Phyllicia McGowan and Susan Kocen

00:01 Hello, my name is Susan kocen of my preferred pronouns. She her my age is 50 and the date today is April 20th, 2016 2016. We are at the Q Center on North Mississippi in North Portland, Oregon and my relationship with Felicia is friend.

00:27 Community friends inspiration also sings

00:37 I'm Felicia Daria McAllen.

00:40 My preferred pronouns are she her and hers?

00:44 I'm 59 years old.

00:47 Today is April 20th 2016 at the Q Center in North Portland. Wonderful place.

00:56 And Susan is a friend and mentor and sort of colleague writing partner.

01:04 That's a very important relationship.

01:10 So Felicia, good morning, and it's great to be sitting opposite you as always.

01:20 I know quite a bit about you from work. We've done together and riding with them together and you are a great inspiration to me and a great teacher of mine. So I have huge gratitude for whatever brought out pods together. So I want everybody to know you. So what should we tell people about you? What should we put into the Library of Congress? Just such a fabulous?

01:53 I have been thinking about this and what I really wanted to talk about is how I have always been queer with most of my life not being able to be a part of the queer community and having lots of really difficult Sparkles about that when you say queer oil life. How would you can you search talk about the gradations of that from being little through adolescence adulthood gender? Excuse me?

02:32 And I have post nasal drip from the allergy season.

02:40 And it wasn't something that I knew consciously for a long time. I think a lot of that is when I grew up the word transgender didn't even exist when I was a kid and I grew up in a small town, but I always knew I was different. I was not like the other boys I knew and was very alienated and

03:12 I knew something was wrong. I knew something was wrong and it was it was late. It was probably it was when I was.

03:21 In college that I really got introduced to the queer Community studying theater course.

03:31 Lots of REM when I say the queer community at that time, it was gay males. This was the mid-seventies and California Northern California small college town.

03:50 But at that time

03:54 There was a big lesbian separatist movement. And so I didn't really get exposed to the lesbian Community for a long long time.

04:10 And I was very attracted to that and really felt a sense of kinship even though I figured out very early that I wasn't a gay male.

04:23 I don't know what I watched and I wanted to belong why I've always searched for belonging because I never felt like I belonged any place and so that was some place. I felt like I could belong to but I wasn't gay so I didn't really fit yet. But I carried that with me. I graduated from college. I moved to San Francisco again gay male Community. This was the seventies and kind of exploded across

05:02 San Francisco, especially I have lots of guy friends but I wasn't really part I was again I was not I wasn't part of the straight Community. I wasn't part of the gay community. I didn't know.

05:19 Any trans people are I didn't know that I knew any trans people trans people were pretty Stealth at that time. And so

05:32 I always have this longing trouble and I and I felt like this is where I belong but I didn't belong which was another sort of I always felt different when I was a kid and I wasn't like so I felt different but at least here I felt like I could belong

05:55 Because I was Chad experience of different and I am

06:05 I feel at home in queer culture and it's very different than the heteronormative patriarchal culture that that we live in a different culture just like there's a different Black Culture. There's it's a you have to be in it to experience that and understand it.

06:31 And what would owe a lot of people who are more articulate that paint have spent many many pages in many many books trying to describe quick butter shot.

06:45 It is a sense of

06:50 Being in it all together. It's very

06:56 In many ways non-judgmental very open about many things that straight culture is not open about sex and sexuality and celebration of difference.

07:15 Expression of self-expression a lot

07:24 Being who you are and not having to conform to the norm. I mean there is some of that and again a lot of that is in the

07:35 Get fight gay male Community. There's there's pressure to fit into a stereotype. But again, it's more it's more open as more flexible it is and and it just keep coming back to this sense of belonging the Seeker you are in The Great Brain mind you have I just wonder if in that face that you can maybe adolescence through young adulthood if there were ever any sort of poets Fargo kind of characters you found in culture.

08:16 That spoke to you. Yeah, I was from a very early age I was

08:25 Greatly in love scuse me with the beat writers and I think I write on the road when I was 12, which is pretty young to read that book and and that really set me off into diving into that and and the Jazz culture and I've always I like modern music. I like classic rock and roll stuff, but I just speaks to me in ways that it's it's a culture all its own and it has a lot of the same quiet and so did the beats a lot of the same qualities of the queer community of being yourself and not being constricted by

09:10 Kind of narrow Norms that

09:16 You have a beautiful and I was out in the work world as a quote-unquote straight male for many many years most of the time I wore a suit and tie and I just very very constructing but it was that was an expectation. You you fit into our society dictated and in the queer Community just like in the the beats and the Jazz community and self-worth you you stepped out of that. And so there was no one telling you what you had to be or how you had to think or how you had to dress or freedom is its freedom.

