BETSY KALIN:

Great. Why don't we start by you telling me your name and the date and place of birth on camera?

DAVID STRACHAN:

My name is David Cameron Strachan, and I was born in Deep River, Ontario, Canada on July 24th, 1947.

BETSY KALIN:

Great. I know you were born in Canada, but where did

BETSY KALIN:

you end up growing up?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Walnut Creek, California.

BETSY KALIN:

Can you tell me how you got from Canada to Walnut Creek?

DAVID STRACHAN:

I can. I got to Walnut Creek because when I was six months old my father and my mother moved me on a train in a basket to Vancouver, British Columbia,

DAVID STRACHAN:

where my mother and brother and I were passed around to her family. While my father came down to California to look for work, he was an electrical engineer and he had been working on the Canadian version of the Manhattan Project in Chalk River, Ontario. After that job was finished, he needed to think about his future

DAVID STRACHAN:

being married and having two sons already. We lived in Richmond, California for a couple of months with another Canadian family while a home in Walnut Creek was being built. Then, I believe it was in August of 1948. We moved to Walnut Creek. Then my little brother was born in Oakland.

BETSY KALIN:

You have two brothers. Can you tell me anything else about what your family was like growing up?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yeah. In 1951, my two brothers and I ended up in Children's Hospital in San Francisco,

DAVID STRACHAN:

we all had polio. My youngest brother had the worst case. He had a shriveled arm and he'd been in an iron lung. My oldest brother had it for about a month and I was in the hospital for two weeks with a high fever. That's how our childhood started out, although my parents tried to make it as normal as possible for us with

DAVID STRACHAN:

Christmas and birthday parties. It was kind of a fun childhood. I mean, I was young, I didn't know what was going on. Then my little sister was born when I was seven, but, unfortunately, she died four months later and that shock permeated our entire family for as long as I can remember.

DAVID STRACHAN:

That's when I was seven. When I was 12, I grew to be six feet tall. And by the time I was 17, just five years later, I'd grown another 10 inches. At 17, I was 6 foot 10. I think my parents were stunned and shocked about if

DAVID STRACHAN:

I was gonna stop growing. Because my parents were very religious, we ended up going to church three times a week. That experience really formed a lot of who I was in my younger years.

BETSY KALIN:

How did that make you feel?

BETSY KALIN:

Did you have any ideas about being different or anything besides being really tall?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, I knew that from being so tall, I got so much attention and all the adults expected me to act like an adult and I just wanted to disappear because I couldn't hide.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I did play basketball in high school. I never really understood my difference because after 12 I didn't develop like other boys. It's kind of an emotional issue, but

DAVID STRACHAN:

when I was playing basketball and I went into the showers to take my shower with all the other boys, I realized that it was me that was different, not them physiologically. Could you repeat your question?

BETSY KALIN:

Sure. I think you were getting to it.

BETSY KALIN:

I just wanted to know when you first felt different, and that could be different in any way, but you were kind of talking about how when you saw that you looked different than the other boys when you were in the shower.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Right. I actually felt different, and I was in sixth grade because I was six feet tall. When we'd sing in the choir, most of the kids were on the bleachers, but I was in the back row

DAVID STRACHAN:

on the gym floor. I mean, in some ways I felt special, but in other ways I didn't like all the responsibility got dumped on me.

BETSY KALIN:

You're talking about because you were so tall, did people treat you like an adult rather than a child?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Right, right, and expected a lot of stuff from me.

BETSY KALIN:

Can you say that in your own words that you were treated kind of like an adult?

DAVID STRACHAN:

My own words

BETSY KALIN:

Well, because I asked you that was one of the yes or no questions. I just want you to say it yourself, without me saying it.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yeah. I felt different when I was 12 being

DAVID STRACHAN:

six feet tall, nobody, nobody else was that tall. People expected me to act like an adult. Maybe more so when I grew a little taller, because at 14, I was 6 foot 6 and I was really getting stuff laid on me. I mean, I was in

DAVID STRACHAN:

the marching band and the teacher wanted me to be the drum major because everybody could see me, but I didn't want to be seen, so I said no.

BETSY KALIN:

Did your mom ever like take you to see a doctor or anything like wonder about --?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yeah. When I was 12 she wanted to touch my genitals and it felt really odd for her to want to do that and I wouldn't let her. And so then they took me to the family doctor and he examined me and made me cough and turned my head and all that. But he didn't do any tests.

DAVID STRACHAN:

He told my mom that I'd grow up normal and they'd be able to have grandchildren. That wasn't true, but I didn't find out until I was 23 that I was sterile.

BETSY KALIN:

When you were growing up, did you have any role models that you could look up to or any people who helped you out?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yes. I had lots of women role models. They're the best. I had this one friend in seventh grade, we all went to the same church and we were all in Cub Scouts together. And Mrs. Sanders often when I would be like in seventh and eighth grade,

DAVID STRACHAN:

I would be very anxious and I would end up in the nurse's office and Mrs. Sanders would come and pick me up and take me back to her house and feed me lunch and we'd watch As the World Turns together. She remained; I would say my best friend

DAVID STRACHAN:

all through my life. She lived in San Jose and she was the mother I always wanted because she loved me unconditionally. Whereas my own mother, it was a whole other experience.

BETSY KALIN:

Oh, well, that's nice that you had that person in your life.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yeah. I miss her to this day.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I've included one of her pictures in with the pictures I'm sending.

BETSY KALIN:

Oh, that's fantastic. I'm so glad to hear that. Were you aware growing up that you might be part of the LGBTQIA community? Did you ever think about boys or anything like that?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, I had lots of girlfriends,

DAVID STRACHAN:

but it was mostly emotional and social connection. I did fantasize about boys and I didn't really know what sexuality was because I wasn't experiencing it, but I did have feelings and those underwear ads in various magazines,

DAVID STRACHAN:

I always looked at them and I always wondered. I never really understood what was really going on, I did feel different. I think the height had something to do with it. In junior high school, a bunch of us played around. I don't think we knew what we were doing, but we were playing around and spanking each other, like our parents

DAVID STRACHAN:

spanked us. So, maybe that's where I got my interest in BDSM. I don't know.

