees and advocacy groups\n21 working for trans people and working with trans people that were just not even remotely\n22 possible when I was looking for this stuff early on. I feel really hopeful about it, yeah.\n23 AJ: Cool. How about you, Isabelle?\n24 IW: Sure – all of that basically, but also, I do think . . . we’ve talked about this a lot, we’ve been really\n25 frustrated by the medical situation where there’s no real data, it’s all anecdotes, there’s more\n26 information in the community than there is in the medical literature. And, nobody is bothering\n27 to really study it and, when they do, it’s tiny sample sizes.\n28 AJ: Study what exactly?\n29 IW: Particularly drug effects. Like progesterone is a great example of where every doctor will tell\n30 you, “Oh, it doesn’t help with your breasts, it doesn’t help breast development.” But the study\n31 that they’re referring to had a sample size of what? Seventeen across both the positive and the\n32 control group – like really, really tiny studies and they’re extrapolating that into care for millions\n33 of people. It’s just really weird how nobody seems to care or like with the injectable estrogen\n34 shortage where it’s like actually . . . that shouldn’t have gone on for as long as it did, we’re\n35 insignificant to the broader medical community and that carries over into research.\n36 AJ: Do you think that has anything to do with sexism?\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 22\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nIW: Possibly. That’s really complicated, right? Because to analyze whether 1 or not there is an\n2 element of sexism in there, or at least certain forms of sexism, you’d have to look at the\n3 corresponding situation for trans men. But, actually, injectable testosterone hasn’t had a\n4 shortage, its effects are pretty clear, its not like . . . it’s sort of a medically simpler situation and\n5 there are other issues there, obviously, like surgical coverage for mastectomies and that’s\n6 complete bullshit that that’s not . . . that they’re still fighting against that, that they’re still trying\n7 to police our bodies.\n8 JT: This is June. At a previous job, I worked with groups doing clinical research and I would\n9 absolutely say that sexism plays a huge role – sexism and heteronormativity, in the way that\n10 research is designed and funded and supported and published is huge in terms of\n11 disadvantaging research towards minority populations, but specifically women as a group, as a\n12 whole, aren’t studied. Research is done on men and backfilled with assumptions about how it\n13 would affect women. The idea that there are participants who are not cis and heteronormative\n14 is still very often edge, in the special projects kind of area, instead of as a core part of any kind of\n15 normal research at all. And, the groups that do this work, there’s a lot of implicit bias stuff that\n16 happens with groups of cis het people, because that’s the norm doing this research and not\n17 really even thinking about it, not as an intentional thing necessarily, but it’s just the matter of\n18 the fact that they don’t believe that that’s a thing that they have to study.\n19 AJ: Wow. Have there been times when someone has been really super helpful in terms of helping\n20 you to become more sure-footed on this journey, this transgender journey?\n21 JT: Oh, my gosh – so many people. I have so many great people in my life that have helped me,\n22 given me space and helped me figure this out. I couldn’t even name them all, but it’s been huge\n23 to have that sense of friendship that I can rely on for that. Absolutely.\n24 AJ: June, who was the first trans person you ever met?\n25 JT: Met in person? Was it you?\n26 IW: That can’t be.\n27 JT: That I was aware of . . . it can’t be. That’s an excellent question that I haven’t really thought\n28 about. I’m not sure. I’m not sure . . . it seems weird that that would be Isabelle, but it might be.\n29 IW: You’re definitely the person that I spent the most time with. We live what . . . 1500 miles apart,\n30 and yet . . . yeah.\n31 AJ: Isabelle, you don’t have very many transgender friends?\n32 IW: Actually, I do. The trans community in New York City is not bad.\n33 AJ: It’s pretty big. I’ve been in New York quite a bit and there’s a lot of trans activism going on and\n34 trans community.\n35 IW: It’s a little geographically defused because New York City pulls people from long distances in\n36 every direction. But, yeah, no – I have some really great friends. Emma, who you met when you\n37 visited New York.\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 23\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\n1 JT: She’s awesome.