10:09 Well that weighs. Can you see you looking back with a ways that you started to?

10:15 To leave you full of nature during the time when you were identified as a white stripe.

10:28 I always had.

10:32 Very eclectic non-traditional Living Spaces

10:41 Kind of

10:43 Collecting what I like odd pieces of furniture and arts and so forth when I wasn't dressed up in my suit and tie.

10:55 You know, I like to express myself as in clothing. I didn't.

11:00 Again, there were there were restrictions, especially when I got married because my wife kind of

11:08 She she put some boundaries on me and

11:15 Just having grown up.

11:17 With that

11:20 Having to live within boundaries that we all grow up with here in this country.

11:29 I can I accepted that I was like, okay. She can she has a right to dictate to me. It was unfortunate but then I know you was such a radical character so I can hardly imagine you sent me not in a suit and tie but even being restricted by the new ones extraordinary wasn't restricted by the Norms was in my head and I got involved in radical politics at an early age.

12:06 Well Ice by

12:09 When I grew up in Chico, my father was a professor at the University and my parents were leaders of the anti-war movement. This was the Vietnam era just kind of post Civil Rights era and I started getting involved in the anti-war activities when I was tan and look like and they encouraged that why they didn't I mean I didn't push that way, but certainly they were supportive of that. Although they weren't politically radical themselves and I started studying politics and I've always been fascinated with politics ever since

12:56 And I I started getting involved in very radical political organizations kind of communist socialist Anarchist kind of things and

13:13 That lasted until

13:18 Really? I

13:21 Settled down and got married and had kids or had kids have got married and and my wife had been involved in radical politics, but

13:36 We we left Northern California. We move to New Mexico. We kind of retreated from all of that stuff. I mean, I wear a lot of things I loved about New Mexico and and there was some Freedom there because the culture is very different from most of the country. Well because it's

14:02 It's not a white majority culture. It is a fact there's no majority. I think when I was living there it was about 40% Anglo which is what flights are known as they are and about 35% or 40% of Hispanic and Latino and about 15 or 20% Native American. So very heavily influenced by the Native American culture and Hispanic culture and and the Latino culture in and I say Hispanic and Latino because there's a long history of the original Spanish.

14:55 I want to play Settlers but conquerors who came to do Mexico with Cortez and self-worth and they kind of set themselves apart from the more indigenous Mexican native culture, but they exist side-by-side in the Native American culture in the ankle culture isn't as dominant as it is people thinking different ways, you know, one of the things that really shifted was my spiritual life my wife. Had to start at one of the Pueblos and of course because she taught head start with all the kids from the Pueblo. We got to know all the families some of them very intimately they became close to

15:55 And we spent a lot of time at Santa Ana Pueblo, but then we got to know people from the other Pueblos and we spent a lot of time there and I really was.

16:12 Enamored by the Pueblo spirituality and

16:20 The difference that that that broad from what I grew up an Episcopalian, which is very white white kind of white supremacist in a way liberal white supremacists and in college, I converted to Catholicism and that pretty unreal well, New Mexico, which is very very Catholic place.

16:53 But the Catholicism is very different there. And of course, I'm on the Pueblos. The the Catholicism is Blended with the ancient Pueblo religion. And so they have kind of a

17:14 Another word that comes to mind is bastardize, but it I died that's not the right word, but it's a very different.

17:25 And I just I felt.

17:29 I felt like New Mexico with a very holy place and I felt very in touch with.

17:38 The spirit of the Divine

17:42 It's a beautiful beautiful. They called the land of enchantment and it's it's really different from any other place on Earth. And of course they have New Mexico green chile, which is again different from any other chili on Earth towards now now that was sort of a

18:10 Big shift that I think from that you moved up here.

18:22 Well, I started.

18:25 I had as I as I got married and had kids and went into the professional world.

18:36 I kind of suppress that.

18:39 Queerness really tried to fit into

18:45 But had a hard time fitting in.

18:49 I didn't.

18:51 I didn't really ever have any male friends are very few male friends.

18:59 Yeah, I know.

19:01 Interesting lady all my life since I got

19:07 Excuse me got away from childhood and home almost all of my friends have been women. My wife had a huge problem with that.

19:18 But I

19:21 So I kind of I suppress that and I kind of lost that I pushed it down into my subconscious buddy.

19:31 It kept coming up to the surface bubbling up to the surface and with more and more urgency. I was 35 when I moved to New Mexico. And by the time I was 40.