BETSY KALIN:

Well, that's always possible.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yeah.

BETSY KALIN:

Well you mentioned this briefly, do you wanna tell me what happened when you were 23 and you finally discovered that you were sterile?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yeah, well, I went to college

DAVID STRACHAN:

in Whitworth, in Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington. It was a Presbyterian school. In 1970s when I graduated, the girl that I was dating at the time -- Let me see, somehow we got engaged. I think she hooked me because she wanted to get outta Spokane.

DAVID STRACHAN:

The first job that I got was in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We were separated for the year. Before I left Thailand, I was teaching fifth grade in American curriculum school. When I was getting ready

DAVID STRACHAN:

to fly back home, after having a homosexual relationship with a guy in Malaysia and my girlfriend was having problems trying to decide about birth control. I had always had in my head from sophomore biology in high school that giants were usually sterile. I remember there was a picture of a giant

DAVID STRACHAN:

and the caption was giants are usually sterile. I assume the textbook was from the 30s or the 20s. I went and had a semen analysis and that's when I learned that I didn't have any sperm. When I came back to Spokane, and also with the struggle in my sexual identity,

DAVID STRACHAN:

I did tell her I was bisexual, but she wanted me to change. She also said that she wanted to have her own children. I told her that I couldn't give them to her, so we broke up. I think it was a sort of a dual breakup because I had a homosexual side and also that I couldn't

DAVID STRACHAN:

father a child.

BETSY KALIN:

When did you finally come out?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Let's see, when did I finally come out? Well, for some reason, I always felt like I'm gonna turn straight. I'm gonna turn straight. They kept telling me this is a phase. It was very frustrating,

DAVID STRACHAN:

but during the 1970s, I dated women, and I should tell you this story. In 1974, when I was 27, I did come out to my parents. I was at the Oakland airport picking them up

DAVID STRACHAN:

after a trip that they'd taken on a cruise. They were standing with another couple that they met on the cruise and in front of us, there was this rather gay looking individual, in my interpretation that I thought, gee, maybe he's one of us or something like that. Off the boat comes this other guy and

DAVID STRACHAN:

they embrace right in front of us all, and kiss passionately. I thought, wow, that's so cool. Wow. I'd never seen that before. When I drove my parents back to their home in Lafayette, I told them that I was bisexual because at the time I figured I was, and it's kind of nice to

DAVID STRACHAN:

look at everything. That's when I came out to them. When I was 29, when I had health insurance was when I went to Kaiser Permanente in Santa Clara, and I went to their infertility clinic.

DAVID STRACHAN:

That's when I found out that I had Klinefelter's syndrome, which is why I was sterile.

BETSY KALIN:

What happened when you went to Kaiser? What did they tell you?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, what they did was, there was like five doctors in this room, I was naked and they were looking at my body and touching me here and there, they did

DAVID STRACHAN:

scrapings from my mouth. They took blood from me, and I was waiting about three months to find out the results. I think I went in for another appointment for something else, and the nurse practitioner said, "Has Dr. Robbins contacted you?" I said, "No, I've been waiting for three months." She was really livid. Within a day,

DAVID STRACHAN:

Dr. Robbins called me and called me back in to see him. That's when he told me that I had Klinefelter's syndrome, which were XXY sex chromosomes, the reason I was sterile. What was the other thing? Oh, that I had 10% of what

DAVID STRACHAN:

they considered normal testosterone levels for a guy. That very day, he ordered me to go to the nurse's station and get my first injection of testosterone. He did not tell me what was gonna happen. He didn't give me any other information. He said, "If you want any other information, go down to the medical library and read about it." When I did that,

DAVID STRACHAN:

everything I read made me feel like a freak. That was not a nice beginning of that journey.

BETSY KALIN:

What was the medical literature at the time?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, it's kind of hard to remember that long ago, but it was like old literature.

DAVID STRACHAN:

They talked a lot about mental retardation and those kinds of things, and apparently younger kids that are with this often get a lot of special ed help. I started wondering, did I need this when I was younger? I mean,

DAVID STRACHAN:

I didn't get any special help. Maybe I could get it now.

BETSY KALIN:

I honestly think you're fine, David.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yeah. I do too.

BETSY KALIN:

So another thing that I wanted to touch on, just because, the way the medical establishment has really treated people who are intersex, for years is -- I want you to kind of talk about,

BETSY KALIN:

they wanted to do surgery on you. Can you talk about what they suggested?

DAVID STRACHAN:

The surgery that they suggested were because I had breast development, they wanted to do breast reduction surgery. A lot of guys that develop breasts, and I mean,

DAVID STRACHAN:

really large breasts, they often have mastectomies like trans men, and the other surgery that they suggested was testicular implants. I know people that have had them and have hated them and I never wanted them. I refused both surgeries because I really liked my body the way it was. And

DAVID STRACHAN:

unfortunately with the testosterone replacement therapy, my body has changed in ways I never thought were possible. To be 29 years of age, having made peace with my body and loving it the way it was, and then all of a sudden, it got really hairy, I call it my gorilla suit. Then I started losing my hair on my head,

DAVID STRACHAN:

and those are just side effects of the drug.

BETSY KALIN:

You also told a really great story about loving your body when you were in the pre-interview and you talked about when you had a girlfriend. Can you tell us what you did with your breasts?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yes, yes, yes. My friend Mel and I sat next to each other and we go, "look, twins."

DAVID STRACHAN:

Our boobs were twins; her breast and my breast were the same size and the same fullness. That was really fun to have a girlfriend with a twin breast.

BETSY KALIN:

I think that's a great story. I love that. You found out that you had Klinefelter, but you didn't know that you were intersex.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Correct. Right. That word wasn't around.

DAVID STRACHAN:

It didn't come into the lexicon until 1993 when Cheryl Chase created the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA). Should I tell that story?

