Forty-three years ago, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries—or STAR—was co-founded in New York City by trans activists Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson and Bubbles Rose Lee.
Rivera and Johnson were best friends, veterans of the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969 ( Johnson is said to have been the first to physically resist the police ), among the founders of the Gay Activists Alliance, Gay Liberation Front and organizers of the first Gay Pride March.
STAR was, "… an organization designed to achieve rights for [mainly the trans-]community, and provide social services to this largely ignored and stigmatized group," wrote Bebe Scarpinato and Rusty Moore in the Sylvia Rivera Law Project Notes.
It pains me to iterate to younger readers who walk into the wonderland of ghettoized gay privilege with overinflated senses of entitlement that the pro bono social, legal and medical services available to queer and trans peoples did not magically fall from the sky.
Violent and impulsive acts of civil disobedience and direct actions were often performed to radically dismantle the status quo. Pre-bureaucratic activists knowingly risked police-sanctioned civilian abuse, brutal police treatment, arrests on ludicrous charges ( e.g., lesbians wearing trousers could be incarcerated for "impersonating a man" ), repeated jailhouse beatings and rape, compulsory dismissal from jobs as well as general public humiliation. An exceedingly high level of dedication led many—including Rivera—to willingly give up paying day jobs, be routinely arrested thus becoming homeless as a gesture of solidarity to the cause. Pride celebrations were not plastic, corporate-sponsored global circuses.
By 1973, Rivera and Johnson had created STAR House. They "…had managed to get some small time mobster who ran a porno store in the Lower East Side in some slum building [640 East 12th St., Apt. 14] which, for a few months, they operated as a shelter for homeless transgendered youth. And they felt that was one of their great accomplishments in life. That has ended up going into the history books 'cause it was really the first time anyone had tried to make an outreach to the homeless transgendered community," said Randolfe Wicker, Marsha P. Johnson's friend and housemate of 12 years, in Pay It No Mind, a documentary on Johnson.
"Lack of funds and problems with the certificate of occupancy for S.T.A.R. House, forced the abandonment of the venture at that time, but Rivera never lost the dream of creating a supportive and safe living space for young transgender people," wrote Scarpinato and Moore.
In 1993, one of Rivera's "children," Chelsea Goodwin, and her partner Rusty Mae Moore used STAR House as a conceptual blueprint when they converted their Brooklyn graystone into an experimental queer communal residence nicknamed Transy House. Rivera joined the collective where she worked as house mother, counselor and financial aid officer to homeless people in the process of gender transition from 1997 until her death in 2002.
New York City social workers began sending hard-to-place trans people to reside in Transy House resulting in overcrowding and problems with insubordination. Goodwin and Moore closed Transy House in 2008. During its 15-year operation as a shelter, it housed up to 13 at once.
In July 2013—STAR House's 40th-anniversary year—Chicago House opened the TransLife Center ( TLC ). I want to make it clear that current transgender housing and service solutions are rooted in a legacy of work that predates TLC by decades. With the aid of the Internet, the histories of these once-obscure initiatives are easily accessible to everyone.
It is indisputable that STAR House, Transy House and TransLife Center share an identical ideological germ built around the mission of safely sheltering a centralized group. The additional tiers of service TLC promises ( legal, medical, employment training ) are cherries on the sundae. These cherries simply did not exist in 1973. It was part of the intention of Rivera and Johnson for Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries to be a platform for the invention and implementation of stratagem for productive trans-inclusion in the world at-large. It is irrelevant at this point if in the past, those cherries were fully realized, lived as attempts or merely as part of a dream. Rivera's projects and TLC share the same goal.
I believe it is the responsibility of the community to make sure the history of transgender activism and culture is not the history that got away.
Throughout her life, Rivera was abused by the same white male power base she fought for. "In the early days of the gay civil rights movement Rivera was repeatedly used to front possibly dangerous demonstrations, and then shunted aside by assimilationist 'leaders' when the press appeared. … Rivera was greatly disillusioned with the desire of many early gay and lesbian activists to distance the gay movement from transvestites, drag queens, and other gender variant people, in spite of the fact that these people were often the 'shock troops' for the entire gay community," wrote Scarpinato and Moore.
I wonder if it's not the same opportunistic, bait and switch mentality that forces Rivera to continue to ride at the back of the bus in death, suggests Jesse Gan in an article for Centro Journal in 2007.
Johnson and Rivera were both people of color and sex workers. Rivera did have alcohol and substance abuse problems. Neither had formal education. This background does not make these iconoclastic insurrectionists ineligible for equal consideration by the modern LGBTQ movement, which walks in their pumps.
The spirit of this work in 2013, at TransLife Center and across the country, will feel exponentially more authentic when it allows itself to be connected to the STAR House legacy.
To learn more about trans activism, visit http://tagzeen.com/tagged/Trans%20Activism.
Erik R. Peterson is a mixed-media artist who has also worked across the disciplines of photography, installation and performance. He exhibits in his native Chicago; Benton Harbor, Mich.; New York; and London. Erik is a freelance curator and writes about art and culture. He is also co-founder and publisher of TAG Zine ( tagzeen.com ), a queer art, culture and sex guide.
