Trans history in the present with Susan Stryker

By Carlysle Price LIFESTYLES STAFF REPORTER

As part of the LGBTQIA+ Health & History Series, Utah State University invited Susan Stryker to present her research to students and staff. Stryker is a senior research fellow who focuses on gender and human sexuality at Stanford University’s Humanities Center. She is also a professor of gender studies at the University of Arizona and works with other universities to educate students.

Stryker’s talk on April 6 at USU was titled, “What Transpires Now: Trans History in the Present.” The audience consisted of a variety of age ranges, colleges and sexual orientation.

As a transgender woman, Stryker found it of personal importance to educate the public on similarities that have occurred between present-day anti-trans bills to those of the past.

Stryker said the current crisis around gender is being fgured in the representation of transgender phenomena and transgender bias in a longer historical context. She said gender is one of the most critical concepts of our time.

“It provides a vocabulary for articulating and understanding the relationship between our sense of self, biological substance or social existence or physical environments, and our beliefs about the future,” Stryker said. The word “transpire” was the focus of Stryker’s talk, and she explained it can mean “to passively happen.” But if you focus on the parts of the word, what prefx and roots are present, change can be found.

“Trans is a Latin prefx. It is a shape-shift, changing principle of movement across borders, animating addition. Trans attaches itself to the name, and pulls that thing over boundaries between it and whatever it is not,” Stryker said.

Stryker presented examples in history of cross-dressing being acceptable, including Brigham Morris Young, one of Brigham Young’s sons. He was considered a professional woman impersonator, and would wear women’s clothing to sing and perform under the name Madam Pattirini. It was contrasted to today’s controversy over drag shows to explain how cross-dressing might have become fuel to the fre of an overly-politicized debate.

Other examples were shown of past moral panics pointed towards those who didn’t ft a two-sex binary norm. Thomas(ine) Hall was born in 1603 and was intersex. This means they didn’t have genitalia that directly matched male or female biology. They were scrutinized and forced to prove their intersex characteristics by showing their body to courtrooms, as well as being forced to dress in clothes that showed they were both male and female.

If they chose to present themselves in just one gender’s fashion, it was considered deceiving. According to Stryker, many Americans today believe dressing in the opposite gender’s clothing is impure or meant to deceive others, with fear surrounding narratives of children and women’s bathrooms.

“Trans histories in the past are transpiring again in the present, the same issues are at stake,” Stryker said. She said national issues create local targets on the backs of transgender people in their homes, classrooms, bathrooms and stores.

As of 2023, more than 24 bills have been introduced that are seeking to restrict transgender health care access, and across the nation, debates over bathrooms and “wokeness” have gained serious traction.

At the end of the talk, Stryker’s Q&A session posed a very serious question for LGBTQ+ youth, asking how they should move forward in a world that wants to stop them from being themselves.

Stryker answered there is no way to know what will happen next and it will be very hard, but offered advice focused on self-care, and fnding people who accept you for you.

“I have always felt this really strong sense of self. I know that I am okay,” Stryker said.

She said she feels very fortunate to have a family that has always accepted her, and to have a partner, kids and a successful professional life.

Despite the possibility of states taking back rights she has enjoyed for decades, she told trans youth what they can’t do is take away who you are inside, at your core. After the talk, many people in the audience stayed to discuss r the many challenges trans people are now facing with Stryker.

Ike Thomas, a sociology major at USU, was at the event for an extra -credit opportunity for a class.

“I found it very interesting, and wanted to learn more about trans history because I was never taught about it in high school,” Thomas said. “I wanted to broaden my perspective of the trans experience.”

Thomas’ professor, Guadalupe Marquez-Velarde, assistant professor of sociology, said she was excited to share the opportunity with her students.

“I think it’s important to learn new perspectives. We don’t have a lot of voices like Susan Stryker here at USU or Utah in general, so I thought it was a great opportunity to learn something new,” said Marquez-Velarde.

You can learn more from Susan Stryker by watching her flm, “Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria,” or reading her books which can be found online.

@notnotphoebe @cartwatson @paulswhtn

@dan_lefev

For the Salt Lake MLB team name, we should steal another city’s iconic music style

By Leah Call LIFESTYLES STAFF REPORTER

“It’s about love and desire and family dynamics between parents and children. What it’s like when new energy gets brought into a home, what drives these people and the lifeforce that keeps them going,” Mckenna Walwyn, lead in the play and a Utah State University student said. Opening night of the production “Misalliance” took place on April 14 in the Morgan Theatre of the USU Fine Arts Center.