BETSY KALIN:

Sure. Go ahead.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yeah. So Dr. Susan Stryker,

DAVID STRACHAN:

who's a Facebook friend, I had contacted her because she was teaching a class on gender at the Harvey Milk Institute in the Castro, but I couldn't go to the class. I wrote her a letter telling her that I had Klinefelter's syndrome and I was interested in my gender issues. She wrote back and said, well,

DAVID STRACHAN:

you need to meet Cheryl Chase, who has this organization. Little did I know, it was just the name and Cheryl and a PO box. I guess I called Cheryl up and we met and she invited me to an emotional support group that was meeting

DAVID STRACHAN:

at San Francisco Sex Information on, I think it was Franklin and Bush. They had a room there. I was a little nervous about going to that meeting. I wasn't sure what kind of people would be there, but it was a very good meeting. Tiger Devore was there, and a couple of other people, and Cheryl.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Cheryl said to my face, Klinefelter's syndrome is intersex. I'd never heard that before, I didn't really know what intersex was. She showed me in a medical journal a picture of about nine people with Klinefelter's syndrome, standing naked with their eyes blacked out.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I looked at one guy and I thought that body looks just like mine used to look, and that's where I came up with this.

BETSY KALIN:

Oh, that's great.

DAVID STRACHAN:

This is the person before, and they say the cure is testosterone,

DAVID STRACHAN:

and you'll turn into this guy and you'll get a watch, but they fail to tell you need testicular implants and you need breast reduction surgery. They don't tell you that with this. And then these pictures, this is me before, and this is me 20 years later. It's always a shock when I look at these pictures

DAVID STRACHAN:

because I really feel on some levels like I was transitioned outta my intersex body into a male looking body, and that was not my choice. I did it without any informed decision.

BETSY KALIN:

Yeah. I mean, it's very medically irresponsible,

BETSY KALIN:

the whole situation that you went through.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Right.

BETSY KALIN:

And the suffering and trauma that you experienced.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Right, right. But what I've learned since then is that people with an extra X chromosome, once you're conceived, the second cell division is when you get the extra X. What that does, it turns off testicular development. I mean, I didn't know this.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I didn't get the hormone surges that you get in childhood. Then also when you're like 11 or 12, I didn't get any of that. I didn't understand what horny meant until I started injecting testosterone.

BETSY KALIN:

David, if you can sit back against your chair for the frame, if that's comfortable for you. Is that comfortable?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Sure.

BETSY KALIN:

Okay,

DAVID STRACHAN:

Great. That's right. I was leaning in

BETSY KALIN:

That's okay. I'm also leaning in.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Oh, okay.

BETSY KALIN:

You talked about meeting Cheryl and finally realizing that you were intersex.

BETSY KALIN:

From the time that you went to Cheryl's meeting with ISNA, did you go to other support groups or conferences or anything like that?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, yes. There was a Klinefelter's support session up in Sacramento that I went to.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I'm not sure exactly when, but there was a conference, they had a yearly conference and the first one was in Baltimore, Maryland. Peter, my husband, and I went to that conference and I met like maybe 10 - 20 other people with Klinefelter's. Some of them identified as gay. Some of them identified as straight.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Some of them had gender issues like me, but the conference was organized by a mother whose son had Klinefelter's, and I don't want to be despairingly, but they were Mormons and they were very conservative and they didn't want to deal with sexuality or gender issues. It was really the population

DAVID STRACHAN:

that was there that kind of met and shared and swapped phone numbers and that kind of thing. But as far as the intersex issue, also in 1996 was when Cheryl organized a thing, I think it was in Petaluma.

DAVID STRACHAN:

They made a movie out of it, it was called Hermaphrodite Speak. Hermaphrodite or Hermaphrodism was the old term that the medical journals used and we changed it to intersex, and intersex really worked well for me. I really liked that it was sort of between sexes. It's not male, it's not female, it's something

DAVID STRACHAN:

in this other spectrum And we've always existed. That's the amazing thing that you know in Native American cultures and Greek cultures. I mean, when I told my father that I had this syndrome, he said, "Oh, you're a eunuch." But I think he consulted his Bible

DAVID STRACHAN:

and that was the only word he could come up with to describe his middle son.

BETSY KALIN:

Did you start to work with Cheryl and ISNA?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, she asked me to help her. The mission of the Intersex Society was to: End Shame, Secrecy

DAVID STRACHAN:

and Unwanted genital surgeries, because she had her clitoris removed. I mean her story, I think the fact that I had heard her story and she shared it with different people, gave me the courage to share my story. I felt that if

DAVID STRACHAN:

I could help anyone who's struggling with identity or just the term intersex that maybe it would empower people. Whereas my parents wanted me to shut up and not say anything. I decided, as an educator, that I would share this and tell the truth so that hopefully it would help younger populations.

BETSY KALIN:

When did you start sharing your story?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, I remember she had -- I don't know if you know who Rosa von Praunheim, the German filmmaker? He was in town and he interviewed the two of us. That was very empowering. I think it was for a radio program.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Over the years, I would be -- Well, let me stop by saying in 1994, I was diagnosed with ARC, AIDS related ... What's it called? ARC.

BETSY KALIN:

It's a complex

DAVID STRACHAN:

Complex. Thank you. I went out on disability.

DAVID STRACHAN:

That was the same year that I met Cheryl. It's also the year that I met my boyfriend at Welcome Home Restaurant in the Castro, while still having a husband. Yeah. So, what was your question again?