\n2 IW: Yeah, that’s been a really great experience. My wife and I got to take her out on her first day\n3 out as herself shopping.\n4 AJ: Wow.\n5 IW: Yeah, it was really fun. There are a bunch of local people.\n6 JT: You know a ton on Twitter.\n7 IW: That’s true.\n8 JT: You’re like an ambassador for trans people – a huge mentor.\n9 IW: I guess, maybe. I don’t know. I do try to help as many people as I can. I’ve been offering voice\n10 training to people over Skype and that’s been really rewarding. It’s something that when I was\n11 teaching myself, I was really invested in it and it’s something I really, really enjoyed. I put so\n12 much time and so much effort into it, and I loved the work and the process of learning. I’m\n13 discovering things and figuring out . . . I had no idea. It seemed impossible, it feels like magic\n14 that you can practice and change the way you speak and I’ve just been trying to share that with\n15 people.\n16 AJ: Give us some tips.\n17 IW: Oh, sure. Wow, OK – there’s a lot. First things first, most people don’t really breathe as\n18 efficiently as they could when they speak and if you’re going to be pushing the limits of your\n19 voice, you have to breathe like a singer. So, you have to take your breath from your diaphragm,\n20 not your chest. When most people breathe they puff all this up and it makes everything really\n21 tight and it’s exhausting and it’s not that efficient. So, proper breath . . . like, if I just kind of . . .\n22 this isn’t even right . . . somewhere down, so you can get this resonance . . . that’s not even low\n23 enough. I have a hard time doing my own voice. So, you have to pull . . . literally put your hands\n24 on your body and make weird sounds until you figure out what it feels like to have your\n25 vibration come from here and not from here. And also, just listening and trying weird . . . you\n26 have to sound bad. This is the thing that one of my singing teachers told me – practice is about\n27 sounding bad so that you can sound good. So, you just have to be willing to make bad weird\n28 noises that you don’t like and just get used to that.\n29 AJ: Bad . . . which kind of noises?\n30 IW: Weird noises.\n31 AJ: Oh, weird.\n32 IW: So, just recording yourself and getting used to the way you sound and being able to map a\n33 sound to what other people hear to what you hear in your own skull, and what it feels like\n34 experientially, physically, muscular stuff and being able to understand if it feels like this so it will\n35 sound like that. That takes a lot of practice. Most people, when they hear a recording of\n36 themselves, they are like, “Oh, that’s not my voice.” I don’t have that because I’ve listened to\n37 recordings of myself so much.\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 24\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nJT: You spent 1 a lot of time on it, though.\n2 IW: I did. I loved it, I love doing it, I love doing it for other people.\n3 AJ: So, do you charge a fee for your services?\n4 IW: No. I thought briefly about . . . I love it so much and was like, “This would be great if this could\n5 be my job,” but I don’t know . . . so many trans women, the community in general, there’s a\n6 poverty problem and I’m like why would I be taking money out of the community when I am\n7 personally fully capable of getting steady work and putting money into the community instead.\n8 I would be very hesitant to take money for helping another trans woman, that just doesn’t feel\n9 right to me.\n10 AJ: OK, very good. What do you guys think the relationship is between the G, the L, and the B to the\n11 T?\n12 IW: Oh, God. You should go first.\n13 JT: It’s been very . . .\n14 AJ: This is June.\n15 JT: Yes, this is June speaking. It’s been very difficult for me to feel a part of the GLB part of the\n16 community, even though I identify as lesbian, because there is just this huge historical animosity\n17 or . . . I don’t even know what the right word is. It’s just like this constant sense of being thrown\n18 under the bus all the time. Often you’ll see GLBT or LGBT on some marketing or some group’s\n19 identity, and the T is just . . . they don’t have any idea why it’s there, it’s just they heard the\n20 letters and they just added it. It’s very infrequent that I’ve come across groups that are GLBT or\n21 LGBT and they actually mean T. And it seems like it might be getting better, I don’t know . . . I’m\n22 kind of really worried about legislation right now as far as bills prohibiting trans people from\n23 using public accommodations or clarifying a lack of regulations as excluding trans people from\n24 public accommodations.