The play, written by George Bernard Shaw, takes place over the course of one afternoon and follows the Tarleton family as they welcome a new member into the family. Chaos ensues as they attempt to merge two families together. The play shifts when a plane crashes in the Tarleton’s backyard. Pilot Lina Szczepanowska and her copilot, Joseph Percival, come onto the scene.

Walwyn, who plays Lina Szczepanowska, said Shaw’s comedic style come through with quick wit and introspective dialogue.

“Shaw is all about argument,” Walwyn said. “And not argument in the aggressive sense but more about a presentation of ideas and a discourse back and forth about the ideas that Shaw had. I think he put his own experience of the world at this time into these characters. The thing that I love about this is that no one is really right and wrong. So coming into the audition process it was like, ‘Okay, how do I build my argument in the most effective way possible?”

Rehearsals began the week of March 13 and ran for four hours a day, six days a week, not including individual work of studying lines and personal research.

The frst week consisted of table reads where the cast went through the script, before moving into off-book blocking. It was expected they come to rehearsal with memorized lines so more dramaturgical work could be done — understanding important concepts of Edwardian England in the 19th century, where the play takes place.

“Lina is such an incredibly strong woman and I think when I came into the process at the beginning, I was playing her a little too nice and a little too pleasant,” Walwyn said. “When in reality, she’s a female acrobat, she’s a pilot and every day she risks her life. And I think that takes a special kind of person, so being able to feel like I could inhabit that kind of woman was so empowering and made me feel not only like a capable artist but a capable woman. I think that’s something I carry with me through my career as an artist.”

“Misalliance” is directed by Leslie Brott. Brott holds many positions and responsibilities at USU. She is a professor in the department of theatre, interim associate dean for faculty development in the Caine College of the

Arts and the head of acting in the department of theatre arts.

“We decided to do the play because it’s Shaw,” Brott said. “And Shaw is second to Shakespeare in the western literary canon of dead white guys. And it’s because of all the ideas he explores. And Shaw almost always explored every idea — philosophical, social, political — and did so by making us laugh instead of cry.”

In a virtual interview, Brott said the curricular and artistic opportunities for students were some of the motivating factors when it came to choosing this play. Faculty want students to leave as employable as possible, and “Misalliance” provided educational avenues for students working in stage management, design, costume, tailoring and many more.

Brott said in one way or another the entire department has been involved with putting on this production.

“It takes a village to make a world,” Walwyn said.

The actors require fght choreographers for physical moments such as roughhousing, a tantrum that is thrown and a slap on stage. Dialect and text coaches are also required for the Polish, Cockney and English accents of the characters.

“The sentences require great skill in speaking them, so that you as the audience don’t hear anything that’s a long sentence, you just hear a sparkling joke or witty and clever argument,” Brott said. “And that’s hard to do and make it seem like it’s your own thoughts and your own words coming out of your mouth, when really it’s Shaw’s thoughts and Shaw’s words coming out of your mouth. It’s a skill that’s required for anybody in acting.”

She also said the work put in by the actors is designed to make their production look effortless and natural.

“You’re not supposed to know we work that hard,” she said. “Everybody thinks that anybody could act, because good acting doesn’t look like it’s hard at all. But it is supposed to look that way. There is nothing actually akin to normal life in acting, except the fact that you’re talking and standing. Because you’re making a totally fake and artifcial thing seem absolutely real. We don’t want you to question the experience while you’re participating in it. We want you to believe it and experience it with us.”

The complexity of the play is demonstrated through the many themes presented by the characters.

“It is about argument and it is about rhetoric, but it’s not about a conclusion,” Brott said. “It’s just about everybody putting forward their ideas all night long about women’s place in the world, what Edwardian courtship is like, why women should have rights, why marriage is either desirable or ridiculous, why people pursue occupations that they are passionate about or they are stuck in occupations where the work is drudgery. All these things are brought up in an amusing way and Shaw doesn’t prescribe how you should feel about them, but he makes you laugh while you think about them.”

Brott said this is a play she has always been quite fond of and has enjoyed watching her students make it come to life.

“To watch the students struggle with making all of those arguments come alive and then have a moment of success is joy-flled for me and is also really moving,” Brott said. “To know that I have contributed in some small way to help them reveal their artistry, to help validate themselves as craftspeople and to prepare them to enter the profession. It’s humbling and satisfying.”

For more information go to cca.usu.edu/theatre/productions/misalliance.