BETSY KALIN:

I just wanted to talk about more of your work with the Intersex Society.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Okay. She's had several offices, and she would get them pro bono, so she wasn't paying rent. Marty Malin, who was trying to create a

DAVID STRACHAN:

School of Sexology in San Francisco. We had a small room in his office where we met. Cheryl would have all these letters from people that she was collecting, and I would read them and respond to them because she was on headphones, talking to people all over the world. I was a grunt. I enjoyed doing that. It was like,

DAVID STRACHAN:

here I am on disability. I have this new passion to involve myself with. Then we moved, I think it was 1390 Mission Street in San Francisco, it was called Queer Central. FTM international had an office, the Bisexual Bi-Net had an office there there's a whole bunch of different. We had a room

DAVID STRACHAN:

in the back and I built bookshelves for all of Cheryl's books and medical journals and everything. She would sit with her headphones on and I would write letters. At some point, our post office was up at Diamond Heights, and because Peter's a bicyclist,

DAVID STRACHAN:

he got tasked with bicycling up Diamond Heights, picking up the mail, bringing it home to our house. Then when I would volunteer with Cheryl, I take it all over to wherever her office was. Then I would go through them. It was a lot of letters from wannabe gender variant people who were really trans. There's always been sort of this issue

DAVID STRACHAN:

between intersex people and trans people, because trans people want the surgeries and intersex people don't want the surgeries. I mean, I didn't want to be the gatekeeper. I just wanted to offer support and refer them places, if I could. It was very basic,

DAVID STRACHAN:

and it was the beginning of a movement. I know a bunch of people went to a protest. I think it was the pediatrics convention in San Francisco once, and they had a big banner. I can't remember what it said; it had

DAVID STRACHAN:

the word Hermaphrodites in it, about stopping the surgeries. I believe that was in 1995/1996. Then I'd always had, sort of, a story in me that I wanted to write. I didn't know if you know who Dr. Alice Dreger is?

BETSY KALIN:

No.

DAVID STRACHAN:

She's a medical ethicist,

DAVID STRACHAN:

up at Ann Arbor, I can never remember where exactly she worked, but she became our board chair. With my help, they created an advisory board that included doctors that were

DAVID STRACHAN:

supportive of our cause, and psychologists. Then we had a board of directors and it wasn't until I think it was 2002 that I joined the board and I really pushed Cheryl to create a nonprofit, because I knew people would donate money if they could get a tax write-off.

DAVID STRACHAN:

She did, but then Cheryl fell in love with a woman. We went to their wedding up in Santa Rosa. I think she took off for a couple of years now. I can't remember if it was before she got married or after she got married, she was elsewhere. She was somewhere back in the Midwest, and then

DAVID STRACHAN:

eventually she came back to San Francisco and Santa Rosa. I think my timing, when things happened, I can't really remember all the dates and all that. I'm doing my best.

BETSY KALIN:

No, I think that's fine. I just wanted to hear more about the organization in the beginning because it's so important and historical,

BETSY KALIN:

and of course, we wanted to have that about how you got started.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Cheryl would ask me -- For many years, I would go up to UCSF and do a presentation to the nurses or to Cal Berkeley where we talked to pre-med students.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I think we were trying to educate up and coming doctors to take a different stance on these surgeries, to show the impact of how they affected a lot of us. I really honored Cheryl, considering her own background and what happened to her. I just wanted to honor her. She was awesome.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I could see the pain that she was experiencing because of the lack of sexual functioning and scarring. For her to create this organization and be supported by a lot of different people to actually meet the mission statement.

BETSY KALIN:

That's great. Thank you. Thank you, David. Sure. I wanna take you back again. You mentioned this in your pre-interview and I wanted you to talk about the 1970s in Santa Cruz and what that was like for you.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Santa Cruz, the Santa Cruz mountains.

BETSY KALIN:

Yeah. When you were at massage school.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Oh yeah, massage school. That was a wonderful time.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Before I went to massage school, I was working for Catholic Charities in San Jose for two years in an out-day treatment facility for chronic schizophrenics, very stressful. Because I was diagnosed with Klinefelter's in 1976, I decided to leave that job because I felt like I needed to process it somehow.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I discovered there was an opportunity to go to massage school up in the Santa Cruz mountains. The savings that I had from the job paid the tuition for the massage school. That was a wonderful experience. It was also a nudist camp. What else can I say about it?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Is there anything specific that you'd like to know about it?

BETSY KALIN:

Well, I think you said that this was one of the happiest times in your life and you just really appreciated, like you were bisexual, you appreciated all the bodies. It just sounded great.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yeah. Well, it was interesting that I think there was -- A lot of sexologists would

DAVID STRACHAN:

come up there to lead workshops. I remember doing -- There was a young woman and I who were models and we were being filmed for an exercise in giving permission to touch. That was really cool to ask each other if I could touch you there,

DAVID STRACHAN:

it was like a demonstration for other students that were there. I was in massage school for -- It was January, February, and March. It was the first time I'd ever been in the shower with all kinds of people. They had a hot tub out on the meadow.

DAVID STRACHAN:

One day we got 38 people in it. The woman in front of me had a double mastectomy and she was dealing with her own trauma around that, but I just gave her a nice big hug and she got a smile on her face. That was nice. It was a place to heal from trauma. All of us have had

DAVID STRACHAN:

different kinds of trauma that sorted up there. The other nice thing about it is I would take friends up there and I was dating ... Well, I had a male friend that I really, really cared for. I took him up there and the friend where we had twin boobs, they took

DAVID STRACHAN:

one look at each other and said, let's do a three-way with him, let's do a three-way with her. We went up to one of the A-frames across the creek and had a three-way and it was really fun. They eventually got married. When they knew I couldn't have a child, they invited me to the birth room at Stanford

DAVID STRACHAN:

to witness their first child being born. They named him after me. It was so moving to have that connection. We've been friends for years until Mel died five years ago, she had a cancer in her eye that went to her lung and her brain.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I just can't tell you how sad I was when she died. It was a real loss. But, I'm still in touch with my namesake. He's 40 years old and lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his girlfriend and her three kids. That was one of the nicest things that came out of my experience at --

DAVID STRACHAN:

The place was called Getting in Touch. I got in touch.

BETSY KALIN:

I'm so glad I asked you about that.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Thank you.

BETSY KALIN:

Such a beautiful story.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yeah.

BETSY KALIN:

All right. Well now we're gonna take a little more serious turn. Do you wanna get a drink? Some water?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yeah. Yeah. I do get dry mouth and I do have a thing that I can suck on.

BETSY KALIN:

I think maybe

DAVID STRACHAN:

Just the water,

BETSY KALIN:

I think just the water.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Okay.

BETSY KALIN:

Oh, and David, do you need to take a break since we're just about halfway through?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Oh, no, I'm doing good.

BETSY KALIN:

All right. Good. Well, let me have one more second.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yeah. By the way, I really like how you're framing questions and taking it from the things in the past that I did.