\n25 AJ: Yeah, that’s a big deal in the state you just moved from – what the hell is going on in North\n26 Carolina?\n27 JT: It’s a huge deal. North Carolina’s HB2 is awful, of course, but it’s concerted and it’s part of this\n28 very planned effort by conservative groups . . .\n29 IW: ADF.\n30 JT: ADF, specifically – Alliance Defense Fund.\n31 IW: Americans Defending Freedom – some bullshit.\n32 JT: Some eagle and American flag logo. Anyway, it’s a group that basically plans the eradication of\n33 trans people and gay people and pushes legislation into favorable legislatures and gets it passed\n34 and gets ordinances in place and astroturfs local people, like up here in Minnesota, that farmer\n35 dude who went to a bunch of house committee meetings and freaked out about trans people\n36 and made it this big issue. So, they’re pushing all this stuff and trans people, being a small\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 25\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\npercentage of the population are relying on allies in the truest sense 1 of the word to help them\n2 with this stuff. So, political action and lobby groups and people who are oriented towards\n3 justice, we’re relying on them to stand up for us because there aren’t enough of us to do it\n4 ourselves. Right now, it’s really touch and go with LGBT groups, considering whether it’s\n5 politically advantageous to push for public accommodation laws as a line in the sand, or is it\n6 going to be something they want to kick further down the road.\n7 AJ: Where do you stand on that in terms of . . .? Because the argument is we can get some\n8 protections now and then we’ll come back and fight for transgender people later.\n9 JT: Yeah, I do understand the political calculus that’s going on and why people would want to do\n10 that from a tactical perspective. Me personally, I am way on the side of no, that’s not\n11 acceptable, because, to me, public accommodation is everything – that’s more important than\n12 protecting me on the job. If I can’t get to my job, if I can’t be in public, then it’s . . .\n13 AJ: Yeah, right – it’s useless for me to have a job.\n14 JT: I have a lot of appreciation for people who do feel like that’s the right tactical move – like maybe\n15 they’ve really done the test and they’ve decided that this is the best move to make. I don’t\n16 think it is. I think it gives the conservative groups too much ammunition to circle back and take\n17 things away. A lot of the stuff that we enjoy as trans rights right now are executive actions as a\n18 result of the Obama Administration and that could be easily wiped out if there’s not actual\n19 federal legislation that protects trans people. So, I’m really not interested in teaming up with\n20 groups that are going to play that game rather than wholeheartedly support us right now. I\n21 don’t feel like that is safe right now.\n22 IW: Yeah, this is Isabelle. Yeah, I do find . . . like the politics have been, honestly, really baffling.\n23 Human Rights Campaign on our side on this.\n24 AJ: I know, this is weird.\n25 JT: So weird.\n26 IW: Trans Equality being an incrementalist organization when the last time we passed any legislation\n27 like this was what - 2004? So, they’re saying we can wait a decade on public accommodations\n28 and for 10 years you can have a job, but if you’re a trans woman at your job, you have to use the\n29 men’s room. It’s like, “What? Who is that actually serving?”\n30 AJ: And I just want to clarify, NCTE is the National Center for Transgender Equality.\n31 JT: Correct, yes.\n32 IW: It’s just so bizarre how the politics are playing out and they’re basically retreating and protecting\n33 housing and jobs which are, of course, profoundly important, but notably cover . . . if you look at\n34 who is affected by public accommodations, it’s dominantly trans people. If you look at who is\n35 affected by employment and housing, well that’s any queer person. They’re currently not\n36 protected in most states. It’s kind of suspicious that they’re doing the thing that helps gay and\n37 lesbian and bisexual people and skipping the thing that’s specific to transgender people.\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 26\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nJT: This is June speaking again. It reminds me of when I was watching 1 a documentary about trans\n2 women, mostly trans women, doing on-the-ground work in Washington to go to legislator’s\n3 offices and push for the passage of . . . was it called the Equality Act at the time or was it\n4 something else?\n5 AJ: ENDA.\n6 JT: Yeah, ENDA.\n7 AJ: Employment Non-Discrimination Act.