1 10 3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Video and audio oral histories can be viewed here. Histories are listed alphabetically by last name. Individual histories are indexed and transcribed and can be searched. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p>Rights to oral histories vary depending on the history. The library owns the copyright to some histories, and has license to reproduce for nonprofit purposes for others. Please contact CSUSM University Library Special Collections at <a href="mailto:%20archives@csusm.edu">archives@csusm.edu</a> with any questions about use.</p> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Julia Friedman Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Leea Pronovost OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PronovostLeea_FriedmanJulia_2022-04-08.xml Interview Keyword This filed adds keywords to the Omeka Oral History item type. Keywords are included in the OHMS XML, this field in Omeka will allow for full data migration between OHMS XML and the Omeka Record. This field does not impact the OHMS / Omeka integration and is optional if you do not need to map the "keywords" field in the OHMS XML to the corresponding Omeka record. Activism (LGBTQ) OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 5.4 Oral history of Leea Pronovost, April 8, 2022 SC027-18 1:16:52 SC027 California State University San Marcos University Library Special Collections oral history collection CSUSM This oral history was made possible with the generous funding of the Ellie Johns Scholarship Fund at Rancho Santa Fe Foundation and the Library Guild of Rancho Santa Fe. LGBTQ+ activism LGBTQ+ rights San Diego (Calif.) Springfield (Mass.) Transgender people -- Civil rights Activism (LGBTQ) Leea Pronovost Julia Friedman mp4 PronovostLeea_FriedmanJulia_2022-04-08.mp4 1:|14(8)|21(14)|30(2)|36(8)|44(3)|54(13)|62(11)|70(6)|77(4)|91(7)|98(1)|104(2)|112(2)|119(11)|127(11)|135(11)|144(1)|155(8)|167(12)|175(1)|181(10)|189(1)|194(8)|201(8)|210(5)|217(6)|227(8)|236(1)|244(11)|252(11)|261(10)|269(2)|276(6)|283(8)|291(14)|299(10)|308(2)|316(11)|324(12)|332(15)|340(3)|345(11)|353(10)|361(7)|367(6)|375(8)|383(1)|390(1)|398(11)|405(14)|417(7)|430(6)|437(7)|444(1)|451(3)|463(2)|473(9)|481(14)|490(11)|500(2)|512(6)|523(11)|534(15)|542(5)|549(13)|558(1)|568(10)|576(1)|582(13)|597(9)|604(6)|611(2)|616(17)|623(6)|631(7)|649(5) 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/b85338e1bff43294d1016cc0062ca02f.mp4 Other video English 0 Introduction and childhood Julia Friedman: Okay. Today is Friday, April eighth, 2022 at 10:02 AM. I am Julia Friedman, a graduate student at California State University San Marcos. And today, I am interviewing Leea Pronovost for the University Library, Special Collections Oral History Project. Leea, thank you for being with me here today. Leea Pronovost: Oh, thank you for having me. Friedman: I would first like to start by asking when and where were you born? Pronovost: I was born in 1959, October second in Springfield, Massachusetts. Friedman: And can you please describe your childhood? Pronovost: (laughs) Well it wasn't exactly a very pleasant childhood, let's put it that way. One of my earliest memories was actually in 1963, I was four years old and at a Christmas party at my grandmother's house. And I saw my grandmother used to give us little money cards every Christmas--all of her grandchildren. And I noticed my name on an envelope my mother was holding. And I asked her what that word was in front of my name. My grandmother had written “Master.” And I didn't know that word--I didn't. So, she told me what it was, that it was a “Master” and what it stood for. And then I saw she had my little sister’s envelope in her hand and I asked her what was in front of my little sister’s name because of what's different than mine. And, uh, it was “Miss” and I asked her what that meant. And I said, I basically said, “There's something wrong here.” And I think, “I'm supposed to be more like the ‘Miss.’” (laughs) So after her explanation of which each one of those terms meant. As you can imagine that was 1963. So, (laughs) a whole different world. And my mother basically told me to shut up and never talk about it again. Which, you know, because we actually started getting into an argument about it in front of all my aunts and uncles and cousins. And so that's why she told me that. And honestly, I never did talk with her about it again. She actually died before I ever had a chance to, so. That's one of my earliest memories. After that it didn't get much better dealing with that issue. I mean, I was raised very strict Catholic. I was an alter boy. I, um, in my teen year, even, I spent a lot of time in a Jesuit monastery trying to pray that away if you will. And even thought about going into the seminary at one point and becoming a Catholic priest. But I didn't, I ended up joining the Navy. But that's (laughs) another story. So, the--and my father wasn't exactly the nicest of people. He was very much, as you can imagine, a bigoted person, against gays and people like me. I can remember being a kid and hearing about Christine Jorgensen [the first transgender woman in the United States to attain fame for receiving a sex reassignment surgery] and some of the remarks that my father talked to about when he referred to her and were--made me feel very terrible about myself because I knew that's how I felt. So, it wasn't an easy time, believe me. But that's pretty much my basic childhood. Leea Pronovost discusses her experience growing up in a conservative and homophobic household in Springfield, Massachusetts during the 1960s. childhood ; homophobia ; Massachusetts ; Springfield (Mass.) ; transgender ; transphobia 309 Time in the Navy Friedman: Well thank you for sharing that, Leea. I'm sorry that you had such a difficult time growing up. Pronovost: Well, it was a totally different world compared to what we have now. Being transgender wasn’t--I didn't even, I don't think that word even existed until, you know, the 1990s. At some point, I mean, people like me, they used to call them “transsexuals,” which nowadays a lot of the trans community considers that a derogatory term, so. And--but that's the way our society was back then. I mean, I can even tell you that in 1977, I joined the Navy, um, give you--for instance. And when I joined the Navy on my ASVAB, I scored in the top five percent in the nation and they gave me two strikes for going into bootcamp, one strike for coming out of bootcamp. And I was placed into, um, nuclear engineering program to be a nuclear engineer on a sub, and all my life, probably about 1965, I actually started cross dressing, borrowing my sister's clothes, because it made me feel better. But yet there was a certain amount of shame with that. So--but that continued on even into the Navy. And I can remember being on a leave of absence, going to a bar dressed up, and coming out of the bar and being discovered by my commanding officer who then proceeded to file charges against me for crossdressing. And I ended up going through a court-marshal. So, push came to shove, they didn't do what they call a Section 8 on me. What they did do was give me a personal hardship discharge, because they basically said they didn't want “my kind” there. So, but it was very nerve-wracking. I can remember thinking--and I was living in Massachusetts at the time. I'm like thinking throughout the entire court-marshal worst case scenario, they Section 8 me, classify me as, you know, “mentally disturbed,” because of my crossdressing. And if I had went back to Massachusetts with that on my discharge papers, they could have (laughs) at actually put me into a mental institution back then. They still had governmental-run mental institutions in Massachusetts then, and they were not a very pretty sight. And even with people like me, they would actually--and gay people--they would actually lobotomize them trying to “fix them,” so to speak. So, (laugh) it wasn't, it was a totally different world. And I can, you know, they appreciate all the things that, people like me and the whole, uh, gay movement, gay rights and people that fought for and the seventies and even into the eighties and are still fighting today. And I'm one of them. Friedman: Yeah. Pronovost: Because no matter how far we've come, there's still much further to go. So. Leea Pronovost discusses exploring her gender identity through cross-dressing, as well as her time in the Navy, beginning in 1977. Cross-dressing ; homophobia ; Massachusetts ; transgender ; transphobia ; United States. Navy 572 Coming out/ Turning towards activism Friedman: I would actually like to switch gears if that's okay and talk about your years in activism. You've been an activist within the transgender community for twelve years. When did you first decide to turn to activism? Pronovost: Well, after I felt--after I came out to everybody, um--let me explain. In 2006, I had a near death experience that actually--because as I told you, you know, from 1963 on--I knew something was different. 2006, I had a near death experience that caused me to look at what my life was about, who I am, why I survived. And I came to the realization that I had to do something about this. And I started my transition soon as I recovered from that, which was probably about a year after that. I was well enough to actually--I didn't start hormones at that time, but I started looking at herbal supplements that would change my body. And I didn't come out to everybody. My current ex-wife at the time, I did come out to her about changing. And she was okay with it as long as I didn’t tell anybody. She carried--being a Latin person, carried a certain stigmatization around who I was. So, um, but anyway, it took me a couple of years to get on hormones and there's even stories there (laughs). I was actually denied my hormones at one point in time by my therapist, which really--I didn't understand why. I understood that that was the laws. And then, you know, I've heard other stories of other going to support groups and talking to a therapist and learning how to come out to basically the world. And it troubled me how difficult it was. And that whole path of trying to-- knowing deep down inside (laughs) all my life, that something was different, just never realized what it was and because I grew up before internet. And so, it the only place I could find information was in a library. And I was too ashamed to go into a library and pull a book about transsexuals (laughs), you know? Especially with my Catholic upbringing. So, it was very difficult and there were many times that throughout my life that I actually tried to commit suicide because of that. Because I thought I was alone. I thought I different. I never knew there was people like me. And then finding all those hurdles that I had to jump through. And then at the same time, you know, I started discovering that the state that I live in, Massachusetts, didn't even have any protections for transgender people. And if I tried to rent an apartment or buy a house, or, you know, get a job as a trans person, people could actually say “No,” because I was transgender. So, these things really disturbed me down to my core because, you know, it is who I am. It is my identity. So, that's what really got me to become more active and become an advocate and activist for the community because I wanted to make it better for the next people. I want to make it better for the next generation, so they don't have to struggle like I did. Not knowing who they were. I wanted to give the trans community that visibility so that they have role models that can even, you know, that they can idolize basically, and say, “I want be like that person.” Because as a youth, you know, I never had that. We, I mean, if you look in the sixties, seventies and eighties, the people that were portrayed as trans-- what we now call transgender or transsexuals-- in those times, they were either the joke of the movie or they were, you know, the crazed maniac killer (laughs), you know? And I would look at them and I would say, “Oh, that's me when I grow up.” But yet, then I find out that they're either the joke or they're, you know, the crazed maniac killer. And I'm like, “Okay, well, that's not me.” So, I'm not like that, but you know, here I am, that's who I was. So, I wanted to be able to give, you know, the next generation, the next batch of people, because I--after going to a bunch of support groups for being transgender-- I realized that I wasn’t alone and there's a lot more people out there that are like me. And once I started doing my history research, you know, of transgender people--for instance, we've been around forever. I mean, I can tell you, in the Neolithic Age there was art drawings on cave walls of a third sex. And, you know, that date back to about 7,000 BC. So, (laughs) people like me, I've been around forever (laughs). It's just so something that hasn't been known, that's all, at least to the Western world. Because you take, you know--actually to be truthful with you, I identify as Two Spirit. The Indigenous people--not just here in North America--but Indigenous people all around the world have some of them have multiple genders. Two Spirit is an in North American Indigenous term that encompasses some tribes have as many as five genders, some three genders. Friedman: Wow. Pronovost: There's some tribes that don't even acknowledge gender. Men and women didn't have specific rules, if you will. I know of a tribe in Africa that, you know--I met a girl years ago, a trans girl from Africa. She had no concept of what he/she [pronouns] meant. They only had one pronoun for all people in her language. So, it was very difficult for her and even than her mother to understand that concept when they moved here to the United States. So. Leea Pronovost discusses coming out as a transgender woman in 2006 after a near-death experience. After coming out, Pronovost turns towards activism after noticing the hurdles that transgender people face in terms of access to medical treatment, or lack of protections in the housing or job markets. Activism (LGBTQ) ; LGBTQ+ activism ; transgender 1098 Activist activities Friedman: Wow. That's really interesting. And I'm glad that you finally found a community when you first came out. When you first started, um, your working in activism, did you partner with any organizations during these early years and what type-- what type of activities did you participate in? Pronovost: Oh, I partnered with many organizations to be truthful with you. One of the first groups--the two first groups that I partnered with were a group called Tri Ess [an international support group for heterosexual cross-dressers and their partners and families.]. It was actually started in the 1950s by a woman named Virginia Prince. Basically, that was for, in her terms, heterosexual cross-dressers. Although once I became involved in the club, found out that there were a lot of transgender people within the organization that wanted to actually transition. Not that I wouldn't say myself, I would say that cross-dressers do fall under the trans umbrellas, so to speak. So, but, some, some of them don't agree with that, some of them do agree with it. Some of them think they're the only true trans people, when you really get down to the nitty gritty. One of the other main things was the transgender group of Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts. I--that was a peer support group and we were active in helping others find out that--because one of the toughest things that I found was in talking to new people as they come into the groups that they always thought they were alone as well. Because they never knew anybody that was like them. So, you know, that made such a difference for me in my life to realize all of a sudden, “Hey, they're like me and you know what, they're okay. That's an engineer, that's a medical doctor and that's a lawyer,” you know? “This person, you know, is, you know, just a normal average person living their life (laughs) so it's not so bad.” So, it made such a difference in the world for me that it, you know, it just, it seemed like common sense to move into it. And then I mean, I blossomed into a bunch of other organizations. I, uh, (laughs), I didn't start my transition into late in life, as you can imagine. Born in [19]59 and starting in 2007. It was forty-seven or forty-eight years old or something like that. But the thing is it, they, it--I wanted to do as much as I could for, or wherever. And so not being of (laughs)--I decided to help another group called Rainbow Elders. That was a nonprofit group run by, uh, not another nonprofit, that they did stuff for seniors. I can't remember their name off of top of my head, but it-- we used to do things like go out on panels and teach medical facilities. We would teach nursing homes. We would teach assisted living centers. We were teaching people in, um, it just reaching out to all sorts of businesses and stuff and doing panels and educating them about the LBGT experience by telling our stories. Then, you know, I joined another group over at UMass Amherst and, I--that was the Stonewall Speakers Bureau. And they were very active within the GSAs [Gay Straight Alliance]. So, I used to go out to all the GSAs, whether it was a grammar school, middle school, junior high school, high school, and sometimes even other colleges, asking us to come out and speak to gender-related studies and/or education of the faculty. So, and then I started--because the group--that Pioneer Valley group and the Tri Ess group that I first started with--one of them was up in New Hampshire, even though I lived in Massachusetts and the other one was in the Southern part of Massachusetts. So, I was having a drive, you know, anywhere from forty-five minutes to an hour, sometimes even two hours to go to a meeting. So, I decided to create my own peer support group, which I partnered with a hospital in Western Mass[achussets] in the county that I was in, Franklin County in Greenfield Mass. And they gave me a place to work with and a small budget. And I was able to start a group that actually still runs today, even though I'm here in California now. So, then because I also became part of what was known as the Massachusetts Transgendered Political Coalition, which in 2011, we ended up fighting for transgender rights. They made us actually take off on the bill by the time it--in order to get it out of committee, we had to take off transgender public accommodations rights. But it--bill did still encompass our rights to financial institutions, our rights for housing, our rights for, uh, financial housing and employment. Those were the three main rights that we were fighting for. Which it did end up getting passed in 2011 by the end of that year. Uh, they became-- (both talking at once) Friedman: (both talking at once)--Oh, congratulations. Pronovost: Yeah, thanks. But then again, in another organization that I became part of back in 2016, I helped to--we went back and lobbied or advocated for the state government to include transgender public accommodations, which would give us the--most people think, “Oh, that's the bathroom stuff and locker room stuff,” but there's so much more to it when you really sit down and think about it. The right to ride on a public transportation, the right to, (laughs), let's say I worked in a restaurant. If I punched out my time card to go out the back employee door and walk around to the front of that restaurant that hired me, they still have the right to refuse to serve me. Those are actually public accommodations. The right to be served in a hospital, you know? Many times throughout the years that I've worked, I've had myself and my friends have had discrimination by going to a hospital. I had one friend that they fell down on black ice and she got taken away on an ambulance and when they tore off or cut off her clothes, they found that she had a penis. And the doctor just looked at her and said--and then looked at the nurses and said, “Get that thing out of my hospital.” So, she--they called for another ambulance to take her to another hospital. Nowadays, because of that (unintelligible) she's permanently disabled, because she didn't receive the proper attention. And now, you know, we as taxpayers are paying to support her because of that discrimination. And so, things like that just didn't make any sense to me. So, you know, it made sense to go back and fight. So, we formed another organization called Freedom Massachusetts. And we fought for trans rights and we won them. But also, because of all that other activism, I had other organizations like PFLAG [organization dedicated to supporting the LGBTQ+ community ; formally known as Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays] and, uh, PFLAG in two separate counties, both of them had asked me on to be on their board of directors. So, I ended up being on their board of directors at the same time about the--that same time I had many friends that I lost over the years in the support groups. And when I say I lost them, I mean that they took their own lives. And they're no longer here. And prior to my transition, I never knew anybody that committed suicide. Now, all of a sudden in the few short years that I was out as a trans person, I knew more than half a dozen. And I just felt that was wrong. So, I had heard about a organization called Trans Lifeline, and I actually became an operator for them. And because I, myself, (laughs), had, as I told you before, early in my life, I didn't know how to deal with this. I didn't know there were other people like me, there were a few times that I'd tried to commit suicide. So, and if I-- so if I could prevent one trans person from (laughs) stop—help-- stop them from committing suicide, then, you know, that would make me feel great. So, I spent a number of years as an operator, and then I actually became a team lead for a bunch of operators. Actually, even given peer support to the operators, because if you can imagine Trans Lifeline was an organization that was created by transgender people, for trans gender people. And the only criteria was that you had to be trans to be an operator. What helped was, though most of the operators were ones that had tried to commit suicide at one point or another. And sometimes when you're talking somebody down from a suicidal attempt, it brings you yourself into some pretty dark places. So, the operators would definitely need some, you know, self-care and guidance to get back to a point where they can do self-care even. And I know that I have many cases that led me into dark places that I didn't want to go, but yet, I went there to try and make sure, and it makes a difference. It really does, the peer thing, because I've never lost anyone when I was talking with them. When an individual that's on that brink or on that fence, or standing on that (laughs) that [precipice] to jump, if you will. Having somebody else talk to you, that's been there and been through what your experiencing, makes a huge difference. And they open up and listen. And then they also feel much easier to open up to you so that they can pour those feelings out and step off that [precipice]. So, that was really nice work for me. And then the next thing that I (laughs) became active in was the Transgender Law Center up in Oakland, California. I started volunteering for what they call the Detention Project. The Detention Project is basically--there's a lot of transgender people within our prison system that either wanted to transition or had already started their transition and they’re wondering, you know, “Here you have this trans woman sitting in a male jail, what are her rights?” Um, you know, and, “Can she have her name change? Can she get women's clothing? Can be isolated so she's protected away from the general population?” All of these things and Transgender Law Center addresses all of those issues. I was basically a research person for the lawyers and I would actually go and research each individual state's laws pertaining to the detention of transgender people, and then compose letters. And the lawyers would then approve or ask me, you know, change this, change that. And then we would issue the letters back to the inmates, so that they knew what their rights were and how to fund those rights. So, which meant a lot to me (laughs) the next step phase in my, uh, was actually working with the local because I was doing on the national level. And I started working with the local county jails and state prisons, and department of corrections. And I helped them to write--I helped both Massachusetts and Connecticut to write their policies on transgender people. And then--the same way with most of the county jail systems, I helped them to write--and I ran peer support groups within the county jails as well, so. Then I met a woman online (laughs) and moved out here to California (laughs). Well, it, it took a while. It took a few years, it--we had a Coast-to-Coast relationship, and we developed this great relationship. And we decided to take it to the next level and move in together. And I tried to get her to come out to Massachusetts, but one point she came out and it was minus--the high temperature was minus fifteen degrees. And this was the week between Christmas and New Year's. So, she was like, “No, no, no, no.” (both laugh) So, of course I've moved out here, and been living here ever since then. But before I even moved out, once we made that decision to move out here, I was like, “You know, I'm an--I'm an advocate and activist. What do you have out there that I can get involved with?” So, she introduced me to the North County--she was living in Oceanside at the time, and she introduced me to the North County LGBTQ Resource Center. So, I met Max Disposti, the Director and Founder of the place. And I was like, “What can I do to come?” (laughs) You know? “What can I do when I get out here?” (laughs) “Where can I go?” He's like, “Don't worry, we'll put you to work.” So, (both laugh) soon as I moved out here, they had an opening for the Unicorn Homes program, which being a case manager for that program, it was only fifteen hours a week. But, to start, and I was like, “Hey, it's along the lines,” because a lot of times running the peer support group in prisons, I was helping people do a lot of navigate social services that they would need getting out of jail. So, it wasn't too far of a fetch for me to be able to help people, you know, navigate applying for Medi-Cal or, you know, Cal Fresh or being there just to listen and try to help homeless youth. And one of the things, even in Massachusetts, that one of my goals was eventually to create a transgender housing service. So, when I moved here and I had that opportunity to join something like this, I jumped on it. And Max liked what he saw in all the volunteer work that I did. So, he hired me for the position, even though there were a number of other candidates, I received the job. And I just started doing a whole bunch of free work for them (laughs). Because this is where my passion is. In the meantime, you know, I had been, you know, I still own property back East in Massachusetts, rental property. And, you know, I had a nice package of--so I wasn't worried about money or anything. So, why not work where my heart is? Nowadays though, I do a whole bunch of other things for The Center. I manage most of the grants for The Center. I also, now am, uh, Gender Advocacy Project Chair person for the Gender Advocacy Project, which puts on a number of events a year they do--we just recently had the Transgender Day of Visibility a couple weekends ago. Well, this weekend will be two weekends ago. Which was a wonderful event. We had, I don't know if I had to guess probably around 200, maybe 300 people come through and a bunch of booth with resources. And we had a great show. We had speakers and musicians and playing, and we had fun and games for the youth, and it was just a wonderful weekend. Wonderful day. But, so. Gender Advocacy Project also does Transgender Day of Remembrance. And, which is in November twentieth and a rather somber day for us because we're remembering those that we lost through transphobic violence. And the past few years have been actually kind of tough because the numbers have gone up astronomically in 2020, if I remember correctly, there was forty-one or forty-two, and in 2021, I believe there was fifty-six trans women. Now when I say these numbers, they seem like small numbers compared to a nationwide thing, but those are the ones that we actually know. Which, you know, a lot of times the gender is not known and, and they--or, and/or they misgender the person because the family doesn't want them to know about it. So, that number, even though the known cases keeps going up, I'm sure it's at least doubled if not tripled. So for-- for supposedly, according to the statistics, there's less than one percent of people are transgender throughout the nation. So, for that small amount of people to be targeted, the numbers of murders like that--violent murders--basically hate crimes, in my opinion, that's an astronomical amount. When you start looking at the statistics and the breakouts. Especially that most of those numbers, you know--I carry a certain amount of privilege because I'm a white transgender woman--or I appear to be white. I do have some American heritage, um, Indigenous blood in me. But that's something that people don't see because I appear to be white. So, therefore I've got a certain amount of privilege. I know that. When I look at a trans woman of color, those are the ones that are targeted when you look at those people that we honor year after year after year. It's usually Black or Brown people, and occasionally an Indigenous person in there. But, um, and sprinkled with a few Caucasian people. So, you know, it's so that when you look at that target population, that number, even it's more astronomical, when you break it down to what I call the “intersectionality of marginalizations.” So, you know, that's why that particular day is so important to me, even though it's a somber day. And I'm glad that we celebrate that and celebrate those lives that we lost. I'm hoping one day (laughs) and trying to do our best by fighting the hate. One of the grants that the North County LGBTQ Resource Center just got it is--we got a bunch of money into actually--and that's what the grant is called, “Fight the Hate.” (laughs) So, you know, it's an honor for me to be doing this work and nowadays I'm actually paid full time for what I do, because I do the grants. I do the Unicorn Homes. I'm also the Gender Advocacy Project Chair. I'm also--it, I never mentioned what I did prior to, well, while all that activation was going on, activism and advocacy work was going on, I actually worked a