BETSY KALIN:

Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. I did a lot of research on you and I just was very excited. One of my good friends, I don't know if you know her, but Phoebe Hart and she did the movie Orchids

DAVID STRACHAN:

Orchids. I remember that. Yes.

BETSY KALIN:

Yeah. She's actually the reason I met my wife, was through Phoebe.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Oh, cool. Cool. Yay. Yay.

BETSY KALIN:

I was very excited to meet you.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Nice.

BETSY KALIN:

Okay, so now I wanna take you back. I know you briefly mentioned having ARC, but when did you first hear about HIV/AIDS?

DAVID STRACHAN:

I think it was in 1982. I was working for San Francisco Victoriana, which is a restoration company and we manufactured plaster ware and wood moldings from the 1850s to the 1930s. One of my bosses' partner's, his lover was Mark Feldman,

DAVID STRACHAN:

and Mark Feldman had called me on the phone at work and told me that he had AIDS, which really shocked me. In 1983, I was part of a study at San Francisco General. I believe it was Walter Krampf,

DAVID STRACHAN:

I can't remember the other researcher, but they had my blood from 1983. Because I started taking testosterone in 1976, I discovered that I was actually horny for the first time. I moved to San Francisco in '79 and there's all these bath houses here.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I had a good time from '79 to '83 or '84, actually. I guess it was news like the BAR or one of the gay newspapers, and of course, television, they were talking about this new disease. What were the chances

DAVID STRACHAN:

that I was gonna get it? The researcher said, "Considering your past behavior, we think you probably have it." It wasn't until I think it was 1985 when they came out with the test to see, I guess, the antigen test to see if you actually are carrying the virus. But I chose not to

DAVID STRACHAN:

find out my results until 1986. From 1983 to 1987, I was involved with a college girlfriend. I was having an affair with her. Because of that relationship, I decided to find out if I was positive, because I wanted to protect her. It turned out that I was positive.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I decided, because I didn't know what the trajectory of my life was going to be--I kind of cooled our relationship. I mean, I didn't want to be a burden on her. It was right around, I would say '82, and all the people that I worked with were gay.

DAVID STRACHAN:

There weren't any straight people at the work, although one of the bosses I believe was bisexual. I had socialized with the people I worked with, and to find out that one or two or three of them were positive and eventually died in the early '90s was traumatic to say the least. You start seeing

DAVID STRACHAN:

in the Castro, we live not too far from the Castro and people were looking not well and all these organizations were popping up to help. Like, in 1984, I did the Shanti Project, emotional support training. But I was so traumatized by losing so many friends and neighbors and coworkers that I didn't feel like I could

DAVID STRACHAN:

offer emotional support when I needed it myself, and ARC was considered sort of between HIV and a full blown AIDS. How it affected me was I had a lot of trouble walking and I had peripheral neuropathy in my feet and my legs,

DAVID STRACHAN:

and that was due to the AZT drug that I started taking in 1989. The '80s were not the best years.

BETSY KALIN:

Do you think that being on a AZT helped you,

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, fortunately, my doctor put me on a low dose of it, which is why I think I'm still alive because a lot of the guys that were on

DAVID STRACHAN:

high doses have died. It was a very strong drug that did all kinds of things to you. Then over the course of the '90s, I got put on other meds and because the meds weren't studied for very long, the side effects

DAVID STRACHAN:

that actually came out -- Like, I got diabetes because of the drugs. What was the other thing that happened? Oh, and my kidney functions all kind of screwed up because of another drug. You stop taking drugs, but then the damage is already done because they didn't study it for 10 years. We didn't have 10 years. We only had like a year

DAVID STRACHAN:

to save our lives.

BETSY KALIN:

What was it? I mean, I moved to San Francisco in 1991, so I was there in the early '90s. Can you describe what it was like during that time?

DAVID STRACHAN:

I don't know if the time is right, but I just remember a lot of ghostly figures walking around the Castro. People being helped to walk by other people. I remember Kairos House was created sometime around then

DAVID STRACHAN:

and that helped caregivers help people that they were caring for. It was a support network for caregivers. I thought it was extremely depressing time, and because I didn't know what was gonna happen to me. I did have thrush and hairy leukoplakia in my mouth.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I had to take drugs to treat that. Fortunately, I never really had an opportunistic infection, like so many other people I know. Very depressing time.

BETSY KALIN:

Now you're a survivor.

BETSY KALIN:

How many decades passed?

DAVID STRACHAN:

I figure I got infected in, probably, '81 or '82. That was 40 years ago and I feel very blessed that I'm still here. Of course, having my partner, Peter, has really helped me, having a committed relationship. Of course, my boyfriend helped too, because he was also positive,

DAVID STRACHAN:

which meant we could do things that I couldn't really do with my husband because Peter was negative.

BETSY KALIN:

Why don't you talk now about meeting Peter, like when you met and talk about your relationship?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Peter. Remember those people up at Getting in Touch.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, a lot of the people at Getting in Touch identified as bisexual. I was living with my friend, Cindy in San Jose, and we used to drive up to San Francisco to go to the Bi Center and their functions and everything. We decided to put a notice in the Bi-monthly Newsletter and see if we could attract people

DAVID STRACHAN:

in the South Bay to come to a potluck. Our friend, Liller-B Jackson, she was a black woman and she was living in Sunnyvale at the time. Cindy and Liller-B were good friends. I think they had common mental health support things going on.

DAVID STRACHAN:

On March 19th, 1978, we had this potluck and Peter showed up. Peter came, I'd never seen him before, but we had talked on the phone a couple of times before the potluck and he sounded really, really cute.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I guess there's about 20 of us and we were, we had a potluck and then we're sitting in a circle in the living room and we're passing a joint around, like we did in those days. I kept thinking, I better not look at him because I'll get magnetized to him, like how your eyes go bong and then you're sort of stuck in that stare

DAVID STRACHAN:

and a little stoned, and it happened. We started looking at each other and the next thing I knew, he gets up, walks across the room and sits next to me and we start making out, in a room of people. I guess it was easier to do it back then when you were like, how old was I?