\n8 JT: Yes, thank you. Do you remember the name of the movie, Ibby?\n9 IW: I don’t – no, I don’t.\n10 JT: Citizen Lobbyist or something like that.\n11 IW: Something like that; it was something very generic.\n12 JT: Yeah, I apologize.\n13 AJ: That’s fine.\n14 JT: It was like 2002 . . . 2004.\n15 IW: Something like that.\n16 JT: Yeah. I remember watching this group of women do this work and go to the HRC offices and\n17 protest outside of them and make them talk to them and just how familiar it seems to now was\n18 kind of terrifying. If I could have shouted backwards in time, it would be like, “Be more angry.”\n19 Oh, my gosh – thank you for doing the work but oh, my gosh, I am so, so sorry that it’s not\n20 better than it is now. It just feels like this huge boulder.\n21 AJ: Wow, yeah. Well, that is going to be a big issue in the coming weeks and months and years,\n22 unfortunately.\n23 JT: Yes, it will.\n24 IW: Can I take a sec to take that original question from a different angle?\n25 AJ: Yeah, Isabelle – go ahead.\n26 IW: So, politically the community is kind of shitty, obviously. It’s a very mixed bag but I found\n27 interpersonally, locally actual relationships with . . . I mean, a good chunk of my friends are cis\n28 gender queer women and they are so good to me and I can talk to them. There is a great queer\n29 tango scene in New York City that my wife and I were involved in for a long time . . . a while ago.\n30 AJ: Tango, like with the rose and the . . .\n31 IW: Well, no – nobody does the rose.\n32 AJ: OK.\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 27\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nIW: That’s very showey – we did Argentine tango, it’s decidedly very simple and 1 small and perfect –\n2 and I loved it. The community there was great and it was . . . I might have been the only trans\n3 person in our group, but they were all very accepting and I could be open with them. There’s\n4 this really weird contrast for me where every single person that I meet is great and then,\n5 somehow, collectively, the community is not as good. Even within the trans community, things\n6 get ugly.\n7 JT: Really ugly.\n8 IW: Really ugly.\n9 AJ: Like what, for example?\n10 IW: I think our favorite pastime is tearing each other down, basically, on the internet. Go ahead,\n11 June.\n12 JT: Speaking about the legislation thing, the tactics like I remember getting into several really\n13 heated discussions with other trans women about whether that’s a good idea or a bad idea. It\n14 just feels really gross and not fruitful. So, yeah, the dreaded discourse, whenever that comes\n15 up, as far as what does trans mean in terms of what words we use to describe it and who we\n16 involve in our advocacy seems to quickly get heated.\n17 IW: Yeah.\n18 AJ: Who do you think belongs under the transgender umbrella? That seems to be changing a lot\n19 lately so I’m interested in both of your guy’s opinion.\n20 IW: Do you want to go first?\n21 JT: I don’t feel like there’s a limit. I’m excited to . . . like I was saying earlier about the younger\n22 people now and what gender means to them and gender fluidity and how they embrace that. I\n23 mean, it’s really inspiring so I’m hopeful that it’s a broad umbrella and is less like gatekeeper-y,\n24 personally.\n25 IW: This is Isabelle. I think I broadly agree and there are some weird corner cases of people who\n26 frankly do fall under the umbrella of people who are served by transgender activism, but\n27 personally don’t want to be under that umbrella. I mean, Julia Serano talked a lot about the\n28 division between an identity label and an umbrella term and I do feel like people often . . .\n29 AJ: What is the difference?\n30 IW: Sure. I mean, OK. Sure . . . so, somebody who falls under an umbrella is essentially served by\n31 that community so if you . . .\n32 JT: And works to improve that community.\n33 IW: Exactly, but you don’t necessarily have to take that label for yourself.\n34 JT: Sure.\n35 IW: So, unlike Julia Serano who also has opinions about this . . .\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 28\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nAJ: Who would 1 that apply to?\n2 IW: There are lots of bisexual people who don’t feel comfortable using that word for themselves –\n3 lots of bisexual and pansexual women calling themselves queer women because there’s\n4 sometimes a stigma attached to that within the community. So, sometimes, even though\n5 somebody falls under an umbrella, they don’t want to use the word for themselves. So, within\n6 the trans community, there is . . . I don’t know, the intersex community seems, in my\n7 experience, split about 50/50 on whether they want to be under the umbrella. And maybe that\n8 50% split is the intersex people who are also trans, whose birth assignment or whatever . . .