full-time job in telecommunications. I was a Level III Telecommunications Engineer. So, now I do all the IT work (laughs) at The Center as well. So, (both laugh), anything I can do for the community, you know, to make their life better. And, you know, I'm, uh, want to, you know, the North County LGBTQ Resource Center, I feel like I'm privileged to be able to work there, to be honest with you. And to be able to work in such a queer environment where I don't have to face what all my siblings face on a daily basis, you know? Because, despite all the work that we've done, there's still a lot of stigmatization, and even hatred of the trans community. It’s funny how, you know, one of the things, when you've learned the history, it was, you know, of the entire gay rights movement. One of--they say that turning point was Stonewall, right? Well, the first person to actually throw something at the police was actually a transgender woman. And the other trans girls started in. And then if you know, I know people that were actually there and they told me that basically the lesbians then started joining in. And it was at the encouragement of the lesbians that the gay men finally stood up and started doing something against the police. So, if you look at that in its context who, it--that key moment who was the first trans woman? But in gay rights movements, we were left behind. We were taken out because we were so controversial and they wouldn't be able to get their rights. That's what we were told as trans women or transgender people. If we were in clumped in with them, you know? So, even though we were there at the beginning and even well before that, you know, a lot of--there, there were riots all over the country, you know? If you look at San Francisco, if you look at Miami, there were riots in gay bars where trans women--and trans women were the target, because a lot of the women, because they couldn't get jobs were street workers. So, therefore they're trying to pick up these supposedly “men” that dress as “women,” which at the time was against the law, working as a sex worker. So, it's because of that attraction that the trans women stood up and then the lesbian stood up with them, and then the gay guys stood up with them. And yet, here they are fighting for their rights and telling us to step back. Friedman: Yeah. Pronovost: You know, it just didn't make sense. And believe it or not, there's still quite a few lesbian--for instance, I'm with another woman, I consider--I'm sexually attracted to other women. I'm romantically attracted to other women. Not so much with the guys. So, I consider myself basically a lesbian. There's a lot of lesbians out there that would tell me I'm not a lesbian because I'm a trans woman. These are what we would call TERFS: trans-exclusionary radical feminists. And they're out there all over the world, you know? One of the most famous and most recent news is J.K. Rowling. (laughs) Friedman: Yeah. Pronovost: So, (laughs) despite all the love for, you know, the Harry Potter stories, I have to disagree with her principles. So, you know, so there's still--my point is despite all the fighting and activism and how far we've actually come, we still have a huge way to go. So. Leea Pronovost describes her experiences partnering with a plethora of LGBTQ+ activist organizations. Pronovost collaborated with organizations on the East and West Coasts, in fields and topics such as education, peer support, suicide prevention, prison reform, politics, housing, and gender advocacy. Activism (LGBTQ) ; California. ; Gay-straight alliances in schools ; Greenfield (Mass.) ; homophobia ; LGBTQ+ activism ; Massachusetts ; New Hampshire ; Oakland (Calif.) ; Oceanside (Calif.) ; PFLAG ; transgender ; Transgender discrimination ; Transgender Law Center ; transgender rights ; transphobia ; Tri Ess (Organization) 3098 Advocating towards inclusivity Friedman: That actually leads me to my next question. Um, do you think creating an inclusive society is achievable? Pronovost: (both laugh) Honestly, I hope so. You know, one of the latest endeavors that I've looked into is--and I hope I'm not premature in saying this. I've been appointed, still yet to be confirmed--a Senior Commissioner for the City of--Senior Affairs Commissioner for the City of Vista. So, I'm doing my part to hopefully make that true. I don't think it'll happen in my lifetime. I am much older than (laughs) most people nowadays. I am a senior, hence why I'm on that (laughs) Senior Affairs Commission. Or want to be on it. So, and as of lately, there's more and more transgender people within the political scheme, trying to fight the battle from within, which will hopefully eventually bring that about. I mean, that's my ultimate goal. One of the reasons why I do stuff like this, this oral history presentation, or any of my activism--a lot of it is educational. I have a pet peeve that, you know, education brings in tolerance. Tolerance can achieve, hopefully, acceptance. And once acceptance is there, in a general population, then the next thing that that should beget is inclusion. And that's where me, that's my goal. (laughs) Since coming out and becoming an activist, that's--that's my life--that's my life goal, if you will. I know I probably will not see it in my lifetime within the next twenty or so years. I hope we still achieve, you know, steps moving in that direction as we go. One of the things that the Biden administration just recently did, was give, uh, make the announcement on Transgender Day of Visibility, which is March thirty-first. They made an announcement that they were going to allow an X marker on the passports for a third gender. They were going to make it much easier for a person like me who, you know, I was identified male at birth, but yet, I'm a woman, make it much easier for somebody like me to change that name and gender marker on the passport. Another thing that they were planning on doing was one of the really bad areas that--and a lot of us had been fighting against this, the TSA--when you go through TSA screening in an airport and you have the x-ray, um, it's happened to me, you know? I identify as a woman, all my IDs are women and they see something down below. And they call you out, “Hey, we've got an anomaly. You need to step aside over here and we need to get somebody to physically search you.” Friedman: That’s awful. Pronovost: So, they're going to do away with that genderized screening. Which is an awesome thing. Finally, thank God. Because it's so embarrassing, you know, when that happens. And it happens to so many people, it's ridiculous what we have to endure and by being identified that way. Friedman: Yeah. Pronovost: So, that, that was a step in the right direction. They’re looking at making the Affordable Care Act more inclusive for gender treatment, especially one of the things that we recently did as the Gender Advocacy Project, which is the program of the North County LGBTQ Resource Center. I--one of my volunteers put together a list of all the state bills. For instance--what I mean by that is, last year in 2021, we had one hundred and ninety-one hate bills. Most of them were targeting transgender people. And in particular transgendered youth and their ability to receive transgender healthcare. Me, working on Trans Lifeline, know that most of those phone calls that I used to get in on Trans Lifeline are trans youth, anticipating and wanting to commit suicide. If they were accepted and were allowed to get their hormones, though, those numbers would drop drastically. And we have the statistics to back that up. But here, these states are wanting to outlaw and actually go even--go after doctors. And look at Texas. Texas wants to, you know, go after the parents saying that gender-affirmation healthcare for their child is actually child abuse, you know? So, one of the things the Biden administration said was they were going to fight, that they were going to make the Affordable Care Act to protect so that doctors don't have to report that to state agencies. Because they, you know, the state agencies, the state Texas--state of Texas, was forcing the doctors to violate people's HIPAA rights. I mean, they have no right to that information, but yet the state's forcing the doctors to turn that over. HIPAA's a national law, It's not a state law (laughs). They shouldn't be able to bypass federal laws. So, the Biden administration, uh, pledge to make it more difficult for states to be able to do stuff like that. You look at the “Don't Say Gay Bill” in Florida [SB 1834: Parental Rights in Education], you know? Ohio just came out with a bill last week--or just earlier this week, I forget which--that basically mimics the exact wording of Florida's bill. And no one, the state of Ohio and who they are and their history, that will pass, you know? So, we're going to have a couple of states that, you know, people are not allowed to say “You're gay.” There's another state in Utah. Utah wrote a bill that's very similar to Texas's bill about transgender healthcare, but it actually even encompasses adults. So, they want to make it illegal to be me (laughs), you know? And force--trying to force us to go back into the closet, so to speak. Because like I said, you know, one of the thing, one of their arguments is, “Oh, it's become a ‘popular thing.’” It's not popular. You just never knew what the real numbers were because we were all hiding away in the closet. Friedman: Yeah. Pronovost: So, you know. These are thing-- that's why I say we still have so far to go. This particular year though, in the first three months of this year, we have two hundred and thirty-eight hate bills. So, we even-- last year was a record year with all the hate bills, but in three months’ time, we have surpassed all of the bills from last year. So, they're--the thing that I'm looking at is I'm hoping this is like the last grasp (laughs) of them. (both laugh), you know? Their desperation before they fall down into the cracking crevice and go wherever. Friedman: I hope. Pronovost: (laughs) Go away. Yeah. Well, that's my hope (laughs). Because, you know, if you look at the statistics throughout the entire United States as a nation, over sixty percent of the nation is for transgendered people and having our rights or rights in particular of LGBT people. So, that's more than half the population. So eventually I know we will get there because that acceptance number and because, you know, I see the trends: tolerance, acceptance, then inclusion. I know we'll get there, but we still have so far to go. So, um, yeah. I hope that--I hope that answers your question (laughs). Leea Pronovost discusses her thoughts about inclusivity in society. She hopes that society will become more inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community, but believes that it may take many more decades before society’s acceptance of LGBTQ+ people can happen. She also discusses the Biden administration’s legislative’s initiatives to protect LGBTQ+ rights. Activism (LGBTQ) ; Biden, Joseph R., Jr. ; California ; homophobia ; LGBTQ+ activism ; transgender ; Transgender discrimination ; transgender rights ; transphobia ; Vista (Calif.) 3748 West Coast and East Coast LGBTQ+ politics Friedman: Oh, absolutely. Kind of going back to politics, Like throughout your time, working on the East Coast and the West Coast, have you kind of noticed a difference in the politics working on both Coasts? Or, has it just kind of depended, um, kind of like the political shifts because you kind of were mostly on the on the East Coast? Um, is it kind of-- does it not really matter because you kind of just, you mostly on the East Coast for most of your life and--? Pronovost: Um, be honest with you, knowing, I don't think it's that much of a difference here, you know. Here at times, I think there's certain pockets you, that if you will, that are actually inclusive. When I look at the city of Oceanside, for instance, you know? I had mayor Esther Sanchez come out to Transgender Day of Visibility and she gave a speech about being visible and standing up for what's right, you know? And, so I see Oceanside as a pocket, but yet, when I look at a city like Vista where I actually live, you know? Vista is, you know, for lack of better terminology, very conservative. But then there's even worse conservative areas. Like, you start pushing up into Menifee or something like that, you know? You're looking at very, um, I don't like to use this because I don't like to use somebody's name, but it very much what most of us within the community would consider to be Trumpers or people that propagate hate. And I hate using that because I don't like to talk about individuals or refer to that. But that term, let's take it away from the person because that term existed, uh, “Trumping somebody” is overcoming is somebody. So that's what I mean by that terminology, more or less. Where they are totally conservative. And actually, even don't like people like me. You know, I've had people up there in that city actually reach out to me saying they're having troubles with their school systems. Now here in California, for a transgender person and they should--a student should be able to change their name on all information except for their transcripts. That's the only thing that they can't change because that's a legal document, but they should be able to walk in without the school notifying the parents that, “Hey, I no longer want to be called Jane. I want to be called Max.” And the school legally is obligated to change their paperwork. Friedman: I see. Pronovost: But yet that's not happening in a city like that. I get phone calls quite often saying that the school is fighting the individual or the school has actually outed the individual to the parents, even. Because some of these schools aren't, you know, minors are even protected from this, the school is not supposed to out the youth. But yet here we have it happening, you know? And you know, it--so the hate and the stigmatization and the indignities and the discrimination still happens. No matter where you are and back East, I happen to live in a pocket--that Pioneer Valley group that I belong to. That's the whole Connecticut River Valley area throughout all of Western Mass. And that was very progressive. I mean, we--there's a town called Northampton there, which it is kind of, uh, was the gay city for the East Coast kind of equivalent to what San Francisco is to here. So, it's mainly a college town, but that made the entire whole (laughs), excuse me, for lack of better terminology, Pioneer Valley seemed very, uh, “granola-ish,” if you will. Originally Pioneer Valley, that whole Connecticut River Valley, those were the first communes back in the sixties. They started there and then moved out here to the West Coast. So, (laughs), very similar, you know, because even in Massachusetts, you still had your pockets of hate and bigotry and, so. It's very similar. The fight's the same, no matter where (laughs) I seem to go. But, you know, the goal is to get more cities, you know, to be like Oceanside, you know? Because Oceanside they've raise, you know, they do raise a pride flag. Here in Vista, the pride flag that (laughs) that rainbow flag's never been raised here in the City of Vista. And so, you know, I'm hoping that maybe sitting on one of the commissions, (laughs) I can change that (laughs) from within. And so, you know. Leea Pronovost discusses the similarities and differences between LGBTQ+-related politics on the West and East Coasts. California ; Connecticut River Valley ; Massachusetts ; Menifee (Calif.) ; Northampton (Mass.) ; Oceanside (Calif.) ; Vista (Calif.) 4167 The importance of empowering others / Conclusion of interview Friedman: Well, I just have one more question. Pronovost: Okay. Friedman: Um, so you, you've already talked about it. You have a wonderful year--a wonderful career in activism. What have you learned throughout your twelve years working in the trans and LGBT field of activism? Pronovost: Oh, (laughs), I've learned so much it's hard to pinpoint any one thing. I think the one that weighs the heaviest on my heart, if you will, is probably--you know, one of the things that early on people did mention about the intersectionality of marginalizations and now that I've had, you know, more than ten years at this, I actually get to see it. And that breaks my heart. How, you know, for instance, you know, I worked as a Telecom Engineer and I was the Senior Telecom Engineer for one of the world's largest telecommunications companies, Nippon Telephone, and Telegraph [Nippon Telegraph and Telephone]. The first time I walked into an engineering meeting as me, as Leea, they looked at me like, you know, I-- “Where where's the donuts and coffee?” (laughs). That was the type of look I got. And, “Who the hell are you to be sitting here in this engineering meeting?” When, you know, before I used to lead the engineering meeting, you know? So, I know the difference between being a man in a man's field and being a woman trying to make it in a man's field. And, and so I don't—[connection froze]—People that I serve doing what I do and I look at, you know, a trans woman of color, and I see how much more discrimination that they actually face. Because of that intersectionality. Now you start adding more intersectionalities on top of that, such as being disabled or mentally disabled, you know? Disadvantaged. That--those numbers not only do--I mean, they grow exponentially and that's what weighs really heavy on my heart. And now I see that so much more easily, and makes me want to fight all that much or for them, you know? But also at the same time, you know, being--working at the North County LGBTQ Resource Center, and seeing other people fight for, you know, my rights as a trans woman, I want to say, you know, not for me, without me, you know? So that's one of--that ties well into the intersectionality thing. So, you know, I know I can't go out there. I can mention about it, but I can't go out there and say, “You know, we need more protections for trans women of color.” I can say that, but, you know, I don't experience that because I do have that privilege. I can talk from that privilege that we need to do something about it, you know? So, but I want those, I want to be able to empower those trans women of color to come forward and speak up for themselves. I want to, you know, empower other people to do what I do so that the fight you, I know I'm not going to achieve my goal in my lifetime so that I know the legacy I leave behind is me helping them empower themselves so that they can even empower other people and move it forward. So, that's the main thing I've learned is that we have to give people the power to have that voice. So, it isn't just about any one person, it's about empowering an entire demographic, if you will. Friedman: Well, thank you. Is there anything else I should have asked or anything else that you would like to share today? Pronovost: Well, geez, we've covered so much. (both laugh). I don't know. I don't think so. I think we pretty much covered it. It's a lot to chew and digest, if you will. So, I think, I think we've done a good job. Friedman: Yeah. Pronovost: So. Friedman: Well, thank you so much for speaking with me today, Leea. We are so happy to have you a part of this project. Pronovost: Yeah, my pleasure is so, um. I'm just happy to be here. Like I said, that that's my pet peeve. If I can do something to--I'm hoping this gets seen by as many people as it possibly can be. And it gives them the self-confidence in seeing somebody like me to empower themselves to find their voice. So. Friedman: Absolutely. Just continuing on with your, uh, with what you've been doing from the start, basically ever since you started in 2007, 2008. Yeah. Pronovost: Yeah. Friedman: Yeah. Well, thank you again. Pronovost: You're very welcome. And it's my pleasure and thank you for having me. Friedman: Well, it's our pleasure (both laugh). Leea Pronovost concludes the interview by summarizing what she has learned throughout her career working as an activist and the importance of intersectionality in LGBTQ+ advocacy. transgender ; transphobia Oral history Leea Pronovost is a transgender activist and has been advocating for transgender and LGBTQ+ rights since coming out after a near-death experience in 2006. Pronovost began her work in activism in Massachusetts and partnered with a variety of organizations where she worked to help the queer community in areas such as LGBTQ+ education, housing, and hospital rights. She also worked for the Transgender Law Center and the Trans Lifeline. Now residing in Vista, CA, Pronovost is a staff member at the North Country LGBTQ+ Resource Center, where she works as a case manager for Unicorn Homes, chairs the Gender Advocacy Project, and is a grant writer. Julia Friedman: Okay. Today is Friday, April eighth, 2022 at 10:02 AM. I am Julia Friedman, a graduate student at California State University San Marcos. And today, I am interviewing Leea Pronovost for the University Library, Special Collections Oral History Project. Leea, thank you for being with me here today. Leea Pronovost: Oh, thank you for having me. Friedman: I would first like to start by asking when and where were you born? Pronovost: I was born in 1959, October second in Springfield, Massachusetts. Friedman: And can you please describe your childhood? Pronovost: (laughs) Well it wasn&#039 ; t exactly a very pleasant childhood, let&#039 ; s put it that way. One of my earliest memories was actually in 1963, I was four years old and at a Christmas party at my grandmother&#039 ; s house. And I saw my grandmother used to give us little money cards every Christmas--all of her grandchildren. And I noticed my name on an envelope my mother was holding. And I asked her what that word was in front of my name. My grandmother had written &quot ; Master.&quot ; And I didn&#039 ; t know that word--I didn&#039 ; t. So, she told me what it was, that it was a &quot ; Master&quot ; and what it stood for. And then I saw she had my little sister&#039 ; s envelope in her hand and I asked her what was in front of my little sister&#039 ; s name because of what&#039 ; s different than mine. And, uh, it was &quot ; Miss&quot ; and I asked her what that meant. And I said, I basically said, &quot ; There&#039 ; s something wrong here.&quot ; And I think, &quot ; I&#039 ; m supposed to be more like the &#039 ; Miss.&#039 ; &quot ; (laughs) So after her explanation of which each one of those terms meant. As you can imagine that was 1963. So, (laughs) a whole different world. And my mother basically told me to shut up and never talk about it again. Which, you know, because we actually started getting into an argument about it in front of all my aunts and uncles and cousins. And so that&#039 ; s why she told me that. And honestly, I never did talk with her about it again. She actually died before I ever had a chance to, so. That&#039 ; s one of my earliest memories. After that it didn&#039 ; t get much better dealing with that issue. I mean, I was raised very strict Catholic. I was an alter boy. I, um, in my teen year, even, I spent a lot of time in a Jesuit monastery trying to pray that away if you will. And even thought about going into the seminary at one point and becoming a Catholic priest. But I didn&#039 ; t, I ended up joining the Navy. But that&#039 ; s (laughs) another story. So, the--and my father wasn&#039 ; t exactly the nicest of people. He was very much, as you can imagine, a bigoted person, against gays and people like me. I can remember being a kid and hearing about Christine Jorgensen [the first transgender woman in the United States to attain fame for receiving a sex reassignment surgery] and some of the remarks that my father talked to about when he referred to her and were--made me feel very terrible about myself because I knew that&#039 ; s how I felt. So, it wasn&#039 ; t an easy time, believe me. But that&#039 ; s pretty much my basic childhood. Friedman: Well thank you for sharing that, Leea. I&#039 ; m sorry that you had such a difficult time growing up. Pronovost: Well, it was a totally different world compared to what we have now. Being transgender wasn&#039 ; t--I didn&#039 ; t even, I don&#039 ; t think that word even existed until, you know, the 1990s. At some point, I mean, people like me, they used to call them &quot ; transsexuals,&quot ; which nowadays a lot of the trans community considers that a derogatory term, so. And--but that&#039 ; s the way our society was back then. I mean, I can even tell you that in 1977, I joined the Navy, um, give you--for instance. And when I joined the Navy on my ASVAB, I scored in the top five percent in the nation and they gave me two strikes for going into bootcamp, one strike for coming out of bootcamp. And I was placed into, um, nuclear engineering program to be a nuclear engineer on a sub, and all my life, probably about 1965, I actually started cross dressing, borrowing my sister&#039 ; s clothes, because it made me feel better. But yet there was a certain amount of shame with that. So--but that continued on even into the Navy. And I can remember being on a leave of absence, going to a bar dressed up, and coming out of the bar and being discovered by my commanding officer who then proceeded to file charges against me for crossdressing. And I ended up going through a court-marshal. So, push came to shove, they didn&#039 ; t do what they call a Section 8 on me. What they did do was give me a personal hardship discharge, because they basically said they didn&#039 ; t want &quot ; my kind&quot ; there. So, but it was very nerve-wracking. I can remember thinking--and I was living in Massachusetts at the time. I&#039 ; m like thinking throughout the entire court-marshal worst case scenario, they Section 8 me, classify me as, you know, &quot ; mentally disturbed,&quot ; because of my crossdressing. And if I had went back to Massachusetts with that on my discharge papers, they could have (laughs) at actually put me into a mental institution back then. They still had governmental-run mental institutions in Massachusetts then, and they were not a very pretty sight. And even with people like me, they would actually--and gay people--they would actually lobotomize them trying to &quot ; fix them,&quot ; so to speak. So, (laugh) it wasn&#039 ; t, it was a totally different world. And I can, you know, they appreciate all the things that, people like me and the whole, uh, gay movement, gay rights and people that fought for and the seventies and even into the eighties and are still fighting today. And I&#039 ; m one of them. Friedman: Yeah. Pronovost: Because no matter how far we&#039 ; ve come, there&#039 ; s still much further to go. So. Friedman: I would actually like to switch gears if that&#039 ; s okay and talk about your years in activism. You&#039 ; ve been an activist within the transgender community for twelve years. When did you first decide to turn to activism? Pronovost: Well, after I felt--after I came out to everybody, um--let me explain. In 2006, I had a near death experience that actually--because as I told you, you know, from 1963 on--I knew something was different. 2006, I had a near death experience that caused me to look at what my life was about, who I am, why I survived. And I came to the realization that I had to do something about this. And I started my transition soon as I recovered from that, which was probably about a year after that. I was well enough to actually--I didn&#039 ; t start hormones at that time, but I started looking at herbal supplements that would change my body. And I didn&#039 ; t come out to everybody. My current ex-wife at the time, I did come out to her about changing. And she was okay with it as long as I didn&#039 ; t tell anybody. She carried--being a Latin person, carried a certain stigmatization around who I was. So, um, but anyway, it took me a couple of years to get on hormones and there&#039 ; s even stories there (laughs). I was actually denied my hormones at one point in time by my therapist, which really--I didn&#039 ; t understand why. I understood that that was the laws. And then, you know, I&#039 ; ve heard other stories of other going to support groups and talking to a therapist and learning how to come out to basically the world. And it troubled me how difficult it was. And that whole path of trying to-- knowing deep down inside (laughs) all my life, that something was different, just never realized what it was and because I grew up before internet. And so, it the only place I could find information was in a library. And I was too ashamed to go into a library and pull a book about transsexuals (laughs), you know? Especially with my Catholic upbringing. So, it was very difficult and there were many times that throughout my life that I actually tried to commit suicide because of that. Because I thought I was alone. I thought I different. I never knew there was people like me. And then finding all those hurdles that I had to jump through. And then at the same time, you know, I started discovering that the state that I live in, Massachusetts, didn&#039 ; t even have any protections for transgender people. And if I tried to rent an apartment or buy a house, or, you know, get a job as a trans person, people could actually say &quot ; No,&quot ; because I was transgender. So, these things really disturbed me down to my core because, you know, it is who I am. It is my identity. So, that&#039 ; s what really got me to become more active and become an advocate and activist for the community because I wanted to make it better for the next people. I want to make it better for the next generation, so they don&#039 ; t have to struggle like I did. Not knowing who they were. I wanted to give the trans community that visibility so that they have role models that can even, you know, that they can idolize basically, and say, &quot ; I want be like that person.&quot ; Because as a youth, you know, I never had that. We, I mean, if you look in the sixties, seventies and eighties, the people that were portrayed as trans-- what we now call transgender or transsexuals-- in those times, they were either the joke of the movie or they were, you know, the crazed maniac killer (laughs), you know? And I would look at them and I would say, &quot ; Oh, that&#039 ; s me when I grow up.&quot ; But yet, then I find out that they&#039 ; re either the joke or they&#039 ; re, you know, the crazed maniac killer. And I&#039 ; m like, &quot ; Okay, well, that&#039 ; s not me.