DAVID STRACHAN:

1978 I was 31. No, I guess I was 30. It wasn't my birthday yet. Peter was 28 and I was 30. I thought he was as cute as a bug's ear. I invited him home, back to Cindy's and my place where we did the deed three times. I was really impressed.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I'm still waiting for a repeat performance. But we started dating. He lived in Palo Alto in a little studio apartment. I don't know. Oh, it was really love at first sight. I'm sure the marijuana had something to do with it, but I don't know.

DAVID STRACHAN:

We've just been together ever since. We didn't live together for 18 months. In the fall of '78, Peter moved to San Francisco, and that was the year that Harvey and George were murdered. We went to that march together, and that was

DAVID STRACHAN:

very powerful experience. Then in January of '79, that's when I moved to San Francisco. We lived maybe a mile apart off of 20th street, he lived on Douglass and I lived on 20th and Noe. We'd have this big gully, if we wanted to go visit each other, we had a lot of hills to climb.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Then eventually, when I was working at Victoriana, they laid me off a second time, and decided that I couldn't afford my studio apartment that I was paying $275 a month for. Peter invited me to come and live with him.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I moved in with him in September '79. We lived there for, I had trouble because I'd always had my own place, and here I'm living with another human being in a one bedroom apartment and it kind of drove me a little batty. We moved over to States Street

DAVID STRACHAN:

and got a two bedroom, two bath apartment. We were paying, I think it was $700 a month. It had a nice view of the Castro neighborhood. Then in 1983 -- Well, probably before 1983, he discovered that he had a relative,

DAVID STRACHAN:

it was a third cousin who needed to sell her parent's home. We made an offer on the home and she accepted it. That's where we've lived for 38 and a half years now. We did in 1990, we did have a life-partnership commitment ceremony, which was really beautiful.

DAVID STRACHAN:

It was up at Sanborn Park Hostel in Saratoga, California, in a redwood grove. It was really a beautiful day. It was the second day of the autumn Equinox. We had 40 guests, and the woman that ran the hostel made all kinds of salads,

DAVID STRACHAN:

we had a buffet, and all we had to do was pay for the food and everything else was free. It was really wonderful, but it wasn't legal. We also had a rabbi do the ceremony. Rabbi Allen Bennett did the service.

BETSY KALIN:

Are either of you Jewish?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Peter's Jewish, But I'm sort of Jewish too.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Oh, and we had klezmer music to play during the buffet, which was nice. Then we had a friend who was a photographer and everybody got up under the redwood trees on the stairs. He took a picture of everybody that was there. I have picture of my parents.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Mrs. Sanders was there and another couple that were there to support my parents and the horror they were going through or something. And then in 2000--What year did we get married?

BETSY KALIN:

2008.

DAVID STRACHAN:

2008. We got married at city hall

DAVID STRACHAN:

and Mayor Newsom performed the ritual in his office. We had six friends with us. When he asked me to marry him in 2004, when those annulled marriages were being performed, he asked me to marry him, and I said, "Not without a diamond engagement ring."

DAVID STRACHAN:

We went down to Shreve's, Shreve & Company and he bought me a diamond engagement ring. I figured, after four years, I had to honor his gift, so we got married. He does the taxes and he cooks, and he does a lot of stuff. I garden and I grow vegetables and herbs.

DAVID STRACHAN:

We've been together almost 44 years.

BETSY KALIN:

That's amazing.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yeah.

BETSY KALIN:

I love it. I know you've talked a little bit about Keith, but can you talk about what it meant to be in an open relationship, and then about other people and Keith?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yeah, well, the women I was involved with that was part of the okayness. We didn't really describe our relationship as polyamory because we weren't living together, but an open relationship really meant, in the beginning, "If you're not coming home, call--so I don't worry."

DAVID STRACHAN:

It was Peter that wanted the open relationship, which really surprised me because I was dating all these people in San Jose, including a state Senator, oh excuse me, an assemblyman. I won't say who, and I narrowed everybody down to Peter, like this is the guy I wanna be with. Then he says, "I want

DAVID STRACHAN:

an open relationship." I think it's because he was dating a woman that he met at the Meat Market on 24th street. But I gave him an ultimatum, I said, "It's her or me?" He picked the right person. I'm not really sure what else I can say about that. Keith came into my life.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I met him on his 30th birthday, when I was 47, and he was very unique. He had long strawberry blonde hair. He would wear Elizabethan outfits on the bus.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I mean, he lived with an older guy on Stanyan Street. I think they were boyfriends at one time. Keith was pretty young when he moved here. He was 22 when he moved to San Francisco from Fort Lauderdale. Keith let me know that he was

DAVID STRACHAN:

HIV positive and that he had Hep C. We had to kind of monitor our behavior around that. But we had a relationship for 15 years and then he died.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, in 2009, he'd been working in the men's department at Macy's, and his doctor, the previous summer, told him that he should get his affairs in order because his liver was failing. He quit his job

DAVID STRACHAN:

around Thanksgiving of 2009, and in January of 2010, he wanted me to help him find a different place to live because the roommate that he had who was much older, had two young homeless boys, straight boys, living in their apartment, in their one bedroom apart, and the homeless boys were eating

DAVID STRACHAN:

Keith's food, of what he was trying to keep so that he could treat his disease. He really needed to move out. Brian Bassinger had the, I can't remember the name of the organization, but it was to get housing for people that were HIV positive or who had AIDS. I didn't realize how far along

DAVID STRACHAN:

his disease had advanced, or I would've been a lot more aggressive, but he ended up in the hospital a couple of times. The social worker at one of the hospitals was able to get him into Maitri Hospice.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Peter helped me with the financial part of Keith's will. Peter was a great support in the end days of Keith. I was with Keith when he passed, it was really hard

DAVID STRACHAN:

to see someone you really care about to take their last breath. He died on the second day of spring 2010.

BETSY KALIN:

I'm very sorry.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yeah, but it was a good 15 years. The other thing, his roommate, and he would socialize

DAVID STRACHAN:

with Peter and me in our home. I remember when Keith turned 45, in 2009, his roommate, Jack, had invited us over for a birthday dinner for Keith. We all had dinner together in their kitchen. We did that several times over the years, socialized together, which was nice.