\n9 AJ: Because that’s a possibility, right?\n10 JT: Absolutely.\n11 IW: Plenty of people, sure. Avery Edison, Cat Graffam, the painter.\n12 AJ: I’m sorry . . . because my transcriptionist is going to be like, “What did she say?” I’ll be like, “I\n13 don’t know.” So, somebody . . . Addison, you said.\n14 IW: Oh, gosh. Avery Edison and\n15 AJ: Avery Edison.\n16 IW: Yeah, she’s a comedian. Intersex, androgen insensitivity, but assigned male and she is a\n17 transgender woman. I personally think she’s hilarious. Her humor isn’t for everybody but I think\n18 she’s really smart and . . . her humor is pretty dark but she’s very brilliant. She was sort of one\n19 of my early inspirations, one of my role models and one of the people that I looked up to when I\n20 was trying to figure myself out at first.\n21 AJ: Cool.\n22 JT: And the second name you mentioned was Catherine Graffam G-r-a-f-f-a-m. She’s a trans\n23 woman artist but also intersex and really inspiring.\n24 IW: Yeah.\n25 AJ: So, what about drag queens. That is being slowly being pushed out of the umbrella.\n26 IW: Yeah. This is Isabelle . . . I’m just going to say it’s complicated. Plenty of drag queens are also\n27 trans, but plenty aren’t. I feel like maybe in this case, to the extent that somebody performs\n28 drag, there are not really affected by the same issues that affect the transgender community at\n29 large, like when you have the option of switching back – of saying, “Well, I’m not a woman so\n30 public accommodations don’t really affect me.” Like, you can take the costume off, right,\n31 because that really changes things. I can’t ever go back to the safety of being a man, I just\n32 couldn’t – it would destroy me. So, I do think that that is a substantially different situation; the\n33 fact that it is explicitly . . . the people for whom it is explicitly just performative, I do think they\n34 do fall in sort of a separate category, but I understand that can be a controversial opinion.\n35 JT: My experience with drag only is fairly small in terms of direct experience, but I remember pretty\n36 starkly one of the first times that I went out as me with my wife. We went to a club and there\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 29\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nwas a drag performer there, a drag queen, and it was very notable because this 1 is like this thing\n2 that was very show-y for people who were participating as audience and there was absolute,\n3 complete agreement from the audience and the place that was putting on the show that she’s\n4 doing a show and pronouns are she and everything is great – no problems . . . except that I was\n5 harassed in the bathroom downstairs – because, “There’s some guy in the bathroom.” That\n6 makes no . . . it’s right there, it’s right in the same space as this thing going on and people were\n7 like, “Yeah, great.” I don’t know – it felt like a microcosm of how drag kind of can be damaging\n8 for trans women who are just trying to live their lives and not perform this show for everybody.\n9 But, of course, everything Isabelle said as well, I would say.\n10 AJ: Have either of you either worked for or volunteered for a trans or LGBT organization?\n11 JT: I’m on the Trans Commission here at the U.\n12 AJ: This is . . .June.\n13 JT: June speaking, yes.\n14 AJ: You’re on the Trans Commission?\n15 JT: I am.\n16 AJ: What is that like?\n17 JT: It’s pretty cool. It’s like coming back from apparently some rough times so we’re trying . . .\n18 AJ: A bit of a hiatus or . . .\n19 JT: Get more organized. We have a lot of new members that are excited, so we’re hoping to\n20 capitalize on that and use it for some good stuff.\n21 AJ: Is it mostly U of M staff or students? What’s the make-up nowadays?\n22 JT: I think most of it is staff right now, though there was one student at the last meeting that I went\n23 to and there was a specific agenda item about trying to increase student involvement. I’m not\n24 sure how that’s going to go, that’s like right now – so, we’ll see. I’m totally new to it, so I’m just\n25 excited to be a part of it. And, I’ve had some initial talks with different groups here – like\n26 OutFront Minnesota. Having just moved here, I don’t really know much about the queer groups,\n27 but I’m trying to learn. I’ve done some work with a local clinic to kind of help their doctors learn\n28 more about trans people and help with some policy decisions with Allina Health Systems to\n29 improve guidelines for care.