&quot ; So, I&#039 ; m not like that, but you know, here I am, that&#039 ; s who I was. So, I wanted to be able to give, you know, the next generation, the next batch of people, because I--after going to a bunch of support groups for being transgender-- I realized that I wasn&#039 ; t alone and there&#039 ; s a lot more people out there that are like me. And once I started doing my history research, you know, of transgender people--for instance, we&#039 ; ve been around forever. I mean, I can tell you, in the Neolithic Age there was art drawings on cave walls of a third sex. And, you know, that date back to about 7,000 BC. So, (laughs) people like me, I&#039 ; ve been around forever (laughs). It&#039 ; s just so something that hasn&#039 ; t been known, that&#039 ; s all, at least to the Western world. Because you take, you know--actually to be truthful with you, I identify as Two Spirit. The Indigenous people--not just here in North America--but Indigenous people all around the world have some of them have multiple genders. Two Spirit is an in North American Indigenous term that encompasses some tribes have as many as five genders, some three genders. Friedman: Wow. Pronovost: There&#039 ; s some tribes that don&#039 ; t even acknowledge gender. Men and women didn&#039 ; t have specific rules, if you will. I know of a tribe in Africa that, you know--I met a girl years ago, a trans girl from Africa. She had no concept of what he/she [pronouns] meant. They only had one pronoun for all people in her language. So, it was very difficult for her and even than her mother to understand that concept when they moved here to the United States. So. Friedman: Wow. That&#039 ; s really interesting. And I&#039 ; m glad that you finally found a community when you first came out. When you first started, um, your working in activism, did you partner with any organizations during these early years and what type-- what type of activities did you participate in? Pronovost: Oh, I partnered with many organizations to be truthful with you. One of the first groups--the two first groups that I partnered with were a group called Tri Ess [an international support group for heterosexual cross-dressers and their partners and families.]. It was actually started in the 1950s by a woman named Virginia Prince. Basically, that was for, in her terms, heterosexual cross-dressers. Although once I became involved in the club, found out that there were a lot of transgender people within the organization that wanted to actually transition. Not that I wouldn&#039 ; t say myself, I would say that cross-dressers do fall under the trans umbrellas, so to speak. So, but, some, some of them don&#039 ; t agree with that, some of them do agree with it. Some of them think they&#039 ; re the only true trans people, when you really get down to the nitty gritty. One of the other main things was the transgender group of Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts. I--that was a peer support group and we were active in helping others find out that--because one of the toughest things that I found was in talking to new people as they come into the groups that they always thought they were alone as well. Because they never knew anybody that was like them. So, you know, that made such a difference for me in my life to realize all of a sudden, &quot ; Hey, they&#039 ; re like me and you know what, they&#039 ; re okay. That&#039 ; s an engineer, that&#039 ; s a medical doctor and that&#039 ; s a lawyer,&quot ; you know? &quot ; This person, you know, is, you know, just a normal average person living their life (laughs) so it&#039 ; s not so bad.&quot ; So, it made such a difference in the world for me that it, you know, it just, it seemed like common sense to move into it. And then I mean, I blossomed into a bunch of other organizations. I, uh, (laughs), I didn&#039 ; t start my transition into late in life, as you can imagine. Born in [19]59 and starting in 2007. It was forty-seven or forty-eight years old or something like that. But the thing is it, they, it--I wanted to do as much as I could for, or wherever. And so not being of (laughs)--I decided to help another group called Rainbow Elders. That was a nonprofit group run by, uh, not another nonprofit, that they did stuff for seniors. I can&#039 ; t remember their name off of top of my head, but it-- we used to do things like go out on panels and teach medical facilities. We would teach nursing homes. We would teach assisted living centers. We were teaching people in, um, it just reaching out to all sorts of businesses and stuff and doing panels and educating them about the LBGT experience by telling our stories. Then, you know, I joined another group over at UMass Amherst and, I--that was the Stonewall Speakers Bureau. And they were very active within the GSAs [Gay Straight Alliance]. So, I used to go out to all the GSAs, whether it was a grammar school, middle school, junior high school, high school, and sometimes even other colleges, asking us to come out and speak to gender-related studies and/or education of the faculty. So, and then I started--because the group--that Pioneer Valley group and the Tri Ess group that I first started with--one of them was up in New Hampshire, even though I lived in Massachusetts and the other one was in the Southern part of Massachusetts. So, I was having a drive, you know, anywhere from forty-five minutes to an hour, sometimes even two hours to go to a meeting. So, I decided to create my own peer support group, which I partnered with a hospital in Western Mass[achussets] in the county that I was in, Franklin County in Greenfield Mass. And they gave me a place to work with and a small budget. And I was able to start a group that actually still runs today, even though I&#039 ; m here in California now. So, then because I also became part of what was known as the Massachusetts Transgendered Political Coalition, which in 2011, we ended up fighting for transgender rights. They made us actually take off on the bill by the time it--in order to get it out of committee, we had to take off transgender public accommodations rights. But it--bill did still encompass our rights to financial institutions, our rights for housing, our rights for, uh, financial housing and employment. Those were the three main rights that we were fighting for. Which it did end up getting passed in 2011 by the end of that year. Uh, they became-- (both talking at once) Friedman: (both talking at once)--Oh, congratulations. Pronovost: Yeah, thanks. But then again, in another organization that I became part of back in 2016, I helped to--we went back and lobbied or advocated for the state government to include transgender public accommodations, which would give us the--most people think, &quot ; Oh, that&#039 ; s the bathroom stuff and locker room stuff,&quot ; but there&#039 ; s so much more to it when you really sit down and think about it. The right to ride on a public transportation, the right to, (laughs), let&#039 ; s say I worked in a restaurant. If I punched out my time card to go out the back employee door and walk around to the front of that restaurant that hired me, they still have the right to refuse to serve me. Those are actually public accommodations. The right to be served in a hospital, you know? Many times throughout the years that I&#039 ; ve worked, I&#039 ; ve had myself and my friends have had discrimination by going to a hospital. I had one friend that they fell down on black ice and she got taken away on an ambulance and when they tore off or cut off her clothes, they found that she had a penis. And the doctor just looked at her and said--and then looked at the nurses and said, &quot ; Get that thing out of my hospital.&quot ; So, she--they called for another ambulance to take her to another hospital. Nowadays, because of that (unintelligible) she&#039 ; s permanently disabled, because she didn&#039 ; t receive the proper attention. And now, you know, we as taxpayers are paying to support her because of that discrimination. And so, things like that just didn&#039 ; t make any sense to me. So, you know, it made sense to go back and fight. So, we formed another organization called Freedom Massachusetts. And we fought for trans rights and we won them. But also, because of all that other activism, I had other organizations like PFLAG [organization dedicated to supporting the LGBTQ+ community ; formally known as Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays] and, uh, PFLAG in two separate counties, both of them had asked me on to be on their board of directors. So, I ended up being on their board of directors at the same time about the--that same time I had many friends that I lost over the years in the support groups. And when I say I lost them, I mean that they took their own lives. And they&#039 ; re no longer here. And prior to my transition, I never knew anybody that committed suicide. Now, all of a sudden in the few short years that I was out as a trans person, I knew more than half a dozen. And I just felt that was wrong. So, I had heard about a organization called Trans Lifeline, and I actually became an operator for them. And because I, myself, (laughs), had, as I told you before, early in my life, I didn&#039 ; t know how to deal with this. I didn&#039 ; t know there were other people like me, there were a few times that I&#039 ; d tried to commit suicide. So, and if I-- so if I could prevent one trans person from (laughs) stop--help-- stop them from committing suicide, then, you know, that would make me feel great. So, I spent a number of years as an operator, and then I actually became a team lead for a bunch of operators. Actually, even given peer support to the operators, because if you can imagine Trans Lifeline was an organization that was created by transgender people, for trans gender people. And the only criteria was that you had to be trans to be an operator. What helped was, though most of the operators were ones that had tried to commit suicide at one point or another. And sometimes when you&#039 ; re talking somebody down from a suicidal attempt, it brings you yourself into some pretty dark places. So, the operators would definitely need some, you know, self-care and guidance to get back to a point where they can do self-care even. And I know that I have many cases that led me into dark places that I didn&#039 ; t want to go, but yet, I went there to try and make sure, and it makes a difference. It really does, the peer thing, because I&#039 ; ve never lost anyone when I was talking with them. When an individual that&#039 ; s on that brink or on that fence, or standing on that (laughs) that [precipice] to jump, if you will. Having somebody else talk to you, that&#039 ; s been there and been through what your experiencing, makes a huge difference. And they open up and listen. And then they also feel much easier to open up to you so that they can pour those feelings out and step off that [precipice]. So, that was really nice work for me. And then the next thing that I (laughs) became active in was the Transgender Law Center up in Oakland, California. I started volunteering for what they call the Detention Project. The Detention Project is basically--there&#039 ; s a lot of transgender people within our prison system that either wanted to transition or had already started their transition and they&#039 ; re wondering, you know, &quot ; Here you have this trans woman sitting in a male jail, what are her rights?&quot ; Um, you know, and, &quot ; Can she have her name change? Can she get women&#039 ; s clothing? Can be isolated so she&#039 ; s protected away from the general population?&quot ; All of these things and Transgender Law Center addresses all of those issues. I was basically a research person for the lawyers and I would actually go and research each individual state&#039 ; s laws pertaining to the detention of transgender people, and then compose letters. And the lawyers would then approve or ask me, you know, change this, change that. And then we would issue the letters back to the inmates, so that they knew what their rights were and how to fund those rights. So, which meant a lot to me (laughs) the next step phase in my, uh, was actually working with the local because I was doing on the national level. And I started working with the local county jails and state prisons, and department of corrections. And I helped them to write--I helped both Massachusetts and Connecticut to write their policies on transgender people. And then--the same way with most of the county jail systems, I helped them to write--and I ran peer support groups within the county jails as well, so. Then I met a woman online (laughs) and moved out here to California (laughs). Well, it, it took a while. It took a few years, it--we had a Coast-to-Coast relationship, and we developed this great relationship. And we decided to take it to the next level and move in together. And I tried to get her to come out to Massachusetts, but one point she came out and it was minus--the high temperature was minus fifteen degrees. And this was the week between Christmas and New Year&#039 ; s. So, she was like, &quot ; No, no, no, no.&quot ; (both laugh) So, of course I&#039 ; ve moved out here, and been living here ever since then. But before I even moved out, once we made that decision to move out here, I was like, &quot ; You know, I&#039 ; m an--I&#039 ; m an advocate and activist. What do you have out there that I can get involved with?&quot ; So, she introduced me to the North County--she was living in Oceanside at the time, and she introduced me to the North County LGBTQ Resource Center. So, I met Max Disposti, the Director and Founder of the place. And I was like, &quot ; What can I do to come?&quot ; (laughs) You know? &quot ; What can I do when I get out here?&quot ; (laughs) &quot ; Where can I go?&quot ; He&#039 ; s like, &quot ; Don&#039 ; t worry, we&#039 ; ll put you to work.&quot ; So, (both laugh) soon as I moved out here, they had an opening for the Unicorn Homes program, which being a case manager for that program, it was only fifteen hours a week. But, to start, and I was like, &quot ; Hey, it&#039 ; s along the lines,&quot ; because a lot of times running the peer support group in prisons, I was helping people do a lot of navigate social services that they would need getting out of jail. So, it wasn&#039 ; t too far of a fetch for me to be able to help people, you know, navigate applying for Medi-Cal or, you know, Cal Fresh or being there just to listen and try to help homeless youth. And one of the things, even in Massachusetts, that one of my goals was eventually to create a transgender housing service. So, when I moved here and I had that opportunity to join something like this, I jumped on it. And Max liked what he saw in all the volunteer work that I did. So, he hired me for the position, even though there were a number of other candidates, I received the job. And I just started doing a whole bunch of free work for them (laughs). Because this is where my passion is. In the meantime, you know, I had been, you know, I still own property back East in Massachusetts, rental property. And, you know, I had a nice package of--so I wasn&#039 ; t worried about money or anything. So, why not work where my heart is? Nowadays though, I do a whole bunch of other things for The Center. I manage most of the grants for The Center. I also, now am, uh, Gender Advocacy Project Chair person for the Gender Advocacy Project, which puts on a number of events a year they do--we just recently had the Transgender Day of Visibility a couple weekends ago. Well, this weekend will be two weekends ago. Which was a wonderful event. We had, I don&#039 ; t know if I had to guess probably around 200, maybe 300 people come through and a bunch of booth with resources. And we had a great show. We had speakers and musicians and playing, and we had fun and games for the youth, and it was just a wonderful weekend. Wonderful day. But, so. Gender Advocacy Project also does Transgender Day of Remembrance. And, which is in November twentieth and a rather somber day for us because we&#039 ; re remembering those that we lost through transphobic violence. And the past few years have been actually kind of tough because the numbers have gone up astronomically in 2020, if I remember correctly, there was forty-one or forty-two, and in 2021, I believe there was fifty-six trans women. Now when I say these numbers, they seem like small numbers compared to a nationwide thing, but those are the ones that we actually know. Which, you know, a lot of times the gender is not known and, and they--or, and/or they misgender the person because the family doesn&#039 ; t want them to know about it. So, that number, even though the known cases keeps going up, I&#039 ; m sure it&#039 ; s at least doubled if not tripled. So for-- for supposedly, according to the statistics, there&#039 ; s less than one percent of people are transgender throughout the nation. So, for that small amount of people to be targeted, the numbers of murders like that--violent murders--basically hate crimes, in my opinion, that&#039 ; s an astronomical amount. When you start looking at the statistics and the breakouts. Especially that most of those numbers, you know--I carry a certain amount of privilege because I&#039 ; m a white transgender woman--or I appear to be white. I do have some American heritage, um, Indigenous blood in me. But that&#039 ; s something that people don&#039 ; t see because I appear to be white. So, therefore I&#039 ; ve got a certain amount of privilege. I know that. When I look at a trans woman of color, those are the ones that are targeted when you look at those people that we honor year after year after year. It&#039 ; s usually Black or Brown people, and occasionally an Indigenous person in there. But, um, and sprinkled with a few Caucasian people. So, you know, it&#039 ; s so that when you look at that target population, that number, even it&#039 ; s more astronomical, when you break it down to what I call the &quot ; intersectionality of marginalizations.&quot ; So, you know, that&#039 ; s why that particular day is so important to me, even though it&#039 ; s a somber day. And I&#039 ; m glad that we celebrate that and celebrate those lives that we lost. I&#039 ; m hoping one day (laughs) and trying to do our best by fighting the hate. One of the grants that the North County LGBTQ Resource Center just got it is--we got a bunch of money into actually--and that&#039 ; s what the grant is called, &quot ; Fight the Hate.&quot ; (laughs) So, you know, it&#039 ; s an honor for me to be doing this work and nowadays I&#039 ; m actually paid full time for what I do, because I do the grants. I do the Unicorn Homes. I&#039 ; m also the Gender Advocacy Project Chair. I&#039 ; m also--it, I never mentioned what I did prior to, well, while all that activation was going on, activism and advocacy work was going on, I actually worked a full-time job in telecommunications. I was a Level III Telecommunications Engineer. So, now I do all the IT work (laughs) at The Center as well. So, (both laugh), anything I can do for the community, you know, to make their life better. And, you know, I&#039 ; m, uh, want to, you know, the North County LGBTQ Resource Center, I feel like I&#039 ; m privileged to be able to work there, to be honest with you. And to be able to work in such a queer environment where I don&#039 ; t have to face what all my siblings face on a daily basis, you know? Because, despite all the work that we&#039 ; ve done, there&#039 ; s still a lot of stigmatization, and even hatred of the trans community. It&#039 ; s funny how, you know, one of the things, when you&#039 ; ve learned the history, it was, you know, of the entire gay rights movement. One of--they say that turning point was Stonewall, right? Well, the first person to actually throw something at the police was actually a transgender woman. And the other trans girls started in. And then if you know, I know people that were actually there and they told me that basically the lesbians then started joining in. And it was at the encouragement of the lesbians that the gay men finally stood up and started doing something against the police. So, if you look at that in its context who, it--that key moment who was the first trans woman? But in gay rights movements, we were left behind. We were taken out because we were so controversial and they wouldn&#039 ; t be able to get their rights. That&#039 ; s what we were told as trans women or transgender people. If we were in clumped in with them, you know? So, even though we were there at the beginning and even well before that, you know, a lot of--there, there were riots all over the country, you know? If you look at San Francisco, if you look at Miami, there were riots in gay bars where trans women--and trans women were the target, because a lot of the women, because they couldn&#039 ; t get jobs were street workers. So, therefore they&#039 ; re trying to pick up these supposedly &quot ; men&quot ; that dress as &quot ; women,&quot ; which at the time was against the law, working as a sex worker. So, it&#039 ; s because of that attraction that the trans women stood up and then the lesbians stood up with them, and then the gay guys stood up with them. And yet, here they are fighting for their rights and telling us to step back. Friedman: Yeah. Pronovost: You know, it just didn&#039 ; t make sense. And believe it or not, there&#039 ; s still quite a few lesbian--for instance, I&#039 ; m with another woman, I consider--I&#039 ; m sexually attracted to other women. I&#039 ; m romantically attracted to other women. Not so much with the guys. So, I consider myself basically a lesbian. There&#039 ; s a lot of lesbians out there that would tell me I&#039 ; m not a lesbian because I&#039 ; m a trans woman. These are what we would call TERFS: trans-exclusionary radical feminists. And they&#039 ; re out there all over the world, you know? One of the most famous and most recent news is J.K. Rowling. (laughs) Friedman: Yeah. Pronovost: So, (laughs) despite all the love for, you know, the Harry Potter stories, I have to disagree with her principles. So, you know, so there&#039 ; s still--my point is despite all the fighting and activism and how far we&#039 ; ve actually come, we still have a huge way to go. So Friedman: That actually leads me to my next question. Um, do you think creating an inclusive society is achievable? Pronovost: (both laugh) Honestly, I hope so. You know, one of the latest endeavors that I&#039 ; ve looked into is--and I hope I&#039 ; m not premature in saying this. I&#039 ; ve been appointed, still yet to be confirmed--a Senior Commissioner for the City of--Senior Affairs Commissioner for the City of Vista. So, I&#039 ; m doing my part to hopefully make that true. I don&#039 ; t think it&#039 ; ll happen in my lifetime. I am much older than (laughs) most people nowadays. I am a senior, hence why I&#039 ; m on that (laughs) Senior Affairs Commission. Or want to be on it. So, and as of lately, there&#039 ; s more and more transgender people within the political scheme, trying to fight the battle from within, which will hopefully eventually bring that about. I mean, that&#039 ; s my ultimate goal. One of the reasons why I do stuff like this, this oral history presentation, or any of my activism--a lot of it is educational. I have a pet peeve that, you know, education brings in tolerance. Tolerance can achieve, hopefully, acceptance. And once acceptance is there, in a general population, then the next thing that that should beget is inclusion. And that&#039 ; s where me, that&#039 ; s my goal. (laughs) Since coming out and becoming an activist, that&#039 ; s--that&#039 ; s my life--that&#039 ; s my life goal, if you will. I know I probably will not see it in my lifetime within the next twenty or so years. I hope we still achieve, you know, steps moving in that direction as we go. One of the things that the Biden administration just recently did, was give, uh, make the announcement on Transgender Day of Visibility, which is March thirty-first. They made an announcement that they were going to allow an X marker on the passports for a third gender. They were going to make it much easier for a person like me who, you know, I was identified male at birth, but yet, I&#039 ; m a woman, make it much easier for somebody like me to change that name and gender marker on the passport. Another thing that they were planning on doing was one of the really bad areas that--and a lot of us had been fighting against this, the TSA--when you go through TSA screening in an airport and you have the x-ray, um, it&#039 ; s happened to me, you know? I identify as a woman, all my IDs are women and they see something down below. And they call you out, &quot ; Hey, we&#039 ; ve got an anomaly. You need to step aside over here and we need to get somebody to physically search you.&quot ; Friedman: That&#039 ; s awful. Pronovost: So, they&#039 ; re going to do away with that genderized screening. Which is an awesome thing. Finally, thank God. Because it&#039 ; s so embarrassing, you know, when that happens. And it happens to so many people, it&#039 ; s ridiculous what we have to endure and by being identified that way. Friedman: Yeah. Pronovost: So, that, that was a step in the right direction. They&#039 ; re looking at making the Affordable Care Act more inclusive for gender treatment, especially one of the things that we recently did as the Gender Advocacy Project, which is the program of the North County LGBTQ Resource Center. I--one of my volunteers put together a list of all the state bills. For instance--what I mean by that is, last year in 2021, we had one hundred and ninety-one hate bills. Most of them were targeting transgender people. And in particular transgendered youth and their ability to receive transgender healthcare. Me, working on Trans Lifeline, know that most of those phone calls that I used to get in on Trans Lifeline are trans youth, anticipating and wanting to commit suicide. If they were accepted and were allowed to get their hormones, though, those numbers would drop drastically. And we have the statistics to back that up. But here, these states are wanting to outlaw and actually go even--go after doctors. And look at Texas. Texas wants to, you know, go after the parents saying that gender-affirmation healthcare for their child is actually child abuse, you know? So, one of the things the Biden administration said was they were going to fight, that they were going to make the Affordable Care Act to protect so that doctors don&#039 ; t have to report that to state agencies. Because they, you know, the state agencies, the state Texas--state of Texas, was forcing the doctors to violate people&#039 ; s HIPAA rights. I mean, they have no right to that information, but yet the state&#039 ; s forcing the doctors to turn that over. HIPAA&#039 ; s a national law, It&#039 ; s not a state law (laughs). They shouldn&#039 ; t be able to bypass federal laws. So, the Biden administration, uh, pledge to make it more difficult for states to be able to do stuff like that. You look at the &quot ; Don&#039 ; t Say Gay Bill&quot ; in Florida [SB 1834: Parental Rights in Education], you know? Ohio just came out with a bill last week--or just earlier this week, I forget which--that basically mimics the exact wording of Florida&#039 ; s bill. And no one, the state of Ohio and who they are and their history, that will pass, you know? So, we&#039 ; re going to have a couple of states that, you know, people are not allowed to say &quot ; You&#039 ; re gay.&quot ; There&#039 ; s another state in Utah. Utah wrote a bill that&#039 ; s very similar to Texas&#039 ; s bill about transgender healthcare, but it actually even encompasses adults. So, they want to make it illegal to be me (laughs), you know? And force--trying to force us to go back into the closet, so to speak. Because like I said, you know, one of the thing, one of their arguments is, &quot ; Oh, it&#039 ; s become a &#039 ; popular thing.&#039 ; &quot ; It&#039 ; s not popular. You just never knew what the real numbers were because we were all hiding away in the closet. Friedman: Yeah. Pronovost: So, you know. These are thing-- that&#039 ; s why I say we still have so far to go. This particular year though, in the first three months of this year, we have two hundred and thirty-eight hate bills. So, we even-- last year was a record year with all the hate bills, but in three months&#039 ; time, we have surpassed all of the bills from last year. So, they&#039 ; re--the thing that I&#039 ; m looking at is I&#039 ; m hoping this is like the last grasp (laughs) of them. (both laugh), you know? Their desperation before they fall down into the cracking crevice and go wherever. Friedman: I hope. Pronovost: (laughs) Go away. Yeah. Well, that&#039 ; s my hope (laughs). Because, you know, if you look at the statistics throughout the entire United States as a nation, over sixty percent of the nation is for transgendered people and having our rights or rights in particular of LGBT people. So, that&#039 ; s more than half the population. So eventually I know we will get there because that acceptance number and because, you know, I see the trends: tolerance, acceptance, then inclusion. I know we&#039 ; ll get there, but we still have so far to go. So, um, yeah. I hope that--I hope that answers your question (laughs). Friedman: Oh, absolutely. Kind of going back to politics, Like throughout your time, working on the East Coast and the West Coast, have you kind of noticed a difference in the politics working on both Coasts? Or, has it just kind of depended, um, kind of like the political shifts because you kind of were mostly on the on the East Coast? Um, is it kind of-- does it not really matter because you kind of just, you mostly on the East Coast for most of your life and--? Pronovost: Um, be honest with you, knowing, I don&#039 ; t think it&#039 ; s that much of a difference here, you know. Here at times, I think there&#039 ; s certain pockets you, that if you will, that are actually inclusive. When I look at the city of Oceanside, for instance, you know? I had mayor Esther Sanchez come out to Transgender Day of Visibility and she gave a speech about being visible and standing up for what&#039 ; s right, you know? And, so I see Oceanside as a pocket, but yet, when I look at a city like Vista where I actually live, you know? Vista is, you know, for lack of better terminology, very conservative. But then there&#039 ; s even worse conservative areas. Like, you start pushing up into Menifee or something like that, you know? You&#039 ; re looking at very, um, I don&#039 ; t like to use this because I don&#039 ; t like to use somebody&#039 ; s name, but it very much what most of us within the community would consider to be Trumpers or people that propagate hate. And I hate using that because I don&#039 ; t like to talk about individuals or refer to that. But that term, let&#039 ; s take it away from the person because that term existed, uh, &quot ; Trumping somebody&quot ; is overcoming is somebody. So that&#039 ; s what I mean by that terminology, more or less. Where they are totally conservative. And actually, even don&#039 ; t like people like me. You know, I&#039 ; ve had people up there in that city actually reach out to me saying they&#039 ; re having troubles with their school systems. Now here in California, for a transgender person and they should--a student should be able to change their name on all information except for their transcripts. That&#039 ; s the only thing that they can&#039 ; t change because that&#039 ; s a legal document, but they should be able to walk in without the school notifying the parents that, &quot ; Hey, I no longer want to be called Jane. I want to be called Max.