"Christine Beatty’s memoir chronicles her odyssey from collegiate husband to transsexual prostitute, recovery from addiction, and the achievement of her most improbable dreams.
Set mostly in the purgatory of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, her story guides readers on an intimate journey through worlds of hippies, strippers, soldiers, urban transsexuals, prostitutes, addicts, jail, skid row and finally recovery. Ascending against all odds in her career, she is also a pioneering rock musician, a controversial journalist and a survivor of the worst pandemic of the 1980s.
Told with the unflinching honesty of someone with nothing left to hide, the humor of a survivor who discovers silver linings in the darkest clouds, and the spirit of a rebel who refuses to be broken, Beatty’s is a tale of sublime pathos and the triumph of the human spirit. She proves you can’t keep a good woman down."
In 2013, I interviewed Christine and asked her whether at the time of her transition she had any transgender role models: "Back when I transitioned, the usual advice to post-operative transwomen was to blend into society, go “deep stealth” and never admit your transsexual status.
Until I was forty years old I never knew one of the greatest computer engineers who’d ever lived, Dr. Lynn Conway, was a transwoman.
So my role models were the transsexual prostitutes who made $100 an hour because they were in charge of their lives and nobody got to tell them they couldn’t be women. The transgender rights movement that gained speed in the mid-1990s combined with the Internet to change all of that."
Christine Beatty is an American writer, musician and transgender activist. She is known for being one of the first trans women to perform and record as a heavy metal musician. Her writing has been published in various publications such as Spectator Magazine, Transgender Tapestry magazine, and the Bay Area Reporter. In 1993, she published a semi-autobiographical collection of short stories and poetry, Misery Loves Company, which provides insight into the lives of transgender people and other disenfranchised members of San Francisco’s underground community. She also co-founded and performed in Glamazon, one of the first transsexual-fronted heavy metal rock bands. Beatty uses journalism and public speaking to advocate for the transgender and LGBT communities. She testified before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors regarding transgender concerns and served on the San Francisco Task Force on Prostitution. In December 1991, she established San Francisco Gender Information, a database of resources for transgender people.
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