GREEN BAY – Vigils, memorials and solemn gatherings used to be the only national recognition transgender people got, but none of that spoke to the joy or pride of being trans.
Michigan-based transgender activist Rachel Crandall Crocker founded and organized Transgender Day of Visibility in 2009 after recognizing the need to celebrate trans lives. Since then, organizers fill the days in and around March 31, the official day, with activities that showcase community, education and empowerment.
Green Bay’s trans community is no different. This year, the area’s LGBTQ+ community and local business owners will mark International Transgender Day of Visibility with a day and night’s worth of events on Saturday that will include shopping, beauty tips, a museum outing, coffee, more shopping, food, drinks, a professional photo shoot and more.
But first, what does it mean to be transgender? According to Human Rights Campaign’s glossary of terms, transgender is a broad term for people whose gender identity and expression differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. Their gender has no bearing on their sexual orientation, either. A trans person can identify as straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc.
“International day of trans visibility is a way to say that the binary system is not real,” Martha M., who for her safety isn’t using her full name, said. “That binary has caused a lot of pain for trans people. Part of the reason society has such a hard time dealing with trans people is only about 25% of people in the United States know someone who is trans.”
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It’s estimated that, as of 2019, somewhere between 34,800 and 69,600 transgender and non-binary community members live in Wisconsin, according to a survey conducted by FORGE, a national trans anti-violence organization headquartered in Milwaukee.
Transgender Day of Visibility celebrates those peoples’ lives and the stories that led to their authentic selves.
‘There was no role model’
When she first organized the Trans Day of Visibility last year, Martha strolled from store to store on Olde Main in Green Bay, letting local businesses know about the day of celebration and handed out flyers and progressive pride flags, flags that brandished a more inclusive set of identities within the LGBTQ+ community.
It came as something of a shock to Martha how enthusiastic business owners were to accommodate her and the day itself.
It wasn’t so long ago that Martha wrestled into dresses in her car outside a Chicago or Milwaukee bar, cities where she felt safe to be Martha in.
At home, her wife and children knew about Martha, but it wasn’t something Martha’s wife wanted to witness in real time.
“It was just too scary to risk going out in Green Bay,” Martha, who is 72, said. “And I knew of stories from trans people here of violence, loss of jobs and things like that.”
Data from FORGE suggests that nearly 40% of trans Wisconsinites have experienced job discrimination, a statistic that makes sense, considering it was only in October 2020 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay and trans workplace protections.
Despite Martha’s concerns, she decided 15 years ago that she would experiment in her own community. She could go out as Martha to the Napalese Lounge, an LGBTQ+ bar that posed far less threat than a run-of-the-mill bar in Green Bay.
Courage came in the form of three Manhattan cocktails, but Martha’s debut had been a long time coming. Since 5th grade, she had “some mixed feelings and emotions that boys weren’t supposed to feel.” But back in the 60s she couldn’t exactly scroll TikTok for gender-affirming glow-ups to reassure her.
Instead, she had only conversion therapy options, which, she tried in the beginning.
“There was no internet. There was no role model. There was no place to turn,” Martha said. “I just thought I had a sick, sexual fetish. I spent many years running from the reality of who I am.”
That reality came rushing back many years later as she appraised her look for her first night on the town the “Nap,” as Martha now calls it. She had on a blouse, a skirt, a pair of heels, a wig and her “feeble attempt at makeup.”
She sat at the bar and anxiously stared at the door, waiting for someone to recognize her, bully her or worse. Instead, she talked to barflies all night and bonded with the local LGBTQ+ community.
“It was wonderfully anticlimactic,” she said.
These days, she hosts a monthly trans support group at the Nap on Thursday evenings. Every month, more people show up.
“The first time they come they’ll burst into tears. Then they’re on cloud nine,” Martha said. “When I follow up with them, they tell me ‘My god, why did I wait this long to take this step?'”
‘I was stuck in the wrong body’
Prom was a night Shayna Rathsack always imagined for herself. The ornate dress, the elaborate hairdo, the tuxedoed boy to slow dance with. She walked among the other girls at Pulaski High School, took part in impromptu makeup and dress-up parties after school and gossiped about boys.