&quot ; And the school legally is obligated to change their paperwork. Friedman: I see. Pronovost: But yet that&#039 ; s not happening in a city like that. I get phone calls quite often saying that the school is fighting the individual or the school has actually outed the individual to the parents, even. Because some of these schools aren&#039 ; t, you know, minors are even protected from this, the school is not supposed to out the youth. But yet here we have it happening, you know? And you know, it--so the hate and the stigmatization and the indignities and the discrimination still happens. No matter where you are and back East, I happen to live in a pocket--that Pioneer Valley group that I belong to. That&#039 ; s the whole Connecticut River Valley area throughout all of Western Mass. And that was very progressive. I mean, we--there&#039 ; s a town called Northampton there, which it is kind of, uh, was the gay city for the East Coast kind of equivalent to what San Francisco is to here. So, it&#039 ; s mainly a college town, but that made the entire whole (laughs), excuse me, for lack of better terminology, Pioneer Valley seemed very, uh, &quot ; granola-ish,&quot ; if you will. Originally Pioneer Valley, that whole Connecticut River Valley, those were the first communes back in the sixties. They started there and then moved out here to the West Coast. So, (laughs), very similar, you know, because even in Massachusetts, you still had your pockets of hate and bigotry and, so. It&#039 ; s very similar. The fight&#039 ; s the same, no matter where (laughs) I seem to go. But, you know, the goal is to get more cities, you know, to be like Oceanside, you know? Because Oceanside they&#039 ; ve raise, you know, they do raise a pride flag. Here in Vista, the pride flag that (laughs) that rainbow flag&#039 ; s never been raised here in the City of Vista. And so, you know, I&#039 ; m hoping that maybe sitting on one of the commissions, (laughs) I can change that (laughs) from within. And so, you know. Friedman: Well, I just have one more question. Pronovost: Okay. Friedman: Um, so you, you&#039 ; ve already talked about it. You have a wonderful year--a wonderful career in activism. What have you learned throughout your twelve years working in the trans and LGBT field of activism? Pronovost: Oh, (laughs), I&#039 ; ve learned so much it&#039 ; s hard to pinpoint any one thing. I think the one that weighs the heaviest on my heart, if you will, is probably--you know, one of the things that early on people did mention about the intersectionality of marginalizations and now that I&#039 ; ve had, you know, more than ten years at this, I actually get to see it. And that breaks my heart. How, you know, for instance, you know, I worked as a Telecom Engineer and I was the Senior Telecom Engineer for one of the world&#039 ; s largest telecommunications companies, Nippon Telephone and Telegraph [Nippon Telegraph and Telephone]. The first time I walked into an engineering meeting as me, as Leea, they looked at me like, you know, I-- &quot ; Where where&#039 ; s the donuts and coffee?&quot ; (laughs). That was the type of look I got. And, &quot ; Who the hell are you to be sitting here in this engineering meeting?&quot ; When, you know, before I used to lead the engineering meeting, you know? So, I know the difference between being a man in a man&#039 ; s field and being a woman trying to make it in a man&#039 ; s field. And, and so I don&#039 ; t--[connection froze]--People that I serve doing what I do and I look at, you know, a trans woman of color, and I see how much more discrimination that they actually face. Because of that intersectionality. Now you start adding more intersectionalities on top of that, such as being disabled or mentally disabled, you know? Disadvantaged. That--those numbers not only do--I mean, they grow exponentially and that&#039 ; s what weighs really heavy on my heart. And now I see that so much more easily, and makes me want to fight all that much or for them, you know? But also at the same time, you know, being--working at the North County LGBTQ Resource Center, and seeing other people fight for, you know, my rights as a trans woman, I want to say, you know, not for me, without me, you know? So that&#039 ; s one of--that ties well into the intersectionality thing. So, you know, I know I can&#039 ; t go out there. I can mention about it, but I can&#039 ; t go out there and say, &quot ; You know, we need more protections for trans women of color.&quot ; I can say that, but, you know, I don&#039 ; t experience that because I do have that privilege. I can talk from that privilege that we need to do something about it, you know? So, but I want those, I want to be able to empower those trans women of color to come forward and speak up for themselves. I want to, you know, empower other people to do what I do so that the fight you, I know I&#039 ; m not going to achieve my goal in my lifetime so that I know the legacy I leave behind is me helping them empower themselves so that they can even empower other people and move it forward. So, that&#039 ; s the main thing I&#039 ; ve learned is that we have to give people the power to have that voice. So, it isn&#039 ; t just about any one person, it&#039 ; s about empowering an entire demographic, if you will. Friedman: Well, thank you. Is there anything else I should have asked or anything else that you would like to share today? Pronovost: Well, geez, we&#039 ; ve covered so much. (both laugh). I don&#039 ; t know. I don&#039 ; t think so. I think we pretty much covered it. It&#039 ; s a lot to chew and digest, if you will. So, I think, I think we&#039 ; ve done a good job. Friedman: Yeah. Pronovost: So. Friedman: Well, thank you so much for speaking with me today, Leea. We are so happy to have you a part of this project. Pronovost: Yeah, my pleasure is so, um. I&#039 ; m just happy to be here. Like I said, that that&#039 ; s my pet peeve. If I can do something to--I&#039 ; m hoping this gets seen by as many people as it possibly can be. And it gives them the self-confidence in seeing somebody like me to empower themselves to find their voice. So. Friedman: Absolutely. Just continuing on with your, uh, with what you&#039 ; ve been doing from the start, basically ever since you started in 2007, 2008. Yeah. Pronovost: Yeah. Friedman: Yeah. Well, thank you again. Pronovost: You&#039 ; re very welcome. And it&#039 ; s my pleasure and thank you for having me. Friedman: Well, it&#039 ; s our pleasure (both laugh). https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en video Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. This resource is licensed for noncommercial educational use using CC NC-BY 4.0. Please contact Special Collections at archives csusm.edu if you need reproductions made. Please see the related “Preferred Citation note” for language on citing materials from this collection. Permission to examine Library materials is not authorization to publish or to reproduce the examined material in whole, or in part. 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The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=PronovostLeea_FriedmanJulia_2022-04-08.xml PronovostLeea_FriedmanJulia_2022-04-08.xml Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Pronovost, Leea. Interview April 8, 2022 Description An account of the resource Leea Pronovost was a transgender activist and has advocated for transgender and LGBTQIA+ rights since coming out after a near-death experience in 2006. Pronovost began her work in activism in Massachusetts and partnered with a variety of organizations where she worked to help the queer community in areas such as LGBTQ+ education, housing, and hospital rights. She also worked for the Transgender Law Center and the Trans Lifeline. Most recently residing in Vista, CA, Pronovost was a staff member at the North Country LGBTQ+ Resource Center, where she worked as a case manager for Unicorn Homes, chaired the Gender Advocacy Project, and was a grant writer. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SC027-18 Subject The topic of the resource LGBTQ+ activism LGBTQ+ rights Transgender people -- Civil rights Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-04-08 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Leea Pronovost Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Julia Friedman Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant San Diego (Calif.) Springfield (Mass.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Leea Pronovost Activists and activism Community history History Department internship LGBTQIA+ experience Women's experience Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Video and audio oral histories can be viewed here. Histories are listed alphabetically by last name. Individual histories are indexed and transcribed and can be searched. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p>Rights to oral histories vary depending on the history. The library owns the copyright to some histories, and has license to reproduce for nonprofit purposes for others. Please contact CSUSM University Library Special Collections at <a href="mailto:%20archives@csusm.edu">archives@csusm.edu</a> with any questions about use.</p> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Madison Teater Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Max Disposti OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=DispostiMax_MadisonTeater-2022-04-26.xml Interview Keyword This filed adds keywords to the Omeka Oral History item type. Keywords are included in the OHMS XML, this field in Omeka will allow for full data migration between OHMS XML and the Omeka Record. This field does not impact the OHMS / Omeka integration and is optional if you do not need to map the "keywords" field in the OHMS XML to the corresponding Omeka record. LGBT resource center nonprofit management leadership presence Stonewall OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 5.4 2022-04-26 Oral history of Max Disposti, April 26, 2022 SC027-14 00:54:20 SC027 California State University San Marcos University Library Special Collections Oral History Collection CSUSM This oral history was made possible with the generous funding of the Ellie Johns Scholarship Fund at Rancho Santa Fe Foundation and the Library Guild of Rancho Santa Fe. LGBTQ+ activism LGBTQ+ rights North County LGBT Resource Center -- California -- Oceanside North County (San Diego County, Calif.) Rome (Italy) LGBT resource center nonprofit management leadership presence Stonewall Max Disposti MJ Teater m4a DispostiMax_MadisonTeater-2022-04-26.m4a 1:|21(7)|43(6)|53(15)|65(3)|75(4)|85(4)|101(11)|113(17)|124(11)|142(11)|153(5)|165(15)|177(13)|188(7)|205(7)|215(10)|227(2)|237(6)|247(10)|259(12)|272(1)|283(4)|293(11)|303(7)|321(3)|333(3)|344(14)|356(3)|367(14)|379(6)|393(13)|406(1)|417(11)|428(6)|439(1)|450(5)|467(10)|479(2)|489(2)|500(3)|514(7)|526(8)|537(11)|550(5)|568(9)|585(13)|597(4)|607(10)|624(5)|634(2)|645(8)|668(1)|681(2)|702(9) 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/90bdb0d7c052243dc1d6c76100bad70a.m4a Other audio English 97 Growing up and education in Rome Sure. When I grew up in Rome, you know, I came from a family that was poor, but you know not too poor not to provide for me in terms of, you know, food and a good safe environment, you know healthcare and education in Italy and Europe are still free. Definitely having access to a higher education was not a challenge, at least not from the standpoint of view of affordability. I grew up in a very safe environment, even though, you know, we were struggling every month to make ends meet. I would say my childhood has been affected by the activism of both of my parents. I only have one siblings that's five years older than me also lives in Rome right now, my brother. And so throughout my life I was always exposed to diversity and others in Italy at the time. And still nowadays, there was a big migration from Africa and our country and Middle East or Eastern Europe. It depends on the time at the time, it was mostly from North Africa and my family was hosting people and greeting them and making sure that they were safe. I grew up in an environment where we always care about others, even though we had little for ourselves. Our table was always with more people and usually people from different cultures as well. My family exposed me to all of this, even though my own mom and my own dad didn't have any academic education, so to speak, they couldn't pursue a higher education, but also they were during the war at the time &lt ; affirmative&gt ; even going to high school was a privilege that just few wealthy families could afford. I consider myself lucky, of course, when I came out at the age of thirteen there's always that struggle of homophobia, transphobia in a city, in a country that's dominated by Catholic Church. Even though my parents were not religious whatsoever it infiltrates into the patriarchal narratives. When I came out as a gay man at the time it definitely was a surprise and an issue at first to a point I needed to detach from my family. They never pushed me outside so they were not against me but I needed my own space. I was thirteen, fourteen and I was already an activist in the community. But it was never a traumatic experience. I went through my time of self-affirmation and then I came back to them with more-- I knew I could conquer their hearts and mind around this because there were people I could talk to. I was definitely in a privileged position versus other friends of mine. They just end up on the street. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; . So that's my childhood. That's who I am. For me early on, on my sense of social justice, that activism around issues that they were not just LGBT related you know, human rights, immigration rights and against the war all the time. And at the time America, I was definitely not a place where I was aiming to live. It was this big monster imperialistic country that goes around to conquer spaces and lifestyles. We were not a fan of it, but love brought me to California and my first love, I would say serious enough to drag me there. And then one thing led to another, I end up staying in California. Again, though I overstay my visa. I became undocumented for about five, six years of my first time. I had to experience all of that fear because now I'm in love with someone. I didn't want to lose them. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; so that's a little bit my story, even though I always recognized my privilege to come from a place that was definitely not devastated by war and crime or violence. I still felt that I couldn't go back to it just because if I did at the time, I could never return to the U.S. I did my best and my education helped me to go through all the application process and so forth to become a citizen and live the best of both world[s] pretty much, back at home and here in California. So, yeah, I hope I didn't share too much. Max Disposti recounts his childhood and educational experiences in Rome, Italy. He also goes into detail about his parents and their education. Disposti explores the social climate in Rome during his childhood and starts connecting to different movements such as the LGBT, immigration, and human rights. activism ; affordability ; Catholic Church ; higher education ; LGBT ; Rome ; safe environment ; working class activism in Rome, Italy ; Childhood ; Education ; Family education ; Growing up in Rome, Italy 41.9028° N, 12.4964° E 17 Coordinates for Rome, Italy which is where Max Disposti was born and raised. 397 More on education / Early careers Disposti: When I was in Italy I was really driven by social studies since day one. But my high school years were troubled by a lot of strikes that I organized. I can’t even blame anybody, I was always striking for better schools, better conditions against discrimination. At the time being openly gay was a threat. It was a threat to myself. I think people never touched me or attacked me physically because I was so out that would have exposed them as well. Right. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; It was one of those I realized the more vocal out I was, the more protection I was bringing to myself because the people there to be that kinda person, especially in a religious country like that, there's always that fade. I mean, that face that you had to keep, you know, in order decency. High school was problematic. I did finish high school and then I went to the university, high school was just-- in Europe, you already pick in high school what you think you're gonna do in the future. It was graphic design related, a fashion design. Then I look around me, you're in Italy with amazing talented artists. And I look at me and say, “oh my gosh, I would never make it.” These people are just-- each one of them is an artist. I realize it wasn't really for me as well. I went into university and developed more social sociology and social studies. I graduated from-- I got my bachelor[s] over there, but didn't do much with it after a few years-- I mean when I was 30 years old, then I decided to move to the U.S. And here I started over my study and I took my bachelor[s] in political science. And then I went back to get a master [in] nonprofit management in leaderships, which I graduated from in 2016. Not really long ago. Recent, because it was a means for me, I didn't need the academic title. I really needed to know more about the work I was doing, particularly in nonprofit. I had to tell you it was money well invested, even though I'm still paying for it, &lt ; laugh&gt ; after so many years. And it really helped me to understand more about nonprofit governments and leadership as well. In addition to what I already knew. So yeah, that's my academic background pretty much. Max Disposti talks more about the education he received in Italy and then receiving his bachelors and masters in the United States. He further talks about his experience as an immigrant in America and undergoing the process to become a citizen. Meanwhile he was working different jobs and then touches on his goal to start an LGBT center. He leads into talking about the origins of the resource center. academic background ; bachelors ; LGBT center ; military ; nonprofit management ; Oceanside ; organized ; political science ; social sociology ; social studies ; strikes ; transplant Early jobs and career goals ; education in America and Italy ; Job opportunities in California ; Max Disposti's education and career background 33.1959° N, 117.3795° W 17 Oceanside, CA 843 The LGBT Experience in North County San Diego Disposti: It was not easy. I had to fight internally and externally, it was opening the door of the center in a military town. I knew it was going to be difficult because it was at the time all North County was extremely conservative. We received threat. We had our windows smashed several times. We elected people that didn't wanna meet us in person. This was obviously 2008 and 2009. Also 2008 was the year of the campaign for marriage equality. The center at this point was not open because we opened 2011, but we were active as a group. It was called North County LGBT coalition. So we were meeting weekly. We were an organizations with all we were grassroot at the same time. We had a board of directors. I mean we were an organization, but not yet with a space because we were saving money to open one. And yeah, North County was quite brutal, but also interesting enough because we were the only organized entity in North County, we received a lot of support and a lot of love from a lot of people from family and youth and so forth. We connected right away with preexisting grassroot groups in North County, in particular, with Link Lesbian in North County, there is a lot of history around what they've done here in North County for 20 years since women met under cover every Friday to create a support system for themselves, even the gay guys were cruising and the whole spots Oceanside had, the Marines were here. There was a lot of LGBT presence in Oceanside. We used to have two gay bars up to 2002, then they closed down just because the owners got old. But there was a lot of LGBT happening. It reminds me what it used to be in San Diego prior to the seventies when the Marines were there. And it became an LGBT Hillcrest [?] in particular place to go because there were a lot of Navy and Marines coming to town and finally they could be true to themself, right? Oceanside, North County was brewing with Marines that they were gay and Navy officers as well, but it was always-- the community was always in denial. Oceanside was a place where there were a lot of street workers, a lot of LGBT people, a lot of trans women, that had to, not by choice, in that case, to become strict workers because they didn't have opportunity for jobs. So quite a rough place, when we came in people couldn't believe that there [were] enough to put ourself out there and call ourself an LGBT center and having the rainbow flag outside. At first we had people just walking into the door. I remember the seniors in particular, literally were emotionally taken by the fact that we were just there. And at first I saw we're not doing anything special. We're just here with a flag outside, running some support groups, but we didn't realize at first the impact we're having soon, so many lives and people that came and dropped their life story on us, seniors and youth. And then all of a sudden we started seeing more and more, our amazing trans kiddos &lt ; laugh&gt ; . And that was when we started advocating within our own community with our old generation of gay male to the fact that this is the time for us to give back to those of us that are still struggling and understanding how, not only embrace our trans identities, not as a plus or a sign of solidarity, but as a full part of the community, that's always been there, but always been hidden, not by their choice. It was the constitutions of our mission statement at the center. We were fortunate enough that since day one, when no one was talking about trans rights, other than trans people, of course, by meaning the mainstream of the LGBT community. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; Our board was composed by trans folks, the support groups. We started hiring therapists, everybody was volunteering at the time to work with our folks. And we had hundreds, hundreds of kids coming at the center during a week basis. And we learned so much from them, their struggle, their pain, one of this kids became my son because he decided to adopt me. Now he's 22, so he's already grown up and he's a trans male, lives with his girlfriend now and everything else. But so it was a overall real experience. That was never a job for me, never just a job or never just a phase. Right. And I think at that time already, we realized that we needed to educate those old leaderships that they were popping up. And they were excited that we were there, but they started warning us. Hey, this place is becoming, you guys always only care about transcripts. It seems like, what about gay people? Or what about, I say, we don't exclude anyone, but now we need to be together to enhance the voices. So those that haven't been, that have been left out for so many years, because when I grew up in Rome at the age of thirteen, fourteen, I was always surrounded by trans people. They were my friends &lt ; affirmative&gt ; . When people tell me, “Oh, I dunno, what's going on now? All of a sudden, everybody is trans or whatever,” say, “no, it's always been like that.” We always been around. I say, we, even though I'm a cisgender gay guy, because I've been blessed to be educated through the experience for many years when I was thirteen, fourteen. For me to hear an older white male that tells me that I say “You haven't looked around too much. You have been focused on yourself for too long.” I would say that was a journey that allowed me to create a center with a culture and a vision where people, when they joined, they needed to know the old that were on board with the whole spectrum, LGTQI or that wasn't the place for them. And we lost some people in the process. We lost some donors, no regrets. We earned again so much more. And now that people are finally recollecting the necessity to bring home what we’ve started thirty, forty years ago, or fifty years ago with Stonewall to bring it back home with everyone, or just some of us, I think, now people are looking at us and say, “Oh wow, you guys were right. You were always there.” And yeah, we were, we are, and we will. And now we're embracing the intersex identities and struggle because again, they're being ask[ed] to be part of our community because many of them are, and that we've been advocating with them now at the children hospital in San Diego to change the horrible practices of mutilation of our organs just to feed the stereotypical expectations [of] what gender or sexes of birth is all about. We always been there in the forefront and when we weren't, we look into ourself to do better. You can imagine how the past three, four years with the Black Lives Matter Movement with adding colors to our flag, how not only we wanted to embrace, but realize that all our identities are not just one identity, right? That we had to be vocal of about the struggle that our own queer people in our own community BIPOC folks are still enduring because of police brutality, institutional violence, and a way to do nonprofits has been whitewashed for many years. And how white supremacists in filtered into our own community. How it shows up? Recognizing how to do that and making yourself vulnerable to it and not defensive on when you might be perpetuating those dynamics. I think it's part of everyday challenges is what I love the most to be honest, because I don't wanna come to a point where I say, “Oh, I think I know everything, and now I got all of my boxes checked.” Nothing else comes through when it's not true. Life is always moving. Right. And so are we, so, yeah. That's how difficult it was in North County, but I focus on the positive, but we lost some kids in the process in 2014 and by loss, I mean, Taylor, Alisana[?], Sage, and Tyler took their own life. There were transcripts that made national news and there were three of them served by our center. And still troubling for me to talk about it. But I always try to honor their lives because they didn't go in pain, even though I wish they were here. But they taught us a bigger lesson. We believed our kids when they were telling us they were struggling to a point they didn't wanna live anymore. There wasn't just a face or a way to drag attention to themselves. It was a real struggle of pain. Some of us didn't have the privilege. Some of us had the privilege not to experience, by being cisgender. We learn a lot in that process. Sorry. &lt ; laugh&gt ; Max Disposti talks about the LGBT community in North County San Diego. Specifically areas of Oceanside where there were communities that thrived. Disposti also talks about different groups within the community and where they hung out. He begins to touch on why it was important to him to start the North County Resource Center. community ; gay ; grassroot ; lesbians ; LGBT ; LGBTQI ; Link ; marines ; military ; North County ; Oceanside ; organized ; presence ; San Diego ; support ; trans ; transgender ; youth LGBT in the military ; North County ; The LGBT community in North County 33.1222° N, 117.2911° W 17 North County, San Diego 1471 Resources at the North County Resource Center / How the center has changed over time Disposti: Yeah. You know we started in a way at the beginning, really. We didn't have need assessment. We didn't know really how to do any of it eleven years ago. We just said, “Hey, if more than three people come forward and tell us, can we have a super group? For seniors, for non-binary folks, for trans folks?” they say that means it's needed. So, we'll find a facilitator and create guidelines. We were always very serious around policies and procedures and guidelines and protecting ourselves and others in the process. So, we're never easy about that. The opposite. I think that so many times, because while we were a grassroot organization, we knew exactly the level of liability we could incur by just gathering people. You know, there were people [who] were coming because they were stalking other people, right. They were. So how do we protect folks without introducing our own biases in the conversation? We created a support group model that responded to the need of the community. Definitely our trans and non-binary groups was the most populated resources. I mean, sometimes we have 40 people in one room cramped in there because it was the only big room. And I say, “Oh my God the fire department show[ed] up, now they're gonna shut us down.” Because it was a small space at the time. So super groups, then we started doing behavioral health and in the way we wanted to see happening for our people. So, things have changed and housing, case working-- I would say [in] two years we became more experienced. We know how to navigate the system and cut the BS about advocating for people and how to do it well. Creating more safety for our community. So sometimes we're like, for instance, human trafficking is a real, real problem in our community. And we notice that a lot of LGBT centers and churches and sport clubs were place[s] where people are going to groom. And sometimes these people are just a year or two years older than the kid that you're serving. You have to be careful to provide a safe space where you're not there to over micromanage people and their own identity, their own sexuality, their own affirmation are the same, but at the same time, provide a space where people can come to you and tell you, “Hey, I'm an active fifteen year old person, I’m sexually active with this person. Maybe they're at my age or a year older.” How do we go about-- how can I be safe? And things like that. Our youth were coming to us opening their hearts because they knew we weren’t there to judge them. We learned all of that, how to be safe, right? If I have a teenager or thirteen [years old] [who] tells me that they were having a relationship, a sexual relationship with someone at twenty-two, we have major red flags. And we’re also mandated a reporter, right. We've done that too in the past. Navigating through all of that was quite interesting. And we learned how to do it. Now we know so much that we are the one training others youth providers around or the police, when the police shows up because someone called them because maybe they're dynamic of stress. We tell the police what to do and how to approach other people. If they don't agree with that, we don't let them in. This is not place for additional violence and trauma. We educated a lot of these institutions that have been the cause of a lot trauma for our community. We work with them when we can, and we do training and we sit on the same table so that we can advocate and build the trust too. But at the same time, we make it clear that as a service, a clinical provider, this is not a space where they're invited. We need to find other way, how to collaborate and do prevention in a community, without having them finding the queer spaces in San Diego County. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; That's one of the things. Things have changed. And then COVID of course, we moved everything virtually. I have to say, now that we came back, they were coming back in person. We never closed the center. We always been open throughout the pandemic. We just couldn't afford to close. We receive a lot of support from foundations and founders. They realize that we made everything possible to support people. I would say what has changed and now we have support groups, but people prefer the one-on-one because they can't find socialization quite easily nowadays in different spaces, even virtually, but they like the one-on-one, “Hey, help me go through this,” family reification or mental health crisis, or finding a job, or just supporting their ego and the self-esteem. It looks like they will be more successful to do that one by one, instead of putting everyone in a super group, which we do have some people just love that, but they're usually mostly social, like let's come together for an all queer and non-binary or let's come together. And because those spaces are very vital, important. We are not denying that. I would say though, that we are seeing more progress by doing that different kind of intervention. So maybe we're creating a hybrid, whatever the community needs. We'll have to respond to that. Max Disposti explains the services offered at the North County Resource Center. Disposti discusses how the center has changed and became more educated and aware of the needs of those within the community. assessment ; beginning ; church ; community ; family reification ; guidelines ; hybrid ; LGBT ; LGBT centers ; mental health crisis ; procedures ; resources ; safe ; self-esteem ; successful ; trauma ; violence Mental health services ; North County Resource Center ; Support groups ; Support offered at the North County Resource Center 33.1222° N, 117.2911° W 17 North County, San Diego 1802 Challenges and opportunities of the North County Resource Center I would say challenges, but also opportunities. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; I do believe that LGBT centers are the Planned Parenthood of United States. And what I mean is we are vital spaces and resources for our queer community that no other institutions will ever provide. And preserving, not only preserving, but supporting those spaces. I think it's a commitment to the government, state, federal, county will have to commit to, because as we know, as it's happening, if you take away resources from a Planned Parenthood, that's why the comparison, I mean, half of the population of women in particular, but not just women will not have access to reproductive rights, a fundamental human rights. And if they're left to the single communities, and this is a conversation I have with our elected official Mike Levin, people that they're being very willing to understand. I said, I realized during COVID that if it wasn't &lt ; affirmative&gt ; for the private donors and support people with money that stepped in, we would not be open nowadays. And &lt ; affirmative&gt ; the government, you have [to] allow us to close our resources. And now it's eleven years old that has helped thousands of people. And now employs twelve people. And that's just not fair. This is not just a volunteer experience, this is the livelihood, but also the safe space for thousands of people. And that's true in many region[s], right? For the San Diego Center, so forth. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; While it's good for us to build our own funding streams so that you can stay independent. You don't want the government to give you everything for everything you do, because then they want to have a say about how you run your business. But definitely it's important that, especially in California, where supposedly we have a more progressive leadership to start supporting LGBT center so they can provide vital care, healthcare services, the others don't provide. [Be]cause when people get sexually assaulted that are queer, they don't go to the police station. They come to us when they are in a mental health crisis given by different reasons. They come to us first, when they're in poverty, they come to us when experiencing certain kind of relationships or a tougher life or because of drugs or substance abuse, they come to us because they know we're not here to judge. I would say that's why we’re the planned parenthood of the community &lt ; affirmative&gt ; [be]cause it's an essential vital resource. The challenges are that we're not there yet, so that we are left alone to do this work. And now that we have experienced and seen the highest record of anti-LGBT legislation passing in Congress, a passing or proposed in different states and in Congress, this conversation, as you know, they hit home, our kids, even though they're in California. And we know that we're a little bit more protected here. We still have people at the school district level showing up and addressing and stigmatizing and penalizing our queerness. We still have people in position of power taking advantage of those narratives and bring back the same old recycled anti-LGBT religious based narratives. The trauma continues every time we hear that, even though it's not here geographically speaking. That's the challenges that in a time where communication goes past left and right, that sometimes even news needs to be vetted. The trauma that the previous administration has caused, we're still dealing with it. Or the Trump administration for those in the record that might watch this years to come, or even now with all the anti-LGBT bills from Florida in Texas, in Ohio, South Dakota, I mean, these are thousands, hundreds of thousands LGBT youth in particular trans youth. They are denied their own assistance. And in 2022 I was hoping not to see that again, instead we are (inaudible) &lt ; affirmative&gt ; I have hope, I think we have a lot of things going our favor, including a history of resilience, but it's tough. It's tough for a lot of people. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; (Unintelligible) will fight because it's value our own existence, but for a lot of people don't have the means the energy &lt ; affirmative&gt ; and we will have to fight for them too. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; I see a lot of challenges. They are not just political or cultural, or educational and people really go around spreading a lot of misinformation around the (unintelligible) kids, supposedly getting surgery at the age of eight, which is total bullshit &lt ; affirmative&gt ; when it's actually through the opposite. I think that's the challenge of nowadays, they still go and the racism, the institutionalized violence that it's part of the North American culture unfortunately. I think we are an extremely violent culture. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; I can say that because coming from another-- when a different kind of violence from the European experience in Italy in particular, I can say though, that a lot of people that are born and raised here don't even realize the, the level of competitive individualism that's being created here in North America to a point that now we have a national pandemic and a worldwide pandemic, and people are even struggling to care for their own neighbors by protecting their self and other, right. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; I'm really concerned about those dynamics of violence and isolation, individualism that our society has brought us to be &lt ; affirmative&gt ; That goes along with building an LGBT center. Max Disposti analyzes the challenged and opportunities that come from running an LGBT resource center relating instances of both to the current political climate in the United States. He includes his experience in Italy compared to America in which things are handled differently, including the COVID-19 pandemic. commitment ; COVID ; institutionalized violence ; LGBT ; Planned Parenthood ; queer community ; trauma The challenges of running an LGBT resource center ; The opportunities of running an LGBT resource center 33.1222° N, 117.2911° W 17 North County, San Diego 2191 LGBT police and sheriff training in San Diego / comparing local police training in Italy Disposti: I'm gonna say that really, even though I train the Escondido police, the Oceanside police, Carlsbad Sheriff Department, we do training with FBI. I met amazing people in those spaces. I mean, here and there &lt ; affirmative&gt ; I don't wanna generalize. [Be]cause I met folks with coming from, they shouldn't be there in my opinion. I don't have any trust that the police or any law enforcement will ever, ever represent the interest of those that are working and living. And those of us that are really struggling for a better tomorrow, I mean law enforcement is there to preserve the status quo and we don't like the status quo &lt ; affirmative&gt ; of course we like democracy and all of that, but I don't have any confidence in that. You know what I say that to even the officer I train, I tell them I don't dehumanize you because I think people [that] are there are human beings and making their own decisions. Their own sacrifices with their family and many of them risk their life, &lt ; affirmative&gt ; for something that [they’re] living. I'm not here to dehumanize individuals and call them and isolate them. I have a lot of relationships with police in the relations to, in a very transparent way, there are not. For instance, we have meetings that we sit at the table I'm always very clear about: I don't think that policing belongs to queer spaces. I don't think that policing, and even though I know that police gets, especially LGBT law enforcement feel like betrayed by the fact that “I'm a police LGBT officer, I [want to] be in this space because I earn it.” But the problem that they can't forget or separate themselves from the uniform they're wearing and what has represented for our, it's still percent for our queer and people of color in North American particular. Any region is different, but-- &lt ; affirmative&gt ; . What I would say is I believe that training reduce the impact of policing in our community. I believe that building relationships can build trust. That something happens. I can go to the police advocate for my people, and I want answers and vice versa, I think will help the police to understand why there is fear in our community of reporting to the police. Because when you have been called faggot by a police officer, when nobody is watching, it's your word against theirs. So that happens a lot of time &lt ; affirmative&gt ; on watch. But then there is no way we can prove it. That happens everywhere all the time. And so personally speaking, and this is, I wouldn't say it's a statement to my organization, even though I would say it's a common vision. I think collaborations with police, it's important to, in terms of creating relationships, reducing the impact of policing in our community. But I think the institution of policing is to be completely reinvented from zero. If we wanted to be the force that serves the community, it doesn't protect status quo. I know some people might say radical views, but I met police in different countries, just in North America and they were never on our side. Teater: Yeah. How does local policing here compare to in Italy per se or places in Europe? [Be]cause I'm not too familiar with their policing practices. Disposti: America is anomaly. The whole integration of LGBT experiences into the normalcy of the everyday life has a good outcome, but also has developed contradictions. The fact that the police needs to show up in our places and parade with us as a-- in North American seen as a progress, when in Italy it’[s] like, “Okay, we don't need to hate each other, but my job is policing. It's not to lead the LGBT movements into pro-policing know against policing.” Right? It's a different experience with police when I was, even though it was a different time policing in our LGBT experience in Italy was always a (unintelligible) &lt ; affirmative&gt ; . There were never-- nobody will ever think that we need policing in our streets with us. It's a different comparison. Of course, I don't live in Italy now, even though I go back every year and my family's there and they're still active. I definitely have a sense of what's going on, but &lt ; affirmative&gt ; , it's just a different thing. People look at us and say, why you need the whole military marching with you, why you need the whole-- and I understand the sense of the fact that LGBT people are everywhere. We [want to] show the normalcy, that being queer is not anything that's out there, but you know, you can be a police officer queer, a doctor, and I do like that. I do marry the cost that every price should be open to everyone that marches. But we got in a point here in Northern America, where now police is telling us how they [want to] show up. They are in San Diego in particular, they are dictating almost the way they should be representing themselves when maybe they have only three, four LGBT police officer. And they're using them as a token to show that the whole force is pro-LGBT. Then they run surveys through the UCSD [University of California San Diego] or through the service for the Sheriff department that you realize how much homophobic and transphobic and racist the force still is. To me, they haven't earned that spot. I'm just gonna be frank. And I told this to chief of police from Oceanside to San Diego to Chula Vista. I tell that in a very not threatening way, they trust me actually. And they like to talk to me because I'm truthful. I don't beat the bush around. I'm just gonna tell I'm gonna work with you and everything else. But I think you were invited at the table and now you think you own the table and that's okay with me, but the police has an incredible force in America. The lobby of policing, the elected officials get money from policing &lt ; affirmative&gt ; San Diego Police Departments extremely powerful, and they impose their will on, or social organizations and organizing. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; To ask, for instance, going back in the merit, I will have been happy to see the police marching maybe with their own t-shirts and shorts, you know, so that you can tell everybody you are the San Diego Police Department. And so that your department can be proud of you. And I think that should be alright. But the whole presence of uniform and weapons in a inclusive parade is meant to be inclusive of everyone. Includes those that are now super patriotic, or nationalistic, nationalist and so forth. I think it's very not conducive of a good relationship. It's just a parade. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; I don't feel it's very-- so I'm sorry if I took you a little bit off, but this is-- Max Disposti recounts his experience training police in North County. Disposti also shares his thoughts on police in queer spaces. Further he talks about what policing looks like in Italy for the LGBT and BIPOC communities. fear ; inclusive ; LGBT ; policing ; queer spaces LGBT police trainings ; local police ; Police and LGBT interations ; Police in Italy 33.1222° N, 117.2911° W 17 North County, San Diego 2929 The North County Resource Center eleven years later / Joy as an activist Teater &lt ; affirmative&gt ; I love that. I have a couple more questions. I'm [going to] switch gears a little bit. What does it mean to you that the resource center has been open for eleven years now? Disposti: &lt ; laugh&gt ; It means a lot. I can't believe it. And I don't look back too many times, when I do I get emotional. We had our first staff meeting after a while. I mean, in person and in the past six months alone, we hire[d] six people. So now we're[employees] twelve. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; And just look around the table with beautiful queer diversity around us, people with incredible (unintelligible). And I just couldn't even envision this years ago, I knew it was coming, but now seeing these people around me, each one of them gives so much, it brings so much to the center. I get really emotional, but I tend to look ahead of me in terms of, there's so much we [want to] do. Just to give you an idea, this center is really small. Now we really need that center is four or five times bigger, so we can grow and serve really serve North County. I don't feel, we are able to say we are the North County LGBT center because we serve everyone, but truly serving everyone from Escondido to--, it’s just not, at this moment, practically possible. It takes resources. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; Not just volunteers and time and resources and money. I can't imagine a queer person in Escondido, in order to be served they have to come to Oceanside. That alone is a barrier. We encourage, even though we like to serve the whole region, that there are new experiences that we can support them and share with them what we did so they can learn it. We're not in competition with other spaces growing and coming up, but it's not an easy thing to do. I would say I'm proud of what we did, of what we accomplished, but before I finish with the center experience, whenever that is, I [want to] see a huge building, thriving with a lot of people in it. And mostly with a lot of brand-new leaderships that can take that, toward and moving forward. That would make me happy in so many different ways. So, yeah. Teater: Oh, that's so nice. During your time as an activist, and this'll be my final question, during your time as an activist, what has brought you the most joy? Disposti: Oh gosh. I don't think I can single out one. Teater: What were some of the experiences? Disposti: Opening the center, the grand opening of the center. Definitely. People showed up for that dream. Really so many, I've been so fortunate to have so many memories, but definitely the opening the center. The meeting that we had two weeks ago, I told you looking around and see, oh my gosh, these are my people and the staff, and the center is growing. The people coming forward after a few years of months that visit us, and we help them and thanking us for truly-- And when I say save the life, I don't mean in such a-- these were people struggling with their own existence. When I say save the life, I mean, it physically not--I mean, taught them the way. Right. I don't [want to] be so pretentious of presumptions or, we are not telling people what to do, but many people really couldn't survive without our support that has to do with mostly believing in them. When stories like that are coming back to you, you know, you're on the right path, are doing the right work. So many, I can't pin it down, but mostly had to do with my community being there for my community and here at the center. So-- Teater: Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing with me. Is there anything else you wanted to mention before we sign off? Disposti: No, it's hard to recollect now, but I'm sorry for getting through the emotions. Teater: Oh no, I love it all. It's perfect. Disposti: You know, me? Yeah. I don't shy away from that. No, thank you. Thank you for doing this work. That's what I [want to] say that I know how important it's because we're doing an archive here at the center as well, and we are doing the same interviews to the people that were here, the key leaders in the communities, even prior to the opening of the center, it's a very tedious, slow process that takes years in the making. I appreciate you and your team for even thinking about this. And for creating this record that one day will be so helpful for people, or maybe not for people to watch. And I wish I had that when I started the center, looking back to the stories and the voices of those that came before us, because we always stand on the shoulder. Those that came became before us, even though there was not an LGBT center, but, you know, yeah. That's what we got. Thank you. Thank you. Max Disposti reflects on his time at the resource center and the important contributions it has made to North County. Disposti recounts the grand opening of the resource center as a highlight of his time as an activist. barrier ; encourage ; LGBT ; North County ; queer diversity Accomplishments ; Activism ; Growing and serving North County ; LGBT advocate ; Reflecting on the resource center 33.1222° N, 117.2911° W 17 North County, San Diego Oral history Max Disposti is the founder and Executive Director of the North County LGBTQ Resource Center. In this interview, Max discusses his upbringing in Rome, Italy as a queer male and his experience coming to the U.S. and his quest to open the Resource Center. Max Disposti also talks about the parallels in how the LGBTQ+ community is treated in Italy in comparison to America. MJ Teater: Hello. My name is MJ Teeter. Today is Tuesday, April 26th, 2022, and it is 3:00 PM. I&#039 ; m here with Max Disposti. Thank you for joining me, Max. How are you today? Max Disposti: I&#039 ; m honored to be here. Absolutely good. It&#039 ; s a beautiful day out there. Even though I haven&#039 ; t been able to go and see the light &lt ; laugh&gt ; &lt ; affirmative&gt ; I mean, at the center working, but we&#039 ; re all very excited. Yes. Teater: Yeah. Great. For the recording, can you introduce yourself what your name is? Your pronouns, when you were born, and what you do for work? Disposti: Okay. My name is Max Disposti, pronouns he/him. I&#039 ; m a cisgender gay male and I was born in Rome in 1968, long time ago. And I am the executive director and founder of the North County LGBTQ Resource Center. Teater: Awesome. And what did your parents do for work? Disposti: Oh, my parents now are retired because they&#039 ; re 85 years old. They&#039 ; re still alive and they live in Rome, Italy, but they were both working class individuals, actually my mom stayed at home even though she was an activist all her life, very active feminist in the city of Rome and my father as well. Teater: Well, that&#039 ; s awesome. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; Can you tell me about, maybe a little bit about your childhood and some of your educational experience? Disposti: Sure. When I grew up in Rome, you know, I came from a family that was poor, but you know not too poor not to provide for me in terms of, you know, food and a good safe environment, you know healthcare and education in Italy and Europe are still free. Definitely having access to a higher education was not a challenge, at least not from the standpoint of view of affordability. I grew up in a very safe environment, even though, you know, we were struggling every month to make ends meet. I would say my childhood has been affected by the activism of both of my parents. I only have one siblings that&#039 ; s five years older than me also lives in Rome right now, my brother. And so throughout my life I was always exposed to diversity and others in Italy at the time. And still nowadays, there was a big migration from Africa and our country and Middle East or Eastern Europe. It depends on the time at the time, it was mostly from North Africa and my family was hosting people and greeting them and making sure that they were safe. I grew up in an environment where we always care about others, even though we had little for ourselves. Our table was always with more people and usually people from different cultures as well. My family exposed me to all of this, even though my own mom and my own dad didn&#039 ; t have any academic education, so to speak, they couldn&#039 ; t pursue a higher education, but also they were during the war at the time &lt ; affirmative&gt ; even going to high school was a privilege that just few wealthy families could afford. I consider myself lucky, of course, when I came out at the age of thirteen there&#039 ; s always that struggle of homophobia, transphobia in a city, in a country that&#039 ; s dominated by Catholic Church. Even though my parents were not religious whatsoever it infiltrates into the patriarchal narratives. When I came out as a gay man at the time it definitely was a surprise and an issue at first to a point I needed to detach from my family. They never pushed me outside so they were not against me but I needed my own space. I was thirteen, fourteen and I was already an activist in the community. But it was never a traumatic experience. I went through my time of self-affirmation and then I came back to them with more-- I knew I could conquer their hearts and mind around this because there were people I could talk to. I was definitely in a privileged position versus other friends of mine. They just end up on the street. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; . So that&#039 ; s my childhood. That&#039 ; s who I am. For me early on, on my sense of social justice, that activism around issues that they were not just LGBT related you know, human rights, immigration rights and against the war all the time. And at the time America, I was definitely not a place where I was aiming to live. It was this big monster imperialistic country that goes around to conquer spaces and lifestyles. We were not a fan of it, but love brought me to California and my first love, I would say serious enough to drag me there. And then one thing led to another, I end up staying in California. Again, though I overstay my visa. I became undocumented for about five, six years of my first time. I had to experience all of that fear because now I&#039 ; m in love with someone. I didn&#039 ; t want to lose them. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; so that&#039 ; s a little bit my story, even though I always recognized my privilege to come from a place that was definitely not devastated by war and crime or violence. I still felt that I couldn&#039 ; t go back to it just because if I did at the time, I could never return to the U.S. I did my best and my education helped me to go through all the application process and so forth to become a citizen and live the best of both world[s] pretty much, back at home and here in California. So, yeah, I hope I didn&#039 ; t share too much. Teater: No, that&#039 ; s great. I love this. Can you tell me a bit more about your education? What did you study? Disposti: When I was in Italy I was really driven by social studies since day one. But my high school years were troubled by a lot of strikes that I organized. I can&#039 ; t even blame anybody, I was always striking for better schools, better conditions against discrimination. At the time being openly gay was a threat. It was a threat to myself. I think people never touched me or attacked me physically because I was so out that would have exposed them as well. Right. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; It was one of those I realized the more vocal out I was, the more protection I was bringing to myself because the people there to be that kinda person, especially in a religious country like that, there&#039 ; s always that fade. I mean, that face that you had to keep, you know, in order decency. High school was problematic. I did finish high school and then I went to the university, high school was just-- in Europe, you already pick in high school what you think you&#039 ; re gonna do in the future. It was graphic design related, a fashion design. Then I look around me, you&#039 ; re in Italy with amazing talented artists. And I look at me and say, &quot ; oh my gosh, I would never make it.&quot ; These people are just-- each one of them is an artist. I realize it wasn&#039 ; t really for me as well. I went into university and developed more social sociology and social studies. I graduated from-- I got my bachelor[s] over there, but didn&#039 ; t do much with it after a few years-- I mean when I was 30 years old, then I decided to move to the U.S. And here I started over my study and I took my bachelor[s] in political science. And then I went back to get a master [in] nonprofit management in leaderships, which I graduated from in 2016. Not really long ago. Recent, because it was a means for me, I didn&#039 ; t need the academic title. I really needed to know more about the work I was doing, particularly in nonprofit. I had to tell you it was money well invested, even though I&#039 ; m still paying for it, &lt ; laugh&gt ; after so many years. And it really helped me to understand more about nonprofit governments and leadership as well. In addition to what I already knew. So yeah, that&#039 ; s my academic background pretty much. Teater: Man, you&#039 ; ve lived such a fascinating life. &lt ; laugh&gt ; So you touched on it a little bit, but what was your career like before the North County Resource Center? Disposti: The north county resource center, I would say around 2007 or 2008 is when I made that decision to do what I do, even though at first was not a paid position. I needed to save as much as I could, reserve anything, because I didn&#039 ; t know where this was going to take me. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; . Prior to that, when I came in the U.S. even though I was very active and volunteering for different things, I was fortunate enough-- at the beginning I was working in hotel, the hotel industry, I used to be in San Francisco for four years. Then it was a little bit of dot com, I was doing a lot of translating because I speak Spanish and Italian. I was doing a lot of translating from one and to another with platforms, Yahoo platform and so forth. That was a very well-paid job. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; Even at the time that helped me out a little bit uplift my resources, but I wasn&#039 ; t documented at the time. I couldn&#039 ; t really invest into school or nothing because I knew I just couldn&#039 ; t do that to that point. And so I married my previous husband at the time in San Francisco, we decided to come down here because he had family members in the military. And when we moved to Oceanside was the place where it was cheaper and affordable. I did like the beach. I liked the fact it was Southern California. I bought at first into the life okay. Once I finish with my own immigration status, which lasted 10 years struggle. So that&#039 ; s why I&#039 ; m very, not only sympathetic, but not many people understand about what it means to be an immigrant in this place where I had at that point, the money and the lawyers to fight the system and an education, but if it was running away from any other country from famine, war, or violence, there is no way that the U.S. will have offered me an alternative there is just no one, legally speaking. There is not an alternative if you become undocumented to fix your record, really not even if you marry someone. It&#039 ; s just not the way it is anymore. It took me 10 years. Yes. I feel privileged because I was able to go through all of that. In the process, I started working to make some money because my dream was always to open a community center. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; And as I was making the money, I joined some real estate firms. I was a broker and I became very successful because I was this guy that was very realistic. I didn&#039 ; t have dreams of screwing people over to make money. My dream was building LGBT center. I think people saw that in me, that was honest that sometimes I told people, don&#039 ; t buy this house because really too big for you, is not gonna be a good choice, because then you&#039 ; re gonna have this huge mortgage. I was having this conversation with folks, and I think the more I was honest with them, the more business was coming to me. I was doing really well at a certain point, I needed to make the decision to pull the plug and go into unemployment. Mind you I didn&#039 ; t say thousands of thousands of dollars, just enough to go by that unemployment lasted. I mean, I was unemployed for two years because the center couldn&#039 ; t pay me. I mean, it was me &lt ; affirmative&gt ; and starting a center I needed full-time dedications on everything from gathering resources, putting people together, dynamics of power that you encounter, opening the door and having someone there eight hours a day, it was a huge, huge undertaking. But I never felt alone. I always felt fortunate that people trusted me in the process. And also my leadership style has always been very sharing. The resources was never about me, my name and putting my name in top of the things I did, even though at the beginning, it shows a lot me and the center. My name is very linked to it, but mostly I started the center, but I always bring the honor, the credit to the many people, many, many people that made the center what it is today. So that&#039 ; s how it brought to me. I brought those corporate leaderships into this business. I brought my nonprofit academic research. I brought my life experience as an activist. And I think everything just worked together. I was there for the right reason and not to rush things through. And I just had hope in my community here that things will have become like they are today or even more. Yeah, the dream&#039 ; s still on and we still have a lot of things we want to accomplish. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; Teater: In terms of the LGBT community, what was that like in North County? Because I know North County doesn&#039 ; t really have much of a presence as far as LGBT representation, as much as say Downtown or Hillcrest has. Disposti: &lt ; affirmative&gt ; It was not easy. I had to fight internally and externally, it was opening the door of the center in a military town. I knew it was going to be difficult because it was at the time all North County was extremely conservative. We received threat. We had our windows smashed several times. We elected people that didn&#039 ; t wanna meet us in person. This was obviously 2008 and 2009. Also 2008 was the year of the campaign for marriage equality. The center at this point was not open because we opened 2011, but we were active as a group. It was called North County LGBT coalition. So we were meeting weekly. We were an organizations with all we were grassroot at the same time. We had a board of directors. I mean we were an organization, but not yet with a space because we were saving money to open one. And yeah, North County was quite brutal, but also interesting enough because we were the only organized entity in North County, we received a lot of support and a lot of love from a lot of people from family and youth and so forth. We connected right away with preexisting grassroot groups in North County, in particular, with Link Lesbian in North County, there is a lot of history around what they&#039 ; ve done here in North County for 20 years since women met under cover every Friday to create a support system for themselves, even the gay guys were cruising and the whole spots Oceanside had, the Marines were here. There was a lot of LGBT presence in Oceanside. We used to have two gay bars up to 2002, then they closed down just because the owners got old. But there was a lot of LGBT happening. It reminds me what it used to be in San Diego prior to the seventies when the Marines were there. And it became an LGBT Hillcrest [?] in particular place to go because there were a lot of Navy and Marines coming to town and finally they could be true to themself, right? Oceanside, North County was brewing with Marines that they were gay and Navy officers as well, but it was always-- the community was always in denial. Oceanside was a place where there were a lot of street workers, a lot of LGBT people, a lot of trans women, that had to, not by choice, in that case, to become strict workers because they didn&#039 ; t have opportunity for jobs. So quite a rough place, when we came in people couldn&#039 ; t believe that there [were] enough to put ourself out there and call ourself an LGBT center and having the rainbow flag outside. At first we had people just walking into the door. I remember the seniors in particular, literally were emotionally taken by the fact that we were just there. And at first I saw we&#039 ; re not doing anything special. We&#039 ; re just here with a flag outside, running some support groups, but we didn&#039 ; t realize at first the impact we&#039 ; re having soon, so many lives and people that came and dropped their life story on us, seniors and youth. And then all of a sudden we started seeing more and more, our amazing trans kiddos &lt ; laugh&gt ; . And that was when we started advocating within our own community with our old generation of gay male to the fact that this is the time for us to give back to those of us that are still struggling and understanding how, not only embrace our trans identities, not as a plus or a sign of solidarity, but as a full part of the community, that&#039 ; s always been there, but always been hidden, not by their choice. It was the constitutions of our mission statement at the center. We were fortunate enough that since day one, when no one was talking about trans rights, other than trans people, of course, by meaning the mainstream of the LGBT community. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; Our board was composed by trans folks, the support groups. We started hiring therapists, everybody was volunteering at the time to work with our folks. And we had hundreds, hundreds of kids coming at the center during a week basis. And we learned so much from them, their struggle, their pain, one of this kids became my son because he decided to adopt me. Now he&#039 ; s 22, so he&#039 ; s already grown up and he&#039 ; s a trans male, lives with his girlfriend now and everything else. But so it was a overall real experience. That was never a job for me, never just a job or never just a phase. Right. And I think at that time already, we realized that we needed to educate those old leaderships that they were popping up. And they were excited that we were there, but they started warning us. Hey, this place is becoming, you guys always only care about transcripts. It seems like, what about gay people? Or what about, I say, we don&#039 ; t exclude anyone, but now we need to be together to enhance the voices. So those that haven&#039 ; t been, that have been left out for so many years, because when I grew up in Rome at the age of thirteen, fourteen, I was always surrounded by trans people. They were my friends &lt ; affirmative&gt ; . When people tell me, &quot ; Oh, I dunno, what&#039 ; s going on now? All of a sudden, everybody is trans or whatever,&quot ; say, &quot ; no, it&#039 ; s always been like that.&quot ; We always been around. I say, we, even though I&#039 ; m a cisgender gay guy, because I&#039 ; ve been blessed to be educated through the experience for many years when I was thirteen, fourteen. For me to hear an older white male that tells me that I say &quot ; You haven&#039 ; t looked around too much. You have been focused on yourself for too long.&quot ; I would say that was a journey that allowed me to create a center with a culture and a vision where people, when they joined, they needed to know the old that were on board with the whole spectrum, LGTQI or that wasn&#039 ; t the place for them. And we lost some people in the process. We lost some donors, no regrets. We earned again so much more. And now that people are finally recollecting the necessity to bring home what we&#039 ; ve started thirty, forty years ago, or fifty years ago with Stonewall to bring it back home with everyone, or just some of us, I think, now people are looking at us and say, &quot ; Oh wow, you guys were right. You were always there.&quot ; And yeah, we were, we are, and we will. And now we&#039 ; re embracing the intersex identities and struggle because again, they&#039 ; re being ask[ed] to be part of our community because many of them are, and that we&#039 ; ve been advocating with them now at the children hospital in San Diego to change the horrible practices of mutilation of our organs just to feed the stereotypical expectations [of] what gender or sexes of birth is all about. We always been there in the forefront and when we weren&#039 ; t, we look into ourself to do better. You can imagine how the past three, four years with the Black Lives Matter Movement with adding colors to our flag, how not only we wanted to embrace, but realize that all our identities are not just one identity, right? That we had to be vocal of about the struggle that our own queer people in our own community BIPOC folks are still enduring because of police brutality, institutional violence, and a way to do nonprofits has been whitewashed for many years. And how white supremacists in filtered into our own community. How it shows up? Recognizing how to do that and making yourself vulnerable to it and not defensive on when you might be perpetuating those dynamics. I think it&#039 ; s part of everyday challenges is what I love the most to be honest, because I don&#039 ; t wanna come to a point where I say, &quot ; Oh, I think I know everything, and now I got all of my boxes checked.&quot ; Nothing else comes through when it&#039 ; s not true. Life is always moving. Right. And so are we, so, yeah. That&#039 ; s how difficult it was in North County, but I focus on the positive, but we lost some kids in the process in 2014 and by loss, I mean, Taylor, Alisana[?], Sage, and Tyler took their own life. There were transcripts that made national news and there were three of them served by our center. And still troubling for me to talk about it. But I always try to honor their lives because they didn&#039 ; t go in pain, even though I wish they were here. But they taught us a bigger lesson. We believed our kids when they were telling us they were struggling to a point they didn&#039 ; t wanna live anymore. There wasn&#039 ; t just a face or a way to drag attention to themselves. It was a real struggle of pain. Some of us didn&#039 ; t have the privilege. Some of us had the privilege not to experience, by being cisgender. We learn a lot in that process. Sorry. &lt ; laugh&gt ; Teater: No, it&#039 ; s okay. I appreciate you sharing with me. I&#039 ; ll shift to maybe a lighter subject &lt ; laugh&gt ; for a quick second. What are some of the resources and services that are offered at the North County Resource Center and how have they changed over time? Disposti: Yeah. You know we started in a way at the beginning, really. We didn&#039 ; t have need assessment. We didn&#039 ; t know really how to do any of it eleven years ago. We just said, &quot ; Hey, if more than three people come forward and tell us, can we have a super group? For seniors, for non-binary folks, for trans folks?&quot ; they say that means it&#039 ; s needed. So, we&#039 ; ll find a facilitator and create guidelines. We were always very serious around policies and procedures and guidelines and protecting ourselves and others in the process. So, we&#039 ; re never easy about that. The opposite. I think that so many times, because while we were a grassroot organization, we knew exactly the level of liability we could incur by just gathering people. You know, there were people [who] were coming because they were stalking other people, right. They were. So how do we protect folks without introducing our own biases in the conversation? We created a support group model that responded to the need of the community. Definitely our trans and non-binary groups was the most populated resources. I mean, sometimes we have 40 people in one room cramped in there because it was the only big room. And I say, &quot ; Oh my God the fire department show[ed] up, now they&#039 ; re gonna shut us down.&quot ; Because it was a small space at the time. So super groups, then we started doing behavioral health and in the way we wanted to see happening for our people. So, things have changed and housing, case working-- I would say [in] two years we became more experienced. We know how to navigate the system and cut the BS about advocating for people and how to do it well. Creating more safety for our community. So sometimes we&#039 ; re like, for instance, human trafficking is a real, real problem in our community. And we notice that a lot of LGBT centers and churches and sport clubs were place[s] where people are going to groom. And sometimes these people are just a year or two years older than the kid that you&#039 ; re serving. You have to be careful to provide a safe space where you&#039 ; re not there to over micromanage people and their own identity, their own sexuality, their own affirmation are the same, but at the same time, provide a space where people can come to you and tell you, &quot ; Hey, I&#039 ; m an active fifteen year old person, I&#039 ; m sexually active with this person. Maybe they&#039 ; re at my age or a year older.&quot ; How do we go about-- how can I be safe? And things like that. Our youth were coming to us opening their hearts because they knew we weren&#039 ; t there to judge them. We learned all of that, how to be safe, right? If I have a teenager or thirteen [years old] [who] tells me that they were having a relationship, a sexual relationship with someone at twenty-two, we have major red flags. And we&#039 ; re also mandated a reporter, right. We&#039 ; ve done that too in the past. Navigating through all of that was quite interesting. And we learned how to do it. Now we know so much that we are the one training others youth providers around or the police, when the police shows up because someone called them because maybe they&#039 ; re dynamic of stress. We tell the police what to do and how to approach other people. If they don&#039 ; t agree with that, we don&#039 ; t let them in. This is not place for additional violence and trauma. We educated a lot of these institutions that have been the cause of a lot trauma for our community. We work with them when we can, and we do training and we sit on the same table so that we can advocate and build the trust too. But at the same time, we make it clear that as a service, a clinical provider, this is not a space where they&#039 ; re invited. We need to find other way, how to collaborate and do prevention in a community, without having them finding the queer spaces in San Diego County. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; That&#039 ; s one of the things. Things have changed. And then COVID of course, we moved everything virtually. I have to say, now that we came back, they were coming back in person. We never closed the center. We always been open throughout the pandemic. We just couldn&#039 ; t afford to close. We receive a lot of support from foundations and founders. They realize that we made everything possible to support people. I would say what has changed and now we have support groups, but people prefer the one-on-one because they can&#039 ; t find socialization quite easily nowadays in different spaces, even virtually, but they like the one-on-one, &quot ; Hey, help me go through this,&quot ; family reification or mental health crisis, or finding a job, or just supporting their ego and the self-esteem. It looks like they will be more successful to do that one by one, instead of putting everyone in a super group, which we do have some people just love that, but they&#039 ; re usually mostly social, like let&#039 ; s come together for an all queer and non-binary or let&#039 ; s come together. And because those spaces are very vital, important. We are not denying that. I would say though, that we are seeing more progress by doing that different kind of intervention. So maybe we&#039 ; re creating a hybrid, whatever the community needs. We&#039 ; ll have to respond to that. Teater: Oh, I love that. What are some of the challenges that you and the center face today? Disposti: I would say challenges, but also opportunities. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; I do believe that LGBT centers are the Planned Parenthood of United States. And what I mean is we are vital spaces and resources for our queer community that no other institutions will ever provide. And preserving, not only preserving, but supporting those spaces. I think it&#039 ; s a commitment to the government, state, federal, county will have to commit to, because as we know, as it&#039 ; s happening, if you take away resources from a Planned Parenthood, that&#039 ; s why the comparison, I mean, half of the population of women in particular, but not just women will not have access to reproductive rights, a fundamental human rights. And if they&#039 ; re left to the single communities, and this is a conversation I have with our elected official Mike Levin, people that they&#039 ; re being very willing to understand. I said, I realized during COVID that if it wasn&#039 ; t &lt ; affirmative&gt ; for the private donors and support people with money that stepped in, we would not be open nowadays. And &lt ; affirmative&gt ; the government, you have [to] allow us to close our resources. And now it&#039 ; s eleven years old that has helped thousands of people. And now employs twelve people. And that&#039 ; s just not fair. This is not just a volunteer experience, this is the livelihood, but also the safe space for thousands of people. And that&#039 ; s true in many region[s], right? For the San Diego Center, so forth. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; While it&#039 ; s good for us to build our own funding streams so that you can stay independent. You don&#039 ; t want the government to give you everything for everything you do, because then they want to have a say about how you run your business. But definitely it&#039 ; s important that, especially in California, where supposedly we have a more progressive leadership to start supporting LGBT center so they can provide vital care, healthcare services, the others don&#039 ; t provide. [Be]cause when people get sexually assaulted that are queer, they don&#039 ; t go to the police station. They come to us when they are in a mental health crisis given by different reasons. They come to us first, when they&#039 ; re in poverty, they come to us when experiencing certain kind of relationships or a tougher life or because of drugs or substance abuse, they come to us because they know we&#039 ; re not here to judge. I would say that&#039 ; s why we&#039 ; re the planned parenthood of the community &lt ; affirmative&gt ; [be]cause it&#039 ; s an essential vital resource. The challenges are that we&#039 ; re not there yet, so that we are left alone to do this work. And now that we have experienced and seen the highest record of anti-LGBT legislation passing in Congress, a passing or proposed in different states and in Congress, this conversation, as you know, they hit home, our kids, even though they&#039 ; re in California. And we know that we&#039 ; re a little bit more protected here. We still have people at the school district level showing up and addressing and stigmatizing and penalizing our queerness. We still have people in position of power taking advantage of those narratives and bring back the same old recycled anti-LGBT religious based narratives. The trauma continues every time we hear that, even though it&#039 ; s not here geographically speaking. That&#039 ; s the challenges that in a time where communication goes past left and right, that sometimes even news needs to be vetted. The trauma that the previous administration has caused, we&#039 ; re still dealing with it. Or the Trump administration for those in the record that might watch this years to come, or even now with all the anti-LGBT bills from Florida in Texas, in Ohio, South Dakota, I mean, these are thousands, hundreds of thousands LGBT youth in particular trans youth. They are denied their own assistance. And in 2022 I was hoping not to see that again, instead we are (inaudible) &lt ; affirmative&gt ; I have hope, I think we have a lot of things going our favor, including a history of resilience, but it&#039 ; s tough. It&#039 ; s tough for a lot of people. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; (Unintelligible) will fight because it&#039 ; s value our own existence, but for a lot of people don&#039 ; t have the means the energy &lt ; affirmative&gt ; and we will have to fight for them too. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; I see a lot of challenges. They are not just political or cultural, or educational and people really go around spreading a lot of misinformation around the (unintelligible) kids, supposedly getting surgery at the age of eight, which is total bullshit &lt ; affirmative&gt ; when it&#039 ; s actually through the opposite. I think that&#039 ; s the challenge of nowadays, they still go and the racism, the institutionalized violence that it&#039 ; s part of the North American culture unfortunately. I think we are an extremely violent culture. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; I can say that because coming from another-- when a different kind of violence from the European experience in Italy in particular, I can say though, that a lot of people that are born and raised here don&#039 ; t even realize the, the level of competitive individualism that&#039 ; s being created here in North America to a point that now we have a national pandemic and a worldwide pandemic, and people are even struggling to care for their own neighbors by protecting their self and other, right. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; I&#039 ; m really concerned about those dynamics of violence and isolation, individualism that our society has brought us to be &lt ; affirmative&gt ; That goes along with building an LGBT center. Teater: Yeah. You touched on this a little bit earlier, but given the history of policing with the LGBTQ+ community even in San Diego, how do you feel that police and sheriff trainings are received? Disposti: I&#039 ; m gonna say that really, even though I train the Escondido police, the Oceanside police, Carlsbad Sheriff Department, we do training with FBI. I met amazing people in those spaces. I mean, here and there &lt ; affirmative&gt ; I don&#039 ; t wanna generalize. [Be]cause I met folks with coming from, they shouldn&#039 ; t be there in my opinion. I don&#039 ; t have any trust that the police or any law enforcement will ever, ever represent the interest of those that are working and living. And those of us that are really struggling for a better tomorrow, I mean law enforcement is there to preserve the status quo and we don&#039 ; t like the status quo &lt ; affirmative&gt ; of course we like democracy and all of that, but I don&#039 ; t have any confidence in that. You know what I say that to even the officer I train, I tell them I don&#039 ; t dehumanize you because I think people [that] are there are human beings and making their own decisions. Their own sacrifices with their family and many of them risk their life, &lt ; affirmative&gt ; for something that [they&#039 ; re] living. I&#039 ; m not here to dehumanize individuals and call them and isolate them. I have a lot of relationships with police in the relations to, in a very transparent way, there are not. For instance, we have meetings that we sit at the table I&#039 ; m always very clear about: I don&#039 ; t think that policing belongs to queer spaces. I don&#039 ; t think that policing, and even though I know that police gets, especially LGBT law enforcement feel like betrayed by the fact that &quot ; I&#039 ; m a police LGBT officer, I [want to] be in this space because I earn it.&quot ; But the problem that they can&#039 ; t forget or separate themselves from the uniform they&#039 ; re wearing and what has represented for our, it&#039 ; s still percent for our queer and people of color in North American particular. Any region is different, but-- &lt ; affirmative&gt ; . What I would say is I believe that training reduce the impact of policing in our community. I believe that building relationships can build trust. That something happens. I can go to the police advocate for my people, and I want answers and vice versa, I think will help the police to understand why there is fear in our community of reporting to the police. Because when you have been called faggot by a police officer, when nobody is watching, it&#039 ; s your word against theirs. So that happens a lot of time &lt ; affirmative&gt ; on watch. But then there is no way we can prove it. That happens everywhere all the time. And so personally speaking, and this is, I wouldn&#039 ; t say it&#039 ; s a statement to my organization, even though I would say it&#039 ; s a common vision. I think collaborations with police, it&#039 ; s important to, in terms of creating relationships, reducing the impact of policing in our community. But I think the institution of policing is to be completely reinvented from zero. If we wanted to be the force that serves the community, it doesn&#039 ; t protect status quo. I know some people might say radical views, but I met police in different countries, just in North America and they were never on our side. Teater: Yeah. How does local policing here compare to in Italy per se or places in Europe? [Be]cause I&#039 ; m not too familiar with their policing practices. Disposti: America is anomaly. The whole integration of LGBT experiences into the normalcy of the everyday life has a good outcome, but also has developed contradictions. The fact that the police needs to show up in our places and parade with us as a-- in North American seen as a progress, when in Italy it&#039 ; [s] like, &quot ; Okay, we don&#039 ; t need to hate each other, but my job is policing. It&#039 ; s not to lead the LGBT movements into pro-policing know against policing.&quot ; Right? It&#039 ; s a different experience with police when I was, even though it was a different time policing in our LGBT experience in Italy was always a (unintelligible) &lt ; affirmative&gt ; . There were never-- nobody will ever think that we need policing in our streets with us. It&#039 ; s a different comparison. Of course, I don&#039 ; t live in Italy now, even though I go back every year and my family&#039 ; s there and they&#039 ; re still active. I definitely have a sense of what&#039 ; s going on, but &lt ; affirmative&gt ; , it&#039 ; s just a different thing. People look at us and say, why you need the whole military marching with you, why you need the whole-- and I understand the sense of the fact that LGBT people are everywhere. We [want to] show the normalcy, that being queer is not anything that&#039 ; s out there, but you know, you can be a police officer queer, a doctor, and I do like that. I do marry the cost that every price should be open to everyone that marches. But we got in a point here in Northern America, where now police is telling us how they [want to] show up. They are in San Diego in particular, they are dictating almost the way they should be representing themselves when maybe they have only three, four LGBT police officer. And they&#039 ; re using them as a token to show that the whole force is pro-LGBT. Then they run surveys through the UCSD [University of California San Diego] or through the service for the Sheriff department that you realize how much homophobic and transphobic and racist the force still is. To me, they haven&#039 ; t earned that spot. I&#039 ; m just gonna be frank. And I told this to chief of police from Oceanside to San Diego to Chula Vista. I tell that in a very not threatening way, they trust me actually. And they like to talk to me because I&#039 ; m truthful. I don&#039 ; t beat the bush around. I&#039 ; m just gonna tell I&#039 ; m gonna work with you and everything else. But I think you were invited at the table and now you think you own the table and that&#039 ; s okay with me, but the police has an incredible force in America. The lobby of policing, the elected officials get money from policing &lt ; affirmative&gt ; San Diego Police Departments extremely powerful, and they impose their will on, or social organizations and organizing. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; To ask, for instance, going back in the merit, I will have been happy to see the police marching maybe with their own t-shirts and shorts, you know, so that you can tell everybody you are the San Diego Police Department. And so that your department can be proud of you. And I think that should be alright. But the whole presence of uniform and weapons in a inclusive parade is meant to be inclusive of everyone. Includes those that are now super patriotic, or nationalistic, nationalist and so forth. I think it&#039 ; s very not conducive of a good relationship. It&#039 ; s just a parade. