Talking about Transgender Tuesdays: An interview with Mark Freeman and Kelly Kelly

Earlier this week, the LGBT Resource Center at GVSU hosted a screening of the film, Transgender Tuesdays.

The film is about the lives of eight of the patients who came to the Transgender Tuesdays clinic starting in 1993. Their stories reach back to some of the “bad old days” of the 1950s, recalling the sexual freedom movement of the 1960s, drug ravages of the ’70s, Women’s and GLB (and finally T) Liberation in the ’80s, and the HIV epidemic and queer activism of the ’90s.

These true tales reveal what transgender life was like over those decades on the streets of San Francisco and around the country — and make it clear that it is still no bed of roses today. Clinic staff and stars of the community make cameo appearances. But it is the lives of these transgender heroes (often unknown even by younger trans folk today) that provide pride in the present and hope for the future.

On Wednesday, we were fortunate to be able to sit down and talk with the producer of the film, Mark Freeman, and one of those people profiled in the film, Kelly Kelly.

The interview is in two parts. In Part I, we asked both Mark and Kelly to talk about what brought them to the Tom Waddell Health Center. We also asked them about how this film came to fruition and the importance of sharing the powerful stories of the individuals in the film. Lastly, in Part I, we asked both of them what impact the clinic and the film is having across the country.

In Part II, we asked Mark and Kelly to talk about how this film can be an organizing tool to address larger Transgender rights issues in the country. In the last question of the interview, we asked them to speak to the idea of revolutionary love, which is something that Che Guevarra talked about as something that should be central in the lives of all revolutionaries.