But she was trapped in a body that didn’t make sense to her.
“I was stuck in the wrong body. I came out of the womb with the wrong parts,” Rathsack said.
Growing up with a conservative mother and stepfather, Rathsack, 26, was told to stop doing girly things, but such an ask was like telling an apple to be blue. It wasn’t who she was.
When she was a freshman in high school, her mother suspected that Rathsack was gay and sent her to the school counselor. But she wasn’t gay, she told her counselor. She was trans and she wanted to start hormone replacement therapy.
“When I told my mother, she looked at me and said, ‘Don’t ever bring this up again.’ That was killer. It felt like I died inside,” Rathsack said. “I was stuck in a household where I had no support. I couldn’t be me.”
That all changed six years later when she met Tyler. Rathsack was still closeted at that point, but the years of hiding left their marks. She found herself depressed and contemplating suicide.
She knew a month into their relationship that she had to attempt to come out to her boyfriend. It was January and Tyler had planned a romantic trip to Manitowoc. The Christmas decorations still sparkled across the city and added to the magic, but Rathsack was quietly panicking.
She assumed Tyler would leave her. Instead, he said he’d support her through her medical transition.
“He said you’ll go through hell and back and it’ll be hard on the relationship, but I’m willing to give it a shot if you are willing to give it a shot,” Rathsack said. “I remember giving him a huge kiss and crying into his arms.”
They’ve been married for two years and Rathsack finished her gender reassignment surgery last year.
And Rathsack can’t forget the moment her mother finally referred to her by the name “Shayna” and called her daughter. Before then, her mother would dead-name her, a term for when people refer to trans people by their birth name, often associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.
“People in the De Pere community have been really supportive and have asked me questions throughout my transition,” Rathsack said. “It’s kind of shocking how open Wisconsin is becoming. People are so open in Wisconsin and it makes me so happy.”
‘I learned to be a boy … against my wishes’
When Maggie Williams went with her wife to a lady’s night-themed restaurant recently, she was pleasantly surprised when the event leader at the restaurant handed both her and her wife a hand-made, wooden rose.
Williams looked around at the other couples. None of the husbands got a flower.
“That felt very nice. I know my appearance is feminine, but depending on where I am, that can go either way,” Williams said. “It felt good to be read by someone who saw me as a feminine person.”
Williams, 52, has shuttled in and out of her identity for as long as she can remember. An Irish Catholic boy romping around as a girl in a suburb south of Chicago, though, “was only cute for so long,” Williams said.
“I learned to be a boy, I guess, against my wishes. And while I’ve always, always identified as feminine, I’ve had to conceal it,” Williams said, “at least, for most of my life.”
Ten years ago, Williams couldn’t bear another day of concealing her truth. The years of self-destructive behavior — smoking, drinking, acts of bravado performed in her efforts to be a man — needed to stop. With a 5-year-old daughter and a wife at home, Williams chose to finally come out to them.
“After a while of being out all night drinking, I realized the ridiculousness of all that,” Williams said. “It was so lonely growing up and it was hard to relate to others. Coming out wasn’t going to be the thing that would kill me.”
Coming out to her wife and daughter, who both accepted and supported her, gave her permission to do what she could never do before. She grew out her hair and nails, painted her nails, bought women’s clothing and began to give power to the feminine part of her she had kept stowed away.
But for all the ways the last decade has provided her with a path of acceptance, she hasn’t fully rounded the corner. A resident of Neenah, Williams is a special needs and art teacher, and she isn’t fully out to her school just yet.
Like many trans and gender nonconforming people, the stakes at her job are high. While federal rulings theoretically protect her, Wisconsin Fair Employment Act does not explicitly protect against gender identity or transgender status discrimination, according to the state Department of Workforce Development.
Williams said that she fears coming out to her employer risks losing her job and her access to health care.
Students have asked her why she’s wearing a headband or high-waisted jeans, which only adds to her paranoia. Still, many colleagues are in the know about her identity.