\n30 AJ: That’s pretty awesome – sort of as a solo artist.\n31 JT: Yeah, me and a friend who works with the clinic have been working on policies and procedures\n32 and updating them to modern terms and being more sensitive and aware of being respectful.\n33 AJ: That’s incredible. What about you, Isabelle?\n34 IW: Yeah, I’m not as awesome as June – she’s incredible. I’m just . . . I mostly just work directly,\n35 interpersonally. I’m very into trans mom-ing for people. That’s something that I get a lot of joy\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 30\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nout of, so mostly that’s what I do. I don’t think I’ve . . . have I ever 1 gotten at all politically\n2 involved? I’ve been meaning to, but it’s also a really big imposing subject with all this\n3 bureaucracy and all these structures that I don’t understand or really know anything about.\n4 AJ: Yeah, it’s work.\n5 IW: You’ve done a great job of navigating that, June.\n6 JT: I read a lot of angry letters.\n7 IW: I’ve been too scared to even try, really. It’s just so intimidating. But also, I’m just already very\n8 busy just doing all the one-on-one stuff – it’s hard to make time after work and four hours of\n9 voice lessons a week and seeing if I can squeeze in more. And, just supporting people when\n10 they’re feeling really shitty about things.\n11 JT: That’s hugely important.\n12 AJ: Yeah, that’s huge – it absolutely is. What do you guys think the agenda should be for the\n13 transgender community moving forward? You kind of talked about this a little bit, but I just\n14 want to get a little more specific.\n15 IW: Yeah, this is Isabelle. I do think . . . yeah, so there’s the immediate stuff where people are\n16 actively suffering and it’s the stuff that’s politically hot right now . . . bathrooms and housing and\n17 employment. Those need to be fixed, all of them, as soon as possible.\n18 AJ: I’m just going to throw in transgender women of color getting murdered, which is kind of a big\n19 deal.\n20 IW: Yeah, I was going to touch on that. I do think . . . that’s a really hard issue to solve because it\n21 intersects with race and that’s a massive problem in this country in a lot of ways. There are so\n22 many things that dominantly affect women of color – like imprisonment and trans women being\n23 thrown in men’s prisons, sometimes for just defending themselves. It’s atrocious.\n24 AJ: Yeah, I just saw Free CeCe, the movie, this past weekend – one of those women who was\n25 defending herself and subsequently incarcerated.\n26 IW: Yeah, it’s heartbreaking, but what . . .\n27 JT: And even beyond just defending, but surviving – like so much about surviving is criminalized for\n28 trans people, trans women of color specifically.\n29 IW: Sure. I mean, are you talking . . . this is Isabelle, specifically about sex work?\n30 JT: Yeah, specifically.\n31 IW: Yeah. It’s just . . . I don’t know, these are huge problems that have been part of this country’s\n32 history from the very beginning and dismantling them . . . it doesn’t feel impossible, but it feels\n33 like the work of a generation. It’s work of now so many generations . . . it feels almost arrogant\n34 to think that this generation, however great we are, however aware we think we are, I think\n35 we’re up against this massive engrained hatred and I don’t know. People have theories about\n36 how you undo that and there’s the whole Harvey Milk narrative where you just come out and\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 31\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nnow your friends and family know a gay person so maybe they’ll be less 1 shitty. But that only\n2 takes you so far, especially with race where . . . OK, there are parts of the country where\n3 nobody, where everybody only ever sees white people. But, I don’t think merely introducing\n4 yourself to those people as a person of color, I don’t know how far that would get you honestly.\n5 AJ: Changes their hearts and minds – yeah, it really doesn’t.\n6 IW: No. there’s a part of me that just feels like America is broken and we just need to . . . to solve it\n7 and start over, there’s no way to pay back the legacy, the damage that we’ve done, and\n8 relatedly, indigenous communities and the destruction of two-spirit identities is another\n9 important intersection where, yeah . . .\n10 JT: Well, gender as a whole thing is like this colonial legacy of oppression that’s just . . . I mean, the\n11 gender binary. It’s just awful.