Fifty-three years ago this month, on June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village, the Stonewall Riots/Uprising began from which Pride month, the celebration of the LGBTQ+ community, was born.
It was less than a month after I finished my sophomore year at a rural high school (Greenon) about three miles from the village of Enon in Springfield, Ohio and fifteen minutes away from Yellow Springs and Antioch College, a hotbed of Sixties radicalism. Yet, at that time, I was a not-quite fifteen-year-old who had suspected, but had no proof, that there were others like me.
One of my mother’s “Book of the Month Club” selections was “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask). The author, Dr. David Reuben wrote about “transsexuals” and “sex-change” surgery and hormones, and for the first time I felt hope, regardless of how remote it seemed.
The following year, 1970, I lettered in wrestling, track, and football and I overheard locker room talk about the ‘B’ movie at the Stardust Drive-in: “The Christine Jorgensen Story.” Then, there was Renee Richards, Eleanor Schuler, and Wendy Carlos, and TV shows about transsexuals, but electronic bulletin boards and the internet were about twenty years in the future for most Americans.
I came out to my first wife in late summer of 1981 in Mobile, Alabama, a little over a year into our marriage. On July 26, 1986—six years to the day after we wed—I signed the divorce papers in an amicable divorce and the next day, I headed out to Tucson, Arizona where through the now defunct Janus Foundation I had found a psychologist that worked with transsexual clients. My mother lived in Tucson and after coming out to her in 1985 she welcomed me to live with her.
Those were the days of ‘Real-Life Tests (RLT)” of at least one year. But, finally, by December of 1988, I was given a script for intramuscular estradiol cypionate, which I was taught how to self-inject. However, it was only after another one and a half unsuccessful marriages, and twenty-four years, that I completed my journey in Chonburi, Thailand on September 11, 2012.
Prior to going to Thailand, my partner, Chris, and I married after two years together, and come August, we will have been happily married for ten years. However, prior to meeting her and due to the ignorance and secrecy surrounding being transsexual or transgender, the latter of which is an umbrella term, I unfortunately drew innocent lovers and others into my world, depriving them of facts they deserved to know, which is still a regret that haunts me.
My fear is that given the current political and religious insanity, others will be deprived of their rights to truly know who they are getting to know or involved with and, on the other side of the equation, forced to live a lie and never begin the road to self-actualization. Also, too many will either take their own lives or suffer the mental health issues that plague my community, as well as that of all LGBTQ+ Siblings.
I have endured depression for about six decades and survived two bouts of severe major depression for which I was self-admitted and hospitalized. I more or less live with chronic major depression, and sadly know that I am definitely not alone.
Nevertheless, I am now one of Oregon’s five DNC delegates and was one of three Oregon Democrats elected to a four-year term in December of 2020. Prior to that, I was DPO Stonewall Caucus Chair and then the DPO Vice-Chair.
And so, during Pride and other months, I understand the significance of Stonewall and the battle for LGBTQ+ equality and rights. I am also fully aware of the existential threats posed by Republicans and their Evangelical hatemongers, and what harm their wanton ignorance and disdain for our communities have and will wreak.
To my LGBTQ+ Siblings and our allies, to ensure we continue to legally celebrate Pride month next year and every year after, please vote “BLUE” in 2022!
Peace, love, and Happy Pride Month to all!
Michelle Risher
Oregon DNC Committeewoman