Still, Williams, as an artist, has her creative outlet. Her series’ of pieces, ranging from periods that reflect her own reckoning, called “Closet,” “Out” and “Pink.” showcases the phases with which Williams has wrestled throughout her life.
The mixed media art pieces use muted, lighter colors in her “Out” series and bold black and red splashes in her “Closet” pieces. One of the pieces from her “Pink” series was recently purchased by Green Bay’s Neville Museum.
In her artist statement, Williams said of “Pink” that it was her attempt at finally gathering the self-esteem that reflects being out to the world.
“It’s an ongoing process, moving at light speed, awkward, beautiful, improbable,” Williams said.
‘How else can we serve the trans community?’
Nearly a dozen Green Bay boutiques, restaurants, bars, salons and studios will participate in Saturday’s Trans Day of Visibility activities, offering special discounts, helpful tips, safe shopping and welcome, supportive spaces for gender nonconforming, gender fluid, non-binary, and trans people as well as their allies.
The daylong event begins at 10 a.m. Saturday with shopping at boutiques like Sunrise on Main Boutique, on Main Street, and Frayed Not, on Packerland Drive, before moving downtown for a special look at the Neville Public Museum’s “Her Story” exhibit and then, at 1 p.m., to The Attic coffee shop and bookstore for a meet and greet with other participants.
Several participating businesses said it is important for them to provide welcoming, safe spaces for the trans community. Sunrise on Main Boutique owner Joan Johnson said some trans customers have shared horror stories with her. She remembers one or two asked her if it was OK for them to shop in her boutique and that it made her sad to think they felt the need to ask.
“Trans shoppers will share stories and I get choked up hearing the difficulties they have had in their journey,” Johnson said. “The scowls. The questions about your value as a person. I care about them. Our volunteers care about them.”
For Johnson and other participating business owners, the day’s events are about sending a very different message to the trans community.
“It’s truly important for anyone to know, trans or not, that everyone matters, that they’re accepted,” Johnson said.
Sara Rozoff enthusiastically agreed to join Trans Day of Visibility festivities after Martha stopped by her photography studio, Ra Imagery on Main Street.
Rozoff is offering participants a 15-minute photo shoot, a head shot and a full-body shot for $25 on Saturday. Like makeup or hair care, Rozoff said it can be tough to stand in front of a camera as your true self.
“Photos can be a scary thing for anyone, especially someone putting themselves out there,” Rozoff said. “Even if I don’t have much of a turnout, there’s a seed planted that when they are ready, when they want to get a portrait, I will be ready.”
Johnson founded Sunrise on Main in 2018 to be a place of “warmth, love and acceptance,” values her “tiny, petite Swedish” grandmother instilled in her from an early age.
Last year when her friend Martha mentioned that some trans people didn’t feel comfortable changing at home before a monthly support group meeting at Napalese Lounge, Johnson extended the upscale-yet-affordable resale shop’s hours that night so people could change and shop.
“They know it’s a safe place they can bring their items and change before they go down the street,” Johnson said. “We’re happy to do that.”
Johnson wanted to do more, though, especially as she befriended more of her trans customers and learned about their experiences trying to find businesses where they can shop for clothes, learn the basics of applying makeup or to find a stylist to do their hair.
In early March she and Martha hosted the first support group meeting at Sunrise on Main for partners of trans people. Eight people showed up to share their experiences and challenges in supporting their trans partners. The group plans to meet every other month
Acceptance has come incrementally in Green Bay, but the unveiling of an LGBTQ+ mural at the Napalese Lounge in August marked a watershed moment for the community, Martha said.
“That really pushed me way out of my comfort zone, in terms of my own invisibility,” Martha said. “I had no idea how eager and ready the Green Bay community was to affirm the LGBTQ+ community.”
Natalie Eilbert is a government watchdog reporter for the Green Bay Press-Gazette. You can reach her at neilbert@gannett.com or view her Twitter profile at @natalie_eilbert.
Contact Jeff Bollier at (920) 431-8387 or jbollier@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JeffBollier.
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