\n12 IW: Yeah, like white supremacists and so-called white nationalists and whatever bullshit they call\n13 themselves to make themselves feel good about it – or even white genocide. I’m like, “Sure,\n14 let’s do that, let them fix things.” Yeah, just like, “Let’s breed ourselves out of existence, that\n15 would be OK, everybody would be better off.”\n16 JT: I mean, yeah, we’ve pretty much fucked everything up.\n17 IW: OK, so that’s the white guilt portion.\n18 AJ: I’m not saying that.\n19 JT: I said it.\n20 AJ: I just want to be clear here.\n21 IW: Yeah . . . no, whatever.\n22 AJ: Even though it’s hard to disagree, but I don’t think white genocide is the answer, personally.\n23 IW: Well, white genocide and the way that white supremacists mean it which is like calling diversity\n24 white genocide and worrying about miscegenation and I’m like, “No, that’s kind of OK – diversity\n25 is really great.”\n26 JT: Yeah, this whole sense that equality is somehow oppressive to white people is insane.\n27 AJ: Sure.\n28 JT: That’s ridiculous.\n29 AJ: Well, where do you see the trans community in 50 years from now?\n30 JT: I have . . .\n31 IW: June, that’s June.\n32 JT: Yes, sorry, that’s June speaking. I’ve mentioned to Isabelle that I see larger and larger\n33 percentages of trans people being self-identified and recognized in a census sense as where\n34 we’re going 50 years from now. I think there’s way more trans people than even trans people\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 32\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nnow would say there are because of that legacy of oppression from a whole 1 society suppressing\n2 this idea that you can be trans. So, I am very hopeful that there will be a lot of trans people in\n3 50 years and that will be an OK thing to be and that it will be weird in the same way that it’s\n4 weird for kids now to learn about slavery as a real thing – that their not very distant\n5 relationships experienced. I’m hoping that people 50 years from now will be similarly\n6 embarrassed about and feel disgraced by the idea that that was OK to oppress trans people in\n7 the way that they have been.\n8 AJ: OK. What about you, Isabelle?\n9 IW: Sure. Wow, I don’t know. I do think you’re right in terms of the percentage of the population.\n10 The best study we had was about one-third of a percent, and now it’s about two-thirds of a\n11 percent, and I’m like my guess would probably be closer to 2% altogether, if people would just\n12 feel comfortable coming out of the shadows.\n13 AJ: Minimally, right?\n14 JT: Yeah. I’m very optimistic.\n15 IW: You said 5%, I think that’s probably shooting a little higher but somewhere in the low single\n16 digits. I’m like that’s a real political force . . . that extra, there’s a threshold politically where I\n17 think if we can get across the threshold where people say a third of a percent, or they did, and\n18 now that gets translated into point-zero three of a percent, because people don’t understand\n19 percentages. If we can just cross that threshold into a whole number, it worked for gay men.\n20 Maybe that’s overly optimistic, maybe we . . . I don’t know. Fifty years is a really long time.\n21 JT: That’s a really long time.\n22 IW: But I do think so many trans people are around now and they’re transitioning pretty young\n23 some of them, and that’s really going to change people’s perceptions – I hope.\n24 AJ: Yes, very young.\n25 IW: We made a promise to each other, we’re going to grow old.\n26 JT: Seriously, that’s huge.\n27 IW: Yeah, the trans elders that are so hard to find . . . yeah. So, I think starting to amplify those\n28 generational affects . . . there being enough of us to start passing things down, I think can really\n29 make the difference.\n30 JT: Yeah, stop being the pioneers.\n31 IW: Yeah, right. If people don’t have to feel like pioneers.\n32 JT: We’re still in that stage of everybody figuring it out for the first time themselves only – in\n33 isolation.\n34 AJ: Yeah.\n35 JT: I hope that’s better.\nJune Taylor and Isabelle Wedin 33\nThe Transgender Oral History Project Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies\nUniversity of Minnesota\nAJ: Well, I want to thank you both for being willing to be a part of this 1 project. My sincere\n2 appreciation to June Taylor and Isabelle Wedin.\n3 IW: Correct.\n4 AJ: Thank you so much for coming in. Until we meet again.\n5 JT: Thank you.\n6 AJ: Bye-bye.\n7 IW: Thank you. Bye.", "_version_": 1710339101793714176, "type": "Moving Image", "collection": "p16022coll97", "is_compound": false, "parent_id": "90", "thumb_url": "https://cdnapisec.kaltura.com/p/1369852/thumbnail/entry_id/0_rbcb79xz", "thumb_cdn_url": "https://dkp5i0hinw9br.cloudfront.net/df9abb5185ba4241a37920b58735fd4b1e8d8928.png", "children": [ ] }