BETSY KALIN:

That is nice. That's really great

BETSY KALIN:

that you were able to do that. Do you need another drink of water because we're gonna go on more into some activism stuff.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yeah.

BETSY KALIN:

Okay, great. You briefly mentioned it, but I wanted you to go back and talk about your work with the San Francisco Human Rights Commission.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Ah, yes. In 2002, they were trying to figure out

DAVID STRACHAN:

how to implement the gender identity law that had been passed in San Francisco, so I volunteered to be on some of those. Actually, no, I was appointed through Mark Leno's supervisor job. He was the staff person that met with

DAVID STRACHAN:

the Transgender Implementation -- It was a task force. I can't remember the exact -- Transgender Implementation Task Force. I'm missing a couple of words, but I can't remember. I got appointed to that task force, and we met

DAVID STRACHAN:

every couple of weeks or once a month, because we were trying to figure out how to do it in housing, how to do it in public accommodations. It's interesting how people really wanted to be on this task force. But then when the work came up, a lot of people just disappeared. Because I was already doing stuff

DAVID STRACHAN:

with the Human Rights Commission with their gender identity law, I noticed again, in the B A R, again, there was an announcement that they were looking for new advisory committee members, particularly, they were looking for intersex people. I figured, well, I'm intersex, why not me?

DAVID STRACHAN:

I applied for it and was accepted. I felt because back in 1996 was Cheryl and we were trying to push this issue about non-consensual surgeries, that this is probably a good place to push that again.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I suggested that we have an intersex task force and the members on the committee supported that. Then on, I think, I said 9/11, 2003, Cheryl Chase, Ben Lunine, Thea Hillman, and I spoke to the human rights commissioners

DAVID STRACHAN:

about the plight of the intersex community and what could be done. They suggested that we have a public hearing. I talked to all the intersex people I knew in the bay area and really encouraged them to come to the public hearing because

DAVID STRACHAN:

giving testimony and sharing your truth is what helps move evolution forward, that was my idea at least. We had testimony from all over the world. A lot of the committee members read testimony from people from other places.

DAVID STRACHAN:

My husband and I paid San Francisco Government TV to film the proceedings, which were three and a half hours long. I thought it was kind of interesting that at the very beginning of the hearing Malcolm Heinicke, who was the chair of the Human Rights Commission, made the announcement

DAVID STRACHAN:

that he and his wife were expecting a baby that day and that he might have to leave. I was thinking, what are the chances of someone having a baby, and here we're talking about intersex issues and who knew if this child might be intersex? But I don't think the child was. We had this hearing

DAVID STRACHAN:

Marcus Arana, who's a good friend--. He was like the liaison between the advisory council and the commissioners. Larry Brinken was also working there as well. Marcus took all the testimony a

DAVID STRACHAN:

nd put together the Intersex Report, which is available online. I'm really happy that it all worked out. It was a really heavy afternoon with all this testimony about what happened to people, but Marcus wrote up a really good report

DAVID STRACHAN:

with findings and recommendations. I keep thinking that the intersex task force kept meeting to process a lot of that information. The report came out in, I believe it was either April or May of 2005.

DAVID STRACHAN:

But it didn't go anywhere because it's not a legislative body. They did make a resolution of some sort, supporting the recommendations. But it kind of stopped there and I kept thinking, oh no, this report's gonna go up on the shelf with all the other reports.

DAVID STRACHAN:

But I found out later that Anne Tamar-Mattis, I don't know if you know her, but she got a law degree -- Now, her partner Suegee Tamar-Mattis is an intersex physician up in Santa Rosa. I think Anne thought that gee, nothing's happening legally,

DAVID STRACHAN:

maybe I can do something. She created a round table. I believe it was in 2006 or 2007, and she used the Intersex Report to get her law degree. I felt that there was some movement in the work that we'd been doing. She created originally the title of the nonprofit was

DAVID STRACHAN:

Intersex Children and the Law, which got moved to Advocates for Informed Choice, and then eventually to Intersex Advocates for Intersex Youth, which is still in existence. Anne is no longer the director,

DAVID STRACHAN:

I think its Kimberly Zieselman. She was the executive director and she wrote a book called XOXY because she, I believe, has androgen insensitivity syndrome. She just retired and is moving on to other areas of intersex advocacy.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I guess the other thing I want to say is that the group that I co-founded Intersex and Gender Queer Recognition Project, Toby Adams was my attorney, and we co-founded this organization, I'm trying to remember.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I was hoping that at some point, I could change my gender, thinking that gender -- Well, all our identity documents say sex. It doesn't say gender, but in the legal work world, gender and sex are considered same thing. So it's not my sex that I get to change, it's my gender. I didn't come up with a term

DAVID STRACHAN:

non-binary I think the group did, and I just went along with it. Non-binary fits me fine. I really don't like the binary, it's too confining.

BETSY KALIN:

What did the organization do? Because you're now gonna talk a little bit about you wanted to change the gender markers on legal documents.

BETSY KALIN:

What were you trying to do?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Gosh, Toby, I wish you were here. Well, for me personally, I was trying to change my gender markers, but I didn't know how to do it. Having an attorney really helped. In 2017, three of us went to

DAVID STRACHAN:

the superior court in San Francisco with Toby, and we were legally able to change our genders to non-binary. Then, I was also able, with Toby's help, to get my birth certificate amended to X, which is also non non-binary.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I always wondered where that extra X came from. You know, XXY?

BETSY KALIN:

It's actually one of my favorite movies, is XXY

DAVID STRACHAN:

The 13 minute one?

BETSY KALIN:

It's actually a feature. There's a feature from another country.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Right. Well, there's also a 13 minute one that was created by students at Stanford

DAVID STRACHAN:

that featured Kristie Bruce and Howard Devore. It's an excellent film. All of the films that I've collected over the years are at the Hormel Center at the main library in San Francisco. All my intersex archives are housed there. If people in the future wanna do any research, that's where it is.

