In 1975, the annual Michigan Women’s Music Festival began in the woods of northern Michigan. It was a space where women could listen to music, attend workshops, and spend time together in the absence of men. In 1991, a trans woman named Nancy Jean Burkholder was kicked out of the festival. As Michelle Tea notes in her essay Transmissions from Camp Trans, “Nancy Jean’s eviction is famous in Michigan lore, for it sparked a fierce debate about the inclusion of transsexual women, which has been raging for over a decade.” In 1993, Burkholder and her friends started Camp Trans in protest of the exclusion of trans women. Michfest ended in 2015, largely due to their failure to evolve their feminism to be trans inclusive.
Several years after the start of Michfest, Sandy Stone was also targeted as a trans woman inhabiting a feminist space. This was during her time as a recording engineer at Olivia Records. After receiving violent threats via hate mail at her workplace, the violence escalated to women threatening to kill her. In the midst of the harassment, Stone had trans affirming surgery. The timing was intentional. While Stone was already planning on surgery, she underwent it at that time as a way to protect herself. Stone recalled how she survived: “you just put your head down and you keep fucking moving forward. That’s the only thing I know. And it’s terrifying and exhausting, and if you’re very, very lucky, you break through.”
It is because of the strength and resilience of my trans ancestors that I’ve been able to survive. In 2014, I organized a launch party for a zine I edited called “Second to None: Queer and Trans Chicago Voices” at W&CF. Trans people were well-represented both in the audience and on stage. The event gave me hope for the store and its future. Shortly after, I applied to work there, because I wanted to continue building a supportive environment for trans writers.
When I began working at the bookstore, I was the only out trans employee. Since I’ve been hired, five other trans and nonbinary people have joined our staff. Where I previously felt isolated as the only trans employee in a feminist workplace, I now feel safer working with other trans and nonbinary people. Still, my nonbinary identity is constantly erased by customers who assume everyone in the store is a cis woman. I’ve heard gender neutral pronouns referred to as “a joke,” witnessed customers misgender employees and complain to the owners about the increasing presence of trans people in the store. I’ve been stalked, verbally attacked, and sexually harassed while working at the bookstore. As a result of my negative experiences, I’ve pushed W&CF to prioritize trans inclusivity. The bookstore has partnered with local organizations like Praxis Group to organize trans-affirming workplace training, held fundraisers for Transformative Justice Law Project, hosted readings with the TransWorks Mentorship Program, and commissioned trans artists to make artwork for the walls. Much of this labor was in response to the difficulties I experienced as a trans employee.
After I removed the stickers from the front windows, the whole staff met to discuss the best way to respond. My number one concern was protecting trans staff. I did not want to amplify transphobic rhetoric, give more attention to Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs), or cause more harm to the trans community. As a workplace, we decided to share a newly written, trans-affirming mission statement with about 20,000 people who receive our newsletter. When the stickers appeared for a third time, with two different designs, I knew things would only escalate.
On National Coming Out Day, I tweeted about the stickers in a thread that was shared by authors both in Chicago and across the country like Fatimah Asghar, Eve Ewing, Celeste Ng, Gabby Rivera, and Megan Stielstra. After an article was published in the Chicago Tribune, outlets like ABC, CBS, and NBC all reached out to share the story. Noticeably, most of their pieces mentioned the fact that we did not file a police report. I was not interested in filing a police report. The police perpetuate transphobia and punish trans people, often Black trans women, for self defense. This was evident in the case of CeCe McDonald. When I thought about what justice means to me, it did not involve finding out who put the stickers up and punishing them through the legal system. I want a world that embraces trans people. The police will not help us as we strive for trans liberation.