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; I don&#039 ; t feel it&#039 ; s very-- so I&#039 ; m sorry if I took you a little bit off, but this is-- Teater: No, you&#039 ; re good. I&#039 ; m right there with you. Disposti: It&#039 ; s such a current happening. Maybe people watching this many years from now, I wonder what they will think of it, but right now I feel that we&#039 ; re not there. They have to earn their space. And also let&#039 ; s remember talking about our region when you have a pride parade, you have people coming from all over the county, you have people coming from LA Mesa, Fallbrook in places where policing, the impact of policing on the streets is not as kind of transparent as it could be in any other spaces where we earn that. Right. Like in Hillcrest &lt ; affirmative&gt ; right. We need to be mindful of the experience of our queer people of policing in Chula Vista or other places, not just San Diego proper. What you see the police marching, is not everyone has the same reaction, and you cannot normalize policing by just marching an parade. You need to work every single day. So that&#039 ; s my-- Teater: Yeah, exactly. So, what is the center&#039 ; s relationship with military members of the community then? [Be]cause I know they sort of have a kinship, but like they&#039 ; re different, but they&#039 ; re not, but they are. Disposti: Well. Because we cannot, I mean, I can tell you my personal stance about &lt ; affirmative&gt ; worth&#039 ; s, and army, and the military. I think we spend too much money into it when this country struggle to support its own people that live here. Obviously, I&#039 ; m not sympathetic about any choice of military that&#039 ; s military related, but when it comes to LGBT experience, I have to say the immediate impact of let&#039 ; s say the Marines here, the Navy on our immediate community is incomparable with policing. And what I mean, they&#039 ; re not doing racial profiling here in San Diego. They&#039 ; re not doing-- There is not a direct impact and &lt ; affirmative&gt ; for a city like Oceanside, which every family member has someone in the military. I would say that also understanding the importance of what they give and how they feel it. That is their dedication, their passion. We need to respect that. We serve a lot of veterans, a lot of military folks, but many of these folks, LGBT usually we serve them because they struggle through the military services. They went through &lt ; affirmative&gt ; health, sexual assault abuses that could never report from their commanders, &lt ; affirmative&gt ; transphobia, homophobia, punishments of any kind. We support folks because these are our people. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; It&#039 ; s not my place to tell them where they should go. We meet them where they are. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; But definitely it&#039 ; s a different experience. I would say I met amazing folks that actually have been a resource for the center and helping others from the army, from some of the Marines or the many, many veterans that they are a part of our volunteer team. I&#039 ; m sure some of them might not share my views. These are personal view, again, not the center view, but definitely we did think about building a center in a military community. You could completely subject to it and be dictated on how to express your sentiment around military actions. You can be who you are and supporting the queer people around the world. That&#039 ; s my goal as a human rights and civil rights activist that I-- doesn&#039 ; t believe in any borders, or in any particular nationality, I focus on the help that my folks need in the entire world. If the America gets in the middle of that, then I will definitely denounce it but it&#039 ; s beyond the scope of the center. It&#039 ; s more my personal perspective. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; I think we are all connected in so many different ways. Teater &lt ; affirmative&gt ; I love that. I have a couple more questions. I&#039 ; m [going to] switch gears a little bit. What does it mean to you that the resource center has been open for eleven years now? Disposti: &lt ; laugh&gt ; It means a lot. I can&#039 ; t believe it. And I don&#039 ; t look back too many times, when I do I get emotional. We had our first staff meeting after a while. I mean, in person and in the past six months alone, we hire[d] six people. So now we&#039 ; re[employees] twelve. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; And just look around the table with beautiful queer diversity around us, people with incredible (unintelligible). And I just couldn&#039 ; t even envision this years ago, I knew it was coming, but now seeing these people around me, each one of them gives so much, it brings so much to the center. I get really emotional, but I tend to look ahead of me in terms of, there&#039 ; s so much we [want to] do. Just to give you an idea, this center is really small. Now we really need that center is four or five times bigger, so we can grow and serve really serve North County. I don&#039 ; t feel, we are able to say we are the North County LGBT center because we serve everyone, but truly serving everyone from Escondido to--, it&#039 ; s just not, at this moment, practically possible. It takes resources. &lt ; affirmative&gt ; Not just volunteers and time and resources and money. I can&#039 ; t imagine a queer person in Escondido, in order to be served they have to come to Oceanside. That alone is a barrier. We encourage, even though we like to serve the whole region, that there are new experiences that we can support them and share with them what we did so they can learn it. We&#039 ; re not in competition with other spaces growing and coming up, but it&#039 ; s not an easy thing to do. I would say I&#039 ; m proud of what we did, of what we accomplished, but before I finish with the center experience, whenever that is, I [want to] see a huge building, thriving with a lot of people in it. And mostly with a lot of brand-new leaderships that can take that, toward and moving forward. That would make me happy in so many different ways. So, yeah. Teater: Oh, that&#039 ; s so nice. During your time as an activist, and this&#039 ; ll be my final question, during your time as an activist, what has brought you the most joy? Disposti: Oh gosh. I don&#039 ; t think I can single out one. Teater: What were some of the experiences? Disposti: Opening the center, the grand opening of the center. Definitely. People showed up for that dream. Really so many, I&#039 ; ve been so fortunate to have so many memories, but definitely the opening the center. The meeting that we had two weeks ago, I told you looking around and see, oh my gosh, these are my people and the staff, and the center is growing. The people coming forward after a few years of months that visit us, and we help them and thanking us for truly-- And when I say save the life, I don&#039 ; t mean in such a-- these were people struggling with their own existence. When I say save the life, I mean, it physically not--I mean, taught them the way. Right. I don&#039 ; t [want to] be so pretentious of presumptions or, we are not telling people what to do, but many people really couldn&#039 ; t survive without our support that has to do with mostly believing in them. When stories like that are coming back to you, you know, you&#039 ; re on the right path, are doing the right work. So many, I can&#039 ; t pin it down, but mostly had to do with my community being there for my community and here at the center. So-- Teater: Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing with me. Is there anything else you wanted to mention before we sign off? Disposti: No, it&#039 ; s hard to recollect now, but I&#039 ; m sorry for getting through the emotions. Teater: Oh no, I love it all. It&#039 ; s perfect. Disposti: You know, me? Yeah. I don&#039 ; t shy away from that. No, thank you. Thank you for doing this work. That&#039 ; s what I [want to] say that I know how important it&#039 ; s because we&#039 ; re doing an archive here at the center as well, and we are doing the same interviews to the people that were here, the key leaders in the communities, even prior to the opening of the center, it&#039 ; s a very tedious, slow process that takes years in the making. I appreciate you and your team for even thinking about this. And for creating this record that one day will be so helpful for people, or maybe not for people to watch. And I wish I had that when I started the center, looking back to the stories and the voices of those that came before us, because we always stand on the shoulder. Those that came became before us, even though there was not an LGBT center, but, you know, yeah. That&#039 ; s what we got. Thank you. Thank you. Teater: Thank you. Well, I&#039 ; m [going to] stop the recording now. Disposti: Perfect. https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en audio Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. This resource is licensed for noncommercial educational use using CC NC-BY 4.0. Please contact Special Collections at archives csusm.edu if you need reproductions made. Please see the related “Preferred Citation note” for language on citing materials from this collection. Permission to examine Library materials is not authorization to publish or to reproduce the examined material in whole, or in part. Persons wishing to quote, publish, perform, reproduce, or otherwise make use of an item in the Library’s collections must assume all responsibility for identifying and satisfying any claimants of the copyright holder. The researcher assumes full responsibility for use of the material and agrees to hold harmless the University Library, and California State University, against all claims, demands, costs, and expenses incurred by copyright infringement or any other legal or regulatory cause of action arising from the use of the Library's materials. In assuming full responsibility for use of the material, the researcher also understands that the materials they examine may contain Social Security numbers, other personal identifiers, and/or sensitive material on potentially living and identifiable individuals (e.g., medical, evaluative, or personally invasive information). The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=DispostiMax_MadisonTeater-2022-04-26.xml DispostiMax_MadisonTeater-2022-04-26.xml Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Disposti, Max. Interview April 26, 2022 Description An account of the resource Max Disposti is the founder and Executive Director of the North County LGBTQ Resource Center. In this interview, Max discusses his upbringing in Rome, Italy as a queer male and his experience coming to the U.S. and his quest to open the Resource Center. Max Disposti also talks about the parallels in how the LGBTQ+ community is treated in Italy in comparison to America. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SC027-14 Subject The topic of the resource LGBTQ+ activism LGBTQ+ rights North County LGBT Resource Center -- California -- Oceanside Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-04-26 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Rome (Italy) North County (San Diego County, Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Max Disposti Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Max Disposti Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Madison Teater Activists and activism Community history History Department internship Immigrant experience LGBTQIA+ experience https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/4cb4071e4b68b0a4322bc9e8ac6d7228.pdf e64e54578e88c9f2be9c650b7c67c406 PDF Text Text LEEA PRONOVOST TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-04-08 Julia Friedman: Okay. Today is Friday, April eighth, 2022 at 10:02 AM. I am Julia Friedman, a graduate student at California State University San Marcos. And today, I am interviewing Leea Pronovost for the University Library, Special Collections Oral History Project. Leea, thank you for being with me here today. Leea Pronovost: Oh, thank you for having me. Friedman: I would first like to start by asking when and where were you born? Pronovost: I was born in 1959, October second in Springfield, Massachusetts. Friedman: And can you please describe your childhood? Pronovost: (laughs) Well it wasn't exactly a very pleasant childhood, let's put it that way. One of my earliest memories was actually in 1963, I was four years old and at a Christmas party at my grandmother's house. And I saw my grandmother used to give us little money cards every Christmas--all of her grandchildren. And I noticed my name on an envelope my mother was holding. And I asked her what that word was in front of my name. My grandmother had written “Master.” And I didn't know that word--I didn't. So, she told me what it was, that it was a “Master” and what it stood for. And then I saw she had my little sister’s envelope in her hand and I asked her what was in front of my little sister’s name because of what's different than mine. And, uh, it was “Miss” and I asked her what that meant. And I said, I basically said, “There's something wrong here.” And I think, “I'm supposed to be more like the ‘Miss.’” (laughs) So after her explanation of which each one of those terms meant. As you can imagine that was 1963. So, (laughs) a whole different world. And my mother basically told me to shut up and never talk about it again. Which, you know, because we actually started getting into an argument about it in front of all my aunts and uncles and cousins. And so that's why she told me that. And honestly, I never did talk with her about it again. She actually died before I ever had a chance to, so. That's one of my earliest memories. After that it didn't get much better dealing with that issue. I mean, I was raised very strict Catholic. I was an alter boy. I, um, in my teen year, even, I spent a lot of time in a Jesuit monastery trying to pray that away if you will. And even thought about going into the seminary at one point and becoming a Catholic priest. But I didn't, I ended up joining the Navy. But that's (laughs) another story. So, the--and my father wasn't exactly the nicest of people. He was very much, as you can imagine, a bigoted person, against gays and people like me. I can remember being a kid and hearing about Christine Jorgensen [the first transgender woman in the United States to attain fame for receiving a sex reassignment surgery] and some of the remarks that my father talked to about when he referred to her and were--made me feel very terrible about myself because I knew that's how I felt. So, it wasn't an easy time, believe me. But that's pretty much my basic childhood. Transcribed by Julia Friedman 1 2022-11-08 �LEEA PRONOVOST TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-04-08 Friedman: Well thank you for sharing that, Leea. I'm sorry that you had such a difficult time growing up. Pronovost: Well, it was a totally different world compared to what we have now. Being transgender wasn’t--I didn't even, I don't think that word even existed until, you know, the 1990s. At some point, I mean, people like me, they used to call them “transsexuals,” which nowadays a lot of the trans community considers that a derogatory term, so. And--but that's the way our society was back then. I mean, I can even tell you that in 1977, I joined the Navy, um, give you--for instance. And when I joined the Navy on my ASVAB, I scored in the top five percent in the nation and they gave me two strikes for going into bootcamp, one strike for coming out of bootcamp. And I was placed into, um, nuclear engineering program to be a nuclear engineer on a sub, and all my life, probably about 1965, I actually started cross dressing, borrowing my sister's clothes, because it made me feel better. But yet there was a certain amount of shame with that. So--but that continued on even into the Navy. And I can remember being on a leave of absence, going to a bar dressed up, and coming out of the bar and being discovered by my commanding officer who then proceeded to file charges against me for crossdressing. And I ended up going through a court-marshal. So, push came to shove, they didn't do what they call a Section 8 on me. What they did do was give me a personal hardship discharge, because they basically said they didn't want “my kind” there. So, but it was very nerve-wracking. I can remember thinking--and I was living in Massachusetts at the time. I'm like thinking throughout the entire court-marshal worst case scenario, they Section 8 me, classify me as, you know, “mentally disturbed,” because of my crossdressing. And if I had went back to Massachusetts with that on my discharge papers, they could have (laughs) at actually put me into a mental institution back then. They still had governmental-run mental institutions in Massachusetts then, and they were not a very pretty sight. And even with people like me, they would actually--and gay people--they would actually lobotomize them trying to “fix them,” so to speak. So, (laugh) it wasn't, it was a totally different world. And I can, you know, they appreciate all the things that, people like me and the whole, uh, gay movement, gay rights and people that fought for and the seventies and even into the eighties and are still fighting today. And I'm one of them. Friedman: Yeah. Pronovost: Because no matter how far we've come, there's still much further to go. So. Friedman: I would actually like to switch gears if that's okay and talk about your years in activism. You've been an activist within the transgender community for twelve years. When did you first decide to turn to activism? Pronovost: Well, after I felt--after I came out to everybody, um--let me explain. In 2006, I had a near death experience that actually--because as I told you, you know, from 1963 on--I knew something was different. 2006, I had a near death experience that caused me to look at what my life was about, who I Transcribed by Julia Friedman 2 2022-11-08 �LEEA PRONOVOST TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-04-08 am, why I survived. And I came to the realization that I had to do something about this. And I started my transition soon as I recovered from that, which was probably about a year after that. I was well enough to actually--I didn't start hormones at that time, but I started looking at herbal supplements that would change my body. And I didn't come out to everybody. My current ex-wife at the time, I did come out to her about changing. And she was okay with it as long as I didn’t tell anybody. She carried--being a Latin person, carried a certain stigmatization around who I was. So, um, but anyway, it took me a couple of years to get on hormones and there's even stories there (laughs). I was actually denied my hormones at one point in time by my therapist, which really--I didn't understand why. I understood that that was the laws. And then, you know, I've heard other stories of other going to support groups and talking to a therapist and learning how to come out to basically the world. And it troubled me how difficult it was. And that whole path of trying to-- knowing deep down inside (laughs) all my life, that something was different, just never realized what it was and because I grew up before internet. And so, it the only place I could find information was in a library. And I was too ashamed to go into a library and pull a book about transsexuals (laughs), you know? Especially with my Catholic upbringing. So, it was very difficult and there were many times that throughout my life that I actually tried to commit suicide because of that. Because I thought I was alone. I thought I different. I never knew there was people like me. And then finding all those hurdles that I had to jump through. And then at the same time, you know, I started discovering that the state that I live in, Massachusetts, didn't even have any protections for transgender people. And if I tried to rent an apartment or buy a house, or, you know, get a job as a trans person, people could actually say “No,” because I was transgender. So, these things really disturbed me down to my core because, you know, it is who I am. It is my identity. So, that's what really got me to become more active and become an advocate and activist for the community because I wanted to make it better for the next people. I want to make it better for the next generation, so they don't have to struggle like I did. Not knowing who they were. I wanted to give the trans community that visibility so that they have role models that can even, you know, that they can idolize basically, and say, “I want be like that person.” Because as a youth, you know, I never had that. We, I mean, if you look in the sixties, seventies and eighties, the people that were portrayed as trans-- what we now call transgender or transsexuals-in those times, they were either the joke of the movie or they were, you know, the crazed maniac killer (laughs), you know? And I would look at them and I would say, “Oh, that's me when I grow up.” But yet, then I find out that they're either the joke or they're, you know, the crazed maniac killer. And I'm like, “Okay, well, that's not me.” So, I'm not like that, but you know, here I am, that's who I was. So, I wanted to be able to give, you know, the next generation, the next batch of people, because I--after going to a bunch of support groups for being transgender-- I realized that I wasn’t alone and there's a lot more people out there that are like me. And once I started doing my history research, you know, of transgender people--for instance, we've been around forever. I mean, I can tell you, in the Neolithic Age there was art drawings on cave walls of a third sex. And, you know, that date back to about 7,000 BC. So, (laughs) people like me, I've been around forever (laughs). It's just so something that hasn't been known, that's all, at least to the Western world. Because you take, you know--actually to be truthful with you, I identify as Two Spirit. The Indigenous people--not just here in North America--but Indigenous people all around the world have some of them have multiple genders. Two Spirit is an in North American Indigenous term that encompasses some tribes have as many as five genders, some three genders. Friedman: Wow. Pronovost: There's some tribes that don't even acknowledge gender. Men and women didn't have specific rules, if you will. I know of a tribe in Africa that, you know--I met a girl years ago, a trans girl Transcribed by Julia Friedman 3 2022-11-08 �LEEA PRONOVOST TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-04-08 from Africa. She had no concept of what he/she [pronouns] meant. They only had one pronoun for all people in her language. So, it was very difficult for her and even than her mother to understand that concept when they moved here to the United States. So. Friedman: Wow. That's really interesting. And I'm glad that you finally found a community when you first came out. When you first started, um, your working in activism, did you partner with any organizations during these early years and what type-- what type of activities did you participate in? Pronovost: Oh, I partnered with many organizations to be truthful with you. One of the first groups--the two first groups that I partnered with were a group called Tri Ess [an international support group for heterosexual cross-dressers and their partners and families.]. It was actually started in the 1950s by a woman named Virginia Prince. Basically, that was for, in her terms, heterosexual cross-dressers. Although once I became involved in the club, found out that there were a lot of transgender people within the organization that wanted to actually transition. Not that I wouldn't say myself, I would say that cross-dressers do fall under the trans umbrellas, so to speak. So, but, some, some of them don't agree with that, some of them do agree with it. Some of them think they're the only true trans people, when you really get down to the nitty gritty. One of the other main things was the transgender group of Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts. I--that was a peer support group and we were active in helping others find out that--because one of the toughest things that I found was in talking to new people as they come into the groups that they always thought they were alone as well. Because they never knew anybody that was like them. So, you know, that made such a difference for me in my life to realize all of a sudden, “Hey, they're like me and you know what, they're okay. That's an engineer, that's a medical doctor and that's a lawyer,” you know? “This person, you know, is, you know, just a normal average person living their life (laughs) so it's not so bad.” So, it made such a difference in the world for me that it, you know, it just, it seemed like common sense to move into it. And then I mean, I blossomed into a bunch of other organizations. I, uh, (laughs), I didn't start my transition into late in life, as you can imagine. Born in [19]59 and starting in 2007. It was forty-seven or forty-eight years old or something like that. But the thing is it, they, it--I wanted to do as much as I could for, or wherever. And so not being of (laughs)--I decided to help another group called Rainbow Elders. That was a nonprofit group run by, uh, not another nonprofit, that they did stuff for seniors. I can't remember their name off of top of my head, but it-- we used to do things like go out on panels and teach medical facilities. We would teach nursing homes. We would teach assisted living centers. We were teaching people in, um, it just reaching out to all sorts of businesses and stuff and doing panels and educating them about the LBGT experience by telling our stories. Then, you know, I joined another group over at UMass Amherst and, I--that was the Stonewall Speakers Bureau. And they were very active within the GSAs [Gay Straight Alliance]. So, I used to go out to all the GSAs, whether it was a grammar school, middle school, junior high school, high school, and sometimes even other colleges, asking us to come out and speak to gender-related studies and/or education of the faculty. So, and then I started--because the group--that Pioneer Valley group and the Tri Ess group that I first started with--one of them was up in New Hampshire, even though I lived in Massachusetts and the other one was in the Southern part of Massachusetts. So, I was having a drive, you know, anywhere from forty-five minutes to an hour, sometimes even two hours to go to a meeting. So, I decided to create my own peer support group, which I partnered with a hospital in Western Mass[achussets] in the county that I was in, Franklin County in Greenfield Mass. And they gave me a place to work with and a small budget. And I was able to start a group that actually still runs today, even though I'm here in California now. So, then because I also became part of what was known as the Massachusetts Transgendered Political Coalition, which in 2011, we ended up fighting for transgender Transcribed by Julia Friedman 4 2022-11-08 �LEEA PRONOVOST TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-04-08 rights. They made us actually take off on the bill by the time it--in order to get it out of committee, we had to take off transgender public accommodations rights. But it--bill did still encompass our rights to financial institutions, our rights for housing, our rights for, uh, financial housing and employment. Those were the three main rights that we were fighting for. Which it did end up getting passed in 2011 by the end of that year. Uh, they became-- (both talking at once) Friedman: (both talking at once)--Oh, congratulations. Pronovost: Yeah, thanks. But then again, in another organization that I became part of back in 2016, I helped to--we went back and lobbied or advocated for the state government to include transgender public accommodations, which would give us the--most people think, “Oh, that's the bathroom stuff and locker room stuff,” but there's so much more to it when you really sit down and think about it. The right to ride on a public transportation, the right to, (laughs), let's say I worked in a restaurant. If I punched out my time card to go out the back employee door and walk around to the front of that restaurant that hired me, they still have the right to refuse to serve me. Those are actually public accommodations. The right to be served in a hospital, you know? Many times throughout the years that I've worked, I've had myself and my friends have had discrimination by going to a hospital. I had one friend that they fell down on black ice and she got taken away on an ambulance and when they tore off or cut off her clothes, they found that she had a penis. And the doctor just looked at her and said--and then looked at the nurses and said, “Get that thing out of my hospital.” So, she--they called for another ambulance to take her to another hospital. Nowadays, because of that (unintelligible) she's permanently disabled, because she didn't receive the proper attention. And now, you know, we as taxpayers are paying to support her because of that discrimination. And so, things like that just didn't make any sense to me. So, you know, it made sense to go back and fight. So, we formed another organization called Freedom Massachusetts. And we fought for trans rights and we won them. But also, because of all that other activism, I had other organizations like PFLAG [organization dedicated to supporting the LGBTQ+ community; formally known as Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays] and, uh, PFLAG in two separate counties, both of them had asked me on to be on their board of directors. So, I ended up being on their board of directors at the same time about the--that same time I had many friends that I lost over the years in the support groups. And when I say I lost them, I mean that they took their own lives. And they're no longer here. And prior to my transition, I never knew anybody that committed suicide. Now, all of a sudden in the few short years that I was out as a trans person, I knew more than half a dozen. And I just felt that was wrong. So, I had heard about a organization called Trans Lifeline, and I actually became an operator for them. And because I, myself, (laughs), had, as I told you before, early in my life, I didn't know how to deal with this. I didn't know there were other people like me, there were a few times that