19:50 I was starting to have.

19:55 Consciousness of maybe I'm not

20:00 Just different from other males, but maybe I'm not male. I still didn't have language to describe that. I need to living in New Mexico, which is a small place and I lived in a suburb of Albuquerque very

20:19 Kind of

20:21 Cookie cutter new breakthrough moment sword people you met old, Florida bathroom

20:34 One of the things that I got when I got married with a stepdaughter tamannaah

20:44 Possibly the most wonderful person I've ever known who tragically died a few years ago. But so she grew up with me went to middle school and high school and then she went away to college went back to Northern California. She went to Mills College, which is a women's college in Oakland and she came home at Christmas that freshman year and told us she was a lesbian.

21:17 It's got a lot of trepidation and I was like great that's wonderful. And it was very exciting because all of a sudden I had a connection to the queer culture again, and I used to go and visit her a couple times a year out in Oakland and I would spend time with her friends and I felt so so comfortable and it at home and what I started saying was I would have made a good lesbian. Not that I am a lesbian, but I would have made a good lesbian and

22:03 As Time moved on as she got older and graduated from college quite a number of her friends came out as trans and started to transition and most of that was female to male because she went to women's college she was in a lesbian community.

22:28 But that

22:31 When her former lover bath

22:35 Announce that

22:38 He was now Ben and he was transitioning.

22:45 That was like an explosion.

22:50 Alert, wow, people really actually do this because you didn't he miss bath the last became less and

23:07 And I started to

23:10 I started to consciously realize that I was trans and that was

23:17 Very very painful because here I was in New Mexico.

23:25 For quite a few years and a New Mexico. I was a teacher in public school system, mostly elementary school, but also Secondary School a little bit, but mostly Elementary School and

23:41 There was no way I could have transitioned.

23:45 We're not in. I mean we're talking.

23:49 The 1990s

23:52 Or like 20-25 years ago, and this was still a big deal and

24:02 You know, if you tried to come out at work, you got fired you got blacklisted. You couldn't find a job you and I had a family to support and and so that was incredibly.

24:20 Painful and

24:22 Let's roll out of depression. I've had.

24:26 I've had Fairly severe depression all my life, but this was really significant.

24:32 I I have some.

24:36 Bipolar disorder

24:39 Quite a heavy bipolar disorder it is I look back on it. Now. I see it all the way back to childhood, but it was never diagnosed.

24:51 I think because most of the doctors are idiots and they don't.

24:57 I'm sorry, but psychiatrist really don't know what they're doing. But it was I thought a lot about suicide all my life. I have had thoughts about that my father committed suicide when I was 14 and ever since then that's kind of always been with me. I just been part of my life for most of the time. It's just kind of sitting there on the edge of my Consciousness, but I started to really have suicidal thoughts and

25:39 How come you didn't?

25:41 Take that Puff.

25:43 It was

25:46 My sense of Duty and obligation, I've always had a sense of Duty and obligation and I had a family and I had children and I was responsible for them. I needed to make sure that they were

26:03 Fed, and clothed and housed and the end and take care of them. And I also knew what my

26:16 Father suicide had done to me and

26:21 Once my son Morgan was born. I kind of took a vow that I would not do to him what my father had done to me. So but it was a constant.

26:33 Struggle and I word

26:41 Stress huge huge my life with huge amounts of stress all my time and it was really only rigid self-control and self-will that allowed me to continue to function and believe I've only known you was Felicia. When was she? When did she come to I mean she came in with you.

27:18 It started a couple years before my daughter passed away. She passed away in 2009. So I had at that time being in therapy for a long long time and I started.

27:36 To say things out loud that I had never allowed myself to say before and only to my therapist but I started yes. Yes. My my I went through a number of the the last one before I move to Portland Oregon first was fabulous, but

28:02 When I told her I was thought I might be transgender. She was kind of incredulous. I mean I had been

28:15 I've always been very good at putting on masks. I bought I learned that was a survival technique growing up.

28:25 &

28:27 And trying to fit into that straight white culture and I put on masks and even though we kind of dug into things. I still have that mask on and I had never let her see behind that mask. If so, she was kind of incredulous. Here's this straight white male. I want you to school teacher by that time but out in the professional world and and he's sitting there and he's got a big beard and I wore a beard for 20 years just to try and make myself appear more masculine cuz I'm not very masculine as always. What's the straight world thinks of his match masculine and

29:20 So it took a long time for her to come around but I

29:26 I didn't let it go and in the past I would have always let it go, but it was bubbling up to the surface so hard that I couldn't.