I'd tried to commit suicide. So, and if I-- so if I could prevent one trans person from (laughs) stop—help-- stop them from committing suicide, then, you know, that would make me feel great. So, I spent a number of years as an operator, and then I actually became a team lead for a bunch of operators. Actually, even given peer support to the operators, because if you can imagine Trans Lifeline was an organization that was created by transgender people, for trans gender people. And the only criteria was that you had to be trans to be an operator. What helped was, though most of the operators were ones that had tried to commit suicide at one point or another. And sometimes when you're talking somebody down from a suicidal attempt, it brings you yourself into some pretty dark places. So, the operators would definitely need some, you know, self-care and guidance to get back to a point where they can do self-care even. And I know that I have many cases that led me into dark places that I didn't want to go, but yet, I went there to try and make sure, and it makes a difference. It really does, the peer thing, because I've never lost anyone when I was talking with them. When an individual Transcribed by Julia Friedman 5 2022-11-08 �LEEA PRONOVOST TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-04-08 that's on that brink or on that fence, or standing on that (laughs) that [precipice] to jump, if you will. Having somebody else talk to you, that's been there and been through what your experiencing, makes a huge difference. And they open up and listen. And then they also feel much easier to open up to you so that they can pour those feelings out and step off that [precipice]. So, that was really nice work for me. And then the next thing that I (laughs) became active in was the Transgender Law Center up in Oakland, California. I started volunteering for what they call the Detention Project. The Detention Project is basically--there's a lot of transgender people within our prison system that either wanted to transition or had already started their transition and they’re wondering, you know, “Here you have this trans woman sitting in a male jail, what are her rights?” Um, you know, and, “Can she have her name change? Can she get women's clothing? Can be isolated so she's protected away from the general population?” All of these things and Transgender Law Center addresses all of those issues. I was basically a research person for the lawyers and I would actually go and research each individual state's laws pertaining to the detention of transgender people, and then compose letters. And the lawyers would then approve or ask me, you know, change this, change that. And then we would issue the letters back to the inmates, so that they knew what their rights were and how to fund those rights. So, which meant a lot to me (laughs) the next step phase in my, uh, was actually working with the local because I was doing on the national level. And I started working with the local county jails and state prisons, and department of corrections. And I helped them to write--I helped both Massachusetts and Connecticut to write their policies on transgender people. And then--the same way with most of the county jail systems, I helped them to write--and I ran peer support groups within the county jails as well, so. Then I met a woman online (laughs) and moved out here to California (laughs). Well, it, it took a while. It took a few years, it-we had a Coast-to-Coast relationship, and we developed this great relationship. And we decided to take it to the next level and move in together. And I tried to get her to come out to Massachusetts, but one point she came out and it was minus--the high temperature was minus fifteen degrees. And this was the week between Christmas and New Year's. So, she was like, “No, no, no, no.” (both laugh) So, of course I've moved out here, and been living here ever since then. But before I even moved out, once we made that decision to move out here, I was like, “You know, I'm an--I'm an advocate and activist. What do you have out there that I can get involved with?” So, she introduced me to the North County--she was living in Oceanside at the time, and she introduced me to the North County LGBTQ Resource Center. So, I met Max Disposti, the Director and Founder of the place. And I was like, “What can I do to come?” (laughs) You know? “What can I do when I get out here?” (laughs) “Where can I go?” He's like, “Don't worry, we'll put you to work.” So, (both laugh) soon as I moved out here, they had an opening for the Unicorn Homes program, which being a case manager for that program, it was only fifteen hours a week. But, to start, and I was like, “Hey, it's along the lines,” because a lot of times running the peer support group in prisons, I was helping people do a lot of navigate social services that they would need getting out of jail. So, it wasn't too far of a fetch for me to be able to help people, you know, navigate applying for MediCal or, you know, Cal Fresh or being there just to listen and try to help homeless youth. And one of the things, even in Massachusetts, that one of my goals was eventually to create a transgender housing service. So, when I moved here and I had that opportunity to join something like this, I jumped on it. And Max liked what he saw in all the volunteer work that I did. So, he hired me for the position, even though there were a number of other candidates, I received the job. And I just started doing a whole bunch of free work for them (laughs). Because this is where my passion is. In the meantime, you know, I had been, you know, I still own property back East in Massachusetts, rental property. And, you know, I had a nice package of--so I wasn't worried about money or anything. So, why not work where my heart is? Nowadays though, I do a whole bunch of other things for The Center. I manage most of the grants for The Center. I also, now am, uh, Gender Advocacy Project Chair person for the Gender Advocacy Project, which puts on a number of events a year they do--we just recently had the Transgender Day of Visibility a couple weekends ago. Well, this weekend will be two weekends ago. Which was a wonderful event. Transcribed by Julia Friedman 6 2022-11-08 �LEEA PRONOVOST TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-04-08 We had, I don't know if I had to guess probably around 200, maybe 300 people come through and a bunch of booth with resources. And we had a great show. We had speakers and musicians and playing, and we had fun and games for the youth, and it was just a wonderful weekend. Wonderful day. But, so. Gender Advocacy Project also does Transgender Day of Remembrance. And, which is in November twentieth and a rather somber day for us because we're remembering those that we lost through transphobic violence. And the past few years have been actually kind of tough because the numbers have gone up astronomically in 2020, if I remember correctly, there was forty-one or forty-two, and in 2021, I believe there was fifty-six trans women. Now when I say these numbers, they seem like small numbers compared to a nationwide thing, but those are the ones that we actually know. Which, you know, a lot of times the gender is not known and, and they--or, and/or they misgender the person because the family doesn't want them to know about it. So, that number, even though the known cases keeps going up, I'm sure it's at least doubled if not tripled. So for-- for supposedly, according to the statistics, there's less than one percent of people are transgender throughout the nation. So, for that small amount of people to be targeted, the numbers of murders like that--violent murders--basically hate crimes, in my opinion, that's an astronomical amount. When you start looking at the statistics and the breakouts. Especially that most of those numbers, you know--I carry a certain amount of privilege because I'm a white transgender woman--or I appear to be white. I do have some American heritage, um, Indigenous blood in me. But that's something that people don't see because I appear to be white. So, therefore I've got a certain amount of privilege. I know that. When I look at a trans woman of color, those are the ones that are targeted when you look at those people that we honor year after year after year. It's usually Black or Brown people, and occasionally an Indigenous person in there. But, um, and sprinkled with a few Caucasian people. So, you know, it's so that when you look at that target population, that number, even it's more astronomical, when you break it down to what I call the “intersectionality of marginalizations.” So, you know, that's why that particular day is so important to me, even though it's a somber day. And I'm glad that we celebrate that and celebrate those lives that we lost. I'm hoping one day (laughs) and trying to do our best by fighting the hate. One of the grants that the North County LGBTQ Resource Center just got it is--we got a bunch of money into actually--and that's what the grant is called, “Fight the Hate.” (laughs) So, you know, it's an honor for me to be doing this work and nowadays I'm actually paid full time for what I do, because I do the grants. I do the Unicorn Homes. I'm also the Gender Advocacy Project Chair. I'm also--it, I never mentioned what I did prior to, well, while all that activation was going on, activism and advocacy work was going on, I actually worked a full-time job in telecommunications. I was a Level III Telecommunications Engineer. So, now I do all the IT work (laughs) at The Center as well. So, (both laugh), anything I can do for the community, you know, to make their life better. And, you know, I'm, uh, want to, you know, the North County LGBTQ Resource Center, I feel like I'm privileged to be able to work there, to be honest with you. And to be able to work in such a queer environment where I don't have to face what all my siblings face on a daily basis, you know? Because, despite all the work that we've done, there's still a lot of stigmatization, and even hatred of the trans community. It’s funny how, you know, one of the things, when you've learned the history, it was, you know, of the entire gay rights movement. One of--they say that turning point was Stonewall, right? Well, the first person to actually throw something at the police was actually a transgender woman. And the other trans girls started in. And then if you know, I know people that were actually there and they told me that basically the lesbians then started joining in. And it was at the encouragement of the lesbians that the gay men finally stood up and started doing something against the police. So, if you look at that in its context who, it--that key moment who was the first trans woman? But in gay rights movements, we were left behind. We were taken out because we were so controversial and they wouldn't be able to get their rights. That's what we were told as trans women or transgender people. If we were in clumped in with them, you know? So, even though we were there at the beginning and even well before that, you know, a lot of--there, there were riots all over the country, you Transcribed by Julia Friedman 7 2022-11-08 �LEEA PRONOVOST TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-04-08 know? If you look at San Francisco, if you look at Miami, there were riots in gay bars where trans women--and trans women were the target, because a lot of the women, because they couldn't get jobs were street workers. So, therefore they're trying to pick up these supposedly “men” that dress as “women,” which at the time was against the law, working as a sex worker. So, it's because of that attraction that the trans women stood up and then the lesbians stood up with them, and then the gay guys stood up with them. And yet, here they are fighting for their rights and telling us to step back. Friedman: Yeah. Pronovost: You know, it just didn't make sense. And believe it or not, there's still quite a few lesbian--for instance, I'm with another woman, I consider--I'm sexually attracted to other women. I'm romantically attracted to other women. Not so much with the guys. So, I consider myself basically a lesbian. There's a lot of lesbians out there that would tell me I'm not a lesbian because I'm a trans woman. These are what we would call TERFS: trans-exclusionary radical feminists. And they're out there all over the world, you know? One of the most famous and most recent news is J.K. Rowling. (laughs) Friedman: Yeah. Pronovost: So, (laughs) despite all the love for, you know, the Harry Potter stories, I have to disagree with her principles. So, you know, so there's still--my point is despite all the fighting and activism and how far we've actually come, we still have a huge way to go. So Friedman: That actually leads me to my next question. Um, do you think creating an inclusive society is achievable? Pronovost: (both laugh) Honestly, I hope so. You know, one of the latest endeavors that I've looked into is--and I hope I'm not premature in saying this. I've been appointed, still yet to be confirmed--a Senior Commissioner for the City of--Senior Affairs Commissioner for the City of Vista. So, I'm doing my part to hopefully make that true. I don't think it'll happen in my lifetime. I am much older than (laughs) most people nowadays. I am a senior, hence why I'm on that (laughs) Senior Affairs Commission. Or want to be on it. So, and as of lately, there's more and more transgender people within the political scheme, trying to fight the battle from within, which will hopefully eventually bring that about. I mean, that's my ultimate goal. One of the reasons why I do stuff like this, this oral history presentation, or any of my activism--a lot of it is educational. I have a pet peeve that, you know, education brings in tolerance. Tolerance can achieve, hopefully, acceptance. And once acceptance is there, in a general population, then the next thing that that should beget is inclusion. And that's where me, that's my goal. (laughs) Since coming out and becoming an activist, that's--that's my life--that's my life goal, if you will. I know I probably will not see it in my lifetime within the next twenty or so years. I hope we still achieve, you know, steps moving in that direction as we go. One of the things that the Biden administration just recently did, was give, uh, make the announcement on Transgender Day of Visibility, which is March thirty-first. They made an announcement that they were going to allow an X marker on the passports for Transcribed by Julia Friedman 8 2022-11-08 �LEEA PRONOVOST TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-04-08 a third gender. They were going to make it much easier for a person like me who, you know, I was identified male at birth, but yet, I'm a woman, make it much easier for somebody like me to change that name and gender marker on the passport. Another thing that they were planning on doing was one of the really bad areas that--and a lot of us had been fighting against this, the TSA--when you go through TSA screening in an airport and you have the x-ray, um, it's happened to me, you know? I identify as a woman, all my IDs are women and they see something down below. And they call you out, “Hey, we've got an anomaly. You need to step aside over here and we need to get somebody to physically search you.” Friedman: That’s awful. Pronovost: So, they're going to do away with that genderized screening. Which is an awesome thing. Finally, thank God. Because it's so embarrassing, you know, when that happens. And it happens to so many people, it's ridiculous what we have to endure and by being identified that way. Friedman: Yeah. Pronovost: So, that, that was a step in the right direction. They’re looking at making the Affordable Care Act more inclusive for gender treatment, especially one of the things that we recently did as the Gender Advocacy Project, which is the program of the North County LGBTQ Resource Center. I--one of my volunteers put together a list of all the state bills. For instance--what I mean by that is, last year in 2021, we had one hundred and ninety-one hate bills. Most of them were targeting transgender people. And in particular transgendered youth and their ability to receive transgender healthcare. Me, working on Trans Lifeline, know that most of those phone calls that I used to get in on Trans Lifeline are trans youth, anticipating and wanting to commit suicide. If they were accepted and were allowed to get their hormones, though, those numbers would drop drastically. And we have the statistics to back that up. But here, these states are wanting to outlaw and actually go even--go after doctors. And look at Texas. Texas wants to, you know, go after the parents saying that gender-affirmation healthcare for their child is actually child abuse, you know? So, one of the things the Biden administration said was they were going to fight, that they were going to make the Affordable Care Act to protect so that doctors don't have to report that to state agencies. Because they, you know, the state agencies, the state Texas--state of Texas, was forcing the doctors to violate people's HIPAA rights. I mean, they have no right to that information, but yet the state's forcing the doctors to turn that over. HIPAA's a national law, It's not a state law (laughs). They shouldn't be able to bypass federal laws. So, the Biden administration, uh, pledge to make it more difficult for states to be able to do stuff like that. You look at the “Don't Say Gay Bill” in Florida [SB 1834: Parental Rights in Education], you know? Ohio just came out with a bill last week--or just earlier this week, I forget which--that basically mimics the exact wording of Florida's bill. And no one, the state of Ohio and who they are and their history, that will pass, you know? So, we're going to have a couple of states that, you know, people are not allowed to say “You're gay.” There's another state in Utah. Utah wrote a bill that's very similar to Texas's bill about transgender healthcare, but it actually even encompasses adults. So, they want to make it illegal to be me (laughs), you know? And force--trying to force us to go back into the closet, so to speak. Because like I said, you know, one of the thing, one of their arguments is, “Oh, it's become a ‘popular thing.’” It's not popular. You just never knew what the real numbers were because we were all hiding away in the closet. Transcribed by Julia Friedman 9 2022-11-08 �LEEA PRONOVOST TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-04-08 Friedman: Yeah. Pronovost: So, you know. These are thing-- that's why I say we still have so far to go. This particular year though, in the first three months of this year, we have two hundred and thirty-eight hate bills. So, we even-- last year was a record year with all the hate bills, but in three months’ time, we have surpassed all of the bills from last year. So, they're--the thing that I'm looking at is I'm hoping this is like the last grasp (laughs) of them. (both laugh), you know? Their desperation before they fall down into the cracking crevice and go wherever. Friedman: I hope. Pronovost: (laughs) Go away. Yeah. Well, that's my hope (laughs). Because, you know, if you look at the statistics throughout the entire United States as a nation, over sixty percent of the nation is for transgendered people and having our rights or rights in particular of LGBT people. So, that's more than half the population. So eventually I know we will get there because that acceptance number and because, you know, I see the trends: tolerance, acceptance, then inclusion. I know we'll get there, but we still have so far to go. So, um, yeah. I hope that--I hope that answers your question (laughs). Friedman: Oh, absolutely. Kind of going back to politics, Like throughout your time, working on the East Coast and the West Coast, have you kind of noticed a difference in the politics working on both Coasts? Or, has it just kind of depended, um, kind of like the political shifts because you kind of were mostly on the on the East Coast? Um, is it kind of-- does it not really matter because you kind of just, you mostly on the East Coast for most of your life and--? Pronovost: Um, be honest with you, knowing, I don't think it's that much of a difference here, you know. Here at times, I think there's certain pockets you, that if you will, that are actually inclusive. When I look at the city of Oceanside, for instance, you know? I had mayor Esther Sanchez come out to Transgender Day of Visibility and she gave a speech about being visible and standing up for what's right, you know? And, so I see Oceanside as a pocket, but yet, when I look at a city like Vista where I actually live, you know? Vista is, you know, for lack of better terminology, very conservative. But then there's even worse conservative areas. Like, you start pushing up into Menifee or something like that, you know? You're looking at very, um, I don't like to use this because I don't like to use somebody's name, but it very much what most of us within the community would consider to be Trumpers or people that propagate hate. And I hate using that because I don't like to talk about individuals or refer to that. But that term, let's take it away from the person because that term existed, uh, “Trumping somebody” is overcoming is somebody. So that's what I mean by that terminology, more or less. Where they are totally conservative. And actually, even don't like people like me. You know, I've had people up there in that city actually reach out to me saying they're having troubles with their school systems. Now here in California, for a transgender person and they should--a student should be able to change their name on all information except for their transcripts. That's the only thing that they can't change because that's a legal document, Transcribed by Julia Friedman 10 2022-11-08 �LEEA PRONOVOST TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-04-08 but they should be able to walk in without the school notifying the parents that, “Hey, I no longer want to be called Jane. I want to be called Max.” And the school legally is obligated to change their paperwork. Friedman: I see. Pronovost: But yet that's not happening in a city like that. I get phone calls quite often saying that the school is fighting the individual or the school has actually outed the individual to the parents, even. Because some of these schools aren't, you know, minors are even protected from this, the school is not supposed to out the youth. But yet here we have it happening, you know? And you know, it--so the hate and the stigmatization and the indignities and the discrimination still happens. No matter where you are and back East, I happen to live in a pocket--that Pioneer Valley group that I belong to. That's the whole Connecticut River Valley area throughout all of Western Mass. And that was very progressive. I mean, we--there's a town called Northampton there, which it is kind of, uh, was the gay city for the East Coast kind of equivalent to what San Francisco is to here. So, it's mainly a college town, but that made the entire whole (laughs), excuse me, for lack of better terminology, Pioneer Valley seemed very, uh, “granola-ish,” if you will. Originally Pioneer Valley, that whole Connecticut River Valley, those were the first communes back in the sixties. They started there and then moved out here to the West Coast. So, (laughs), very similar, you know, because even in Massachusetts, you still had your pockets of hate and bigotry and, so. It's very similar. The fight's the same, no matter where (laughs) I seem to go. But, you know, the goal is to get more cities, you know, to be like Oceanside, you know? Because Oceanside they've raise, you know, they do raise a pride flag. Here in Vista, the pride flag that (laughs) that rainbow flag's never been raised here in the City of Vista. And so, you know, I'm hoping that maybe sitting on one of the commissions, (laughs) I can change that (laughs) from within. And so, you know. Friedman: Well, I just have one more question. Pronovost: Okay. Friedman: Um, so you, you've already talked about it. You have a wonderful year--a wonderful career in activism. What have you learned throughout your twelve years working in the trans and LGBT field of activism? Pronovost: Oh, (laughs), I've learned so much it's hard to pinpoint any one thing. I think the one that weighs the heaviest on my heart, if you will, is probably--you know, one of the things that early on people did mention about the intersectionality of marginalizations and now that I've had, you know, more than ten years at this, I actually get to see it. And that breaks my heart. How, you know, for instance, you know, I worked as a Telecom Engineer and I was the Senior Telecom Engineer for one of the world's largest telecommunications companies, Nippon Telephone and Telegraph [Nippon Telegraph and Telephone]. The first time I walked into an engineering meeting as me, as Leea, they looked at me like, you know, I-- “Where where's the donuts and coffee?” (laughs). That was the type of look I got. Transcribed by Julia Friedman 11 2022-11-08 �LEEA PRONOVOST TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-04-08 And, “Who the hell are you to be sitting here in this engineering meeting?” When, you know, before I used to lead the engineering meeting, you know? So, I know the difference between being a man in a man's field and being a woman trying to make it in a man's field. And, and so I don't—[connection froze]—People that I serve doing what I do and I look at, you know, a trans woman of color, and I see how much more discrimination that they actually face. Because of that intersectionality. Now you start adding more intersectionalities on top of that, such as being disabled or mentally disabled, you know? Disadvantaged. That--those numbers not only do--I mean, they grow exponentially and that's what weighs really heavy on my heart. And now I see that so much more easily, and makes me want to fight all that much or for them, you know? But also at the same time, you know, being--working at the North County LGBTQ Resource Center, and seeing other people fight for, you know, my rights as a trans woman, I want to say, you know, not for me, without me, you know? So that's one of--that ties well into the intersectionality thing. So, you know, I know I can't go out there. I can mention about it, but I can't go out there and say, “You know, we need more protections for trans women of color.” I can say that, but, you know, I don't experience that because I do have that privilege. I can talk from that privilege that we need to do something about it, you know? So, but I want those, I want to be able to empower those trans women of color to come forward and speak up for themselves. I want to, you know, empower other people to do what I do so that the fight you, I know I'm not going to achieve my goal in my lifetime so that I know the legacy I leave behind is me helping them empower themselves so that they can even empower other people and move it forward. So, that's the main thing I've learned is that we have to give people the power to have that voice. So, it isn't just about any one person, it's about empowering an entire demographic, if you will. Friedman: Well, thank you. Is there anything else I should have asked or anything else that you would like to share today? Pronovost: Well, geez, we've covered so much. (both laugh). I don't know. I don't think so. I think we pretty much covered it. It's a lot to chew and digest, if you will. So, I think, I think we've done a good job. Friedman: Yeah. Pronovost: So. Friedman: Well, thank you so much for speaking with me today, Leea. We are so happy to have you a part of this project. Pronovost: Yeah, my pleasure is so, um. I'm just happy to be here. Like I said, that that's my pet peeve. If I can do something to--I'm hoping this gets seen by as many people as it possibly can be. And it gives them the self-confidence in seeing somebody like me to empower themselves to find their voice. So. Transcribed by Julia Friedman 12 2022-11-08 �LEEA PRONOVOST TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-04-08 Friedman: Absolutely. Just continuing on with your, uh, with what you've been doing from the start, basically ever since you started in 2007, 2008. Yeah. Pronovost: Yeah. Friedman: Yeah. Well, thank you again. Pronovost: You're very welcome. And it's my pleasure and thank you for having me. Friedman: Well, it's our pleasure (both laugh). Transcribed by Julia Friedman 13 2022-11-08 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Transcripts Description An account of the resource Written oral histories and transcripts are available for researchers that prefer the written word, or to see the whole interview in a document. Transcripts of <a href="https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/collections/show/5">audio and video files</a> are also available as part of those video files. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Pronovost, Leea. Interview transcript. April 8, 2022. Description An account of the resource Leea Pronovost was a transgender activist and has advocated for transgender and LGBTQIA+ rights since coming out after a near-death experience in 2006. Pronovost began her work in activism in Massachusetts and partnered with a variety of organizations where she worked to help the queer community in areas such as LGBTQ+ education, housing, and hospital rights. She also worked for the Transgender Law Center and the Trans Lifeline. Most recently residing in Vista, CA, Pronovost was a staff member at the North Country LGBTQ+ Resource Center, where she worked as a case manager for Unicorn Homes, chaired the Gender Advocacy Project, and was a grant writer. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Leea Pronovost Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Julia Friedman Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-04-08 Subject The topic of the resource LGBTQ+ issues LGBTQ+ rights Transgender people -- Civil rights Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant San Diego (Calif.) Springfield (Mass.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Special Collections Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en</a> Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Leea Pronovost License A legal document giving official permission to do something with the resource. Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. This resource is licensed for noncommercial educational use using CC NC-BY 4.0. Please contact Special Collections at archives@csusm.edu if you have questions regarding usage of this oral history. Please see the related “Preferred Citation note” for language on citing materials from this collection. 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