29:35 Deal with it anymore without letting it out and so she's sort of started to come around and then tamannaah died. I was February 2009 and

29:55 We were still in New Mexico spend some time out in Oakland when she got sick and when she died and came back had to go right back to work. I was working for Intel and they give you three days bereavement leave.

30:14 Amazing and

30:17 Jeannie and I decided that we didn't want to stay in New Mexico anymore. They're too many ghosts are too many reminders too many memories and with my job at Intel I could transfer up to Oregon to Hillsboro out west of Portland which is huge until place. I think like 16,000 employees. And so we moved in the fall of 2009 and I found another therapist. And the reason I chose her when I I kind of looked at the profiles of all these therapists that the insurance sent to me and she said one of her Specialties was helping transgender people are perfect in that turned into an incredible relationship that lasted five years, and she walked me through my transition.

31:14 As I expected my wife had a very hard time with it never outwardly.

31:22 Tried to be supportive, but she was never comfortable with it never supportive and we ended up separating and I moved from Suburban Hillsborough in the Portland near the Q Center. I didn't know anybody I would had no connection to queer culture at all. There's no quick whole trout in Hillsboro and I started volunteering at the Q Center cuz I wanted to meet people I want to know people and I started to meet people and there was a transgender support group here transgender female support group, and I started going to that.

31:59 I I had always been since the very beginning of it attracted to the sisters of Perpetual Indulgence because I was in San Francisco when they started and there were sisters here and I ran into them.

32:15 The sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are an order of queer nuns. They do a lot of different things in the queer Community. But mainly it's a spiritual calling the the mission of the sisters is to see if I can remember it.

32:40 Is really to empower people with self-love and then part of it is what we call expiating stigmatic Guild helping people to get rid of the guilt that other people and themselves have port on them. And we do a lot of different things to sell at 8 that and I became a sister and I had thought I wanted to be a sister back in 1979 when the sisters started, but of course, I was a straight male I couldn't have done now there are lesbians and trans people in but at that time it was just gay males. The sisters are all over the world now and how do you spell a middle initial r k s k i s s e d

33:35 And I have a kind of a separate Persona of it that goes with that and I put on that face we wear white face with our habits a part of it is to make ourselves more Anonymous so that people are more comfortable talking to us that I've had incredible experiences where people have come up to me and started talking about things. They've never told anyone in their lives and they'll cry in the laugh and and they'll feel the sense of relief and that's a big part of the ministry of the sisters.

34:20 And I start getting more I started getting involved in the trans community and trans activism. I've helped organize the last couple of trans Pride marches in the pants day of remembrance of other types of things and

34:40 For the first time in my life. I have this wonderful community that I actually belong to I always felt like I was part of the queer Community, but I wasn't and now I am part of the queer Community. I found my place after 52 years took 52 years for me to find my place, but I found it to Felicia is

35:07 You've also

35:10 What is what is the word you fall? So and exposed me or or shown me that the huge diversity even in this world Transit and you're an amazing.

35:26 Many feet in many worlds kind of character. There's no binary about you. There's no Torres read about you. This this something you will cuz it's very sad for me very and

35:42 I never felt that before. I really didn't feel a part of any Community. But now I have a a wonderful spiritual religious community that I belong to I have my trans Community Portland is a mecca for Trans people a wonderful place to live if you're Trans Am I trans Community. I have two larger queer Community. I have kind of move so far into what I call the the queer culture and out of that heteronormative culture that I except when I go to church

36:31 I really even spend much time around straight people anymore because this is my family. This is where I belong.

36:44 After a whole lifetime of searching for belonging not knowing what that meant or how I could find it. I found and I found it here in Portland, which was maybe the only place I would have found it.

37:06 Pride

37:08 I feel it's almost a perfect ending point, but I just check if there's anything more you wanted to say.

37:15 It doesn't say what I need to say.

37:20 And I'm remembering to mine and I'm remembering important.

37:30 Text Alicia, but I had her for 17 years.

37:36 And she had you

37:38 Yes, I would you like to remember her?

37:44 The thing that I most remember that I remember most about her is her smile and her laugh she was

37:54 An incredibly outgoing engaged person. She had a huge community of people that loved her. She had almost 300 people at her funeral and so many people got up.

38:13 &

38:15 Sad, I shoot they would say she was my best friend or she changed my life. She allowed me to become what I am today, and I wouldn't have had that without her shoes. Just an amazing amazing person.

38:32 And I've and I just Crush her having had that.

38:38 In my life

38:44 Thank you.