BETSY KALIN:

That's amazing.

BETSY KALIN:

Well, and then can you talk about pride month in 2008, what happened?

DAVID STRACHAN:

2008 pride month?

BETSY KALIN:

Your award.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Oh, yes. Yes. Thank you. This is a picture. I think this picture is amongst the pictures I'm putting forth,

DAVID STRACHAN:

but somebody nominated me to get an award during the LGBT Pride month. It was through KQED and Kaiser Permanente. It was at the KQED offices. They have a screening room and so they had an

DAVID STRACHAN:

award ceremony there and the other two awardees were Tida Aida and Marcy Adelman, two really great people. I was the last one to get my award. There's a YouTube video of it.

BETSY KALIN:

Can you talk about what you were awarded for?

DAVID STRACHAN:

My intersex community volunteer activism? Yeah. I felt really honored and grateful for all the people that supported my nomination with letters. I guess it was nice

DAVID STRACHAN:

to be recognized. Yeah. I mean, I'm sort of a guy that likes to be in the background doing diddly things and helping other people. So, to actually be out there as an almost seven foot tall person, I kind of felt like I finally got to shine in my own way. Yeah.

BETSY KALIN:

That's beautiful. I love that. Can you talk about, I mean, like,

BETSY KALIN:

you've been an activist for 25 years and you've been fighting for intersex rights. Can you just talk about why you've been doing that work for so long?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, it's a cause that I really believed in. I've been sort of disappointed that people in Sacramento

DAVID STRACHAN:

aren't getting it. I mean, Scott Wiener, I think twice has attempted to get a bill passed through the California legislature. I think it was bill 225 that was supposed to limit genital surgeries on children until they could

DAVID STRACHAN:

make their own informed decision about it. But the medical community, the control, and of course, parents want the control. I think this cycle has to break eventually because people are being damaged. They're having their sex damaged by people who think they're doing the best

DAVID STRACHAN:

for them, but they don't really understand exactly what is really happening. I think parents want normal children, but you can't make normal genitals if someone is born in between, if their bodies are non-standard, but that's what's been going on since the '40s. I think a lot of it has to do with what John Money, the psychologist

DAVID STRACHAN:

was saying that, oh, you can assign this gender and then reinforce it and they'll grow up in this, but that's not true. I mean, I'm still trying to figure out my gender. I just think I'm a human being and I have a spiritual energy about me. That is just me, it's

DAVID STRACHAN:

genderless and kind of sexless.

BETSY KALIN:

Yeah. I make documentaries and I did one on tantra. The thing that I love the most about was that it looks at all people as having masculine and feminine energy.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I have always felt like I was an androgynous person, and I like androgyny. I think it's so healthy

DAVID STRACHAN:

to be in balance with those energies. Although I do like my feminine side a lot more.

BETSY KALIN:

Yeah. Well, and I look totally feminine, but I have this like very well matched masculine side.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, that's good. That's good. We all have gifts.

BETSY KALIN:

Exactly. Another thing I wanted to mention since you were talking about

BETSY KALIN:

your activism is what other organizations have you been involved with and what are some names and what do they do?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, let's see, I'm not currently really involved with anything because of the pandemic, but back in the day I was involved with a Stop AIDS Project where I'd

DAVID STRACHAN:

meet with them over on 15th Street and we'd do mailings, old fashioned mailings and things.

BETSY KALIN:

I think you talked about interACT.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Oh, right. That's InterACT Advocates.

DAVID STRACHAN:

That's the group that Anne Tamar-Mattis started. I was interviewed by their communications director, their name was Hans Lindal, and they lived in San Francisco for a few years and did a nice interview of me and that's posted

DAVID STRACHAN:

on their website somewhere. Peter and I have supported them. I guess the only real involvement that I've had personally was when we had the round table in the very beginning, before it became an organization. We met at a law firm

DAVID STRACHAN:

in downtown San Francisco, Milton Diamond was there, several board members from ISNA were there. That was just the beginning to try to figure out where, where we go from here, with the information we have, and created

DAVID STRACHAN:

the first nonprofit that morphed into two more names. How I got on the ISNA board was Julie Dorf. You know Julie Dorf? Yeah. She was on the board of directors at that time and she knew that I inherited some money. She wanted me to be on the board

DAVID STRACHAN:

and we did make a sizable donation to ISNA one time. But then about two years later, they started using terminology like disorders of sex development instead intersex. A whole bunch of us activists were really upset that that happened. I'm not a disorder, but doctors like to have you

DAVID STRACHAN:

as a disorder because then they can fix you.

BETSY KALIN:

Why do you think, like there's still such stigma around being intersex? Do you think it's from the medical community or do you think it's just a simple lack of awareness and education?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yes. Lack of awareness and education. In 2007, Oprah had a program on intersex and

DAVID STRACHAN:

all the people on her show, I knew. They actually contacted me to be on the show and I even bought this really nice scarf to wear, but I never had the opportunity. I think there has been a lot of education around it. I'm just not sure the right people are hearing the message.

DAVID STRACHAN:

If we could get more Republicans on our side, and they're in a whole other world around the binary and et cetera, et cetera. But I think the medical community is at fault, although they're taking baby steps, but I think they need to take giant leaps

DAVID STRACHAN:

to save all the kids that have been surgically altered this past year. I mean, UCS does it, UCSF does it, they perform these surgeries on kids. Now I believe New York state And Massachusetts in Boston, those are the two areas where hospitals have refused to do these surgeries and that's only been recent.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I think Kimberly from InterACT had worked on those issues to get their, I guess, board of directors to cancel these surgeries.

BETSY KALIN:

What would you want someone to know if you know it, what would you want someone to know about being intersex and about being non-binary and

BETSY KALIN:

this fluidity that we don't really seem to have in our culture?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, I think it's a normal place. It's a normal experience to be intersex and non-binary, I think intersex is just part of the spectrum as is non-binary. I just hope kids that might be listening to

DAVID STRACHAN:

this interview, just really love themselves and take care of themselves. If they've been surgically altered on, go out and educate people how this is wrong. They should have the right to say what happens to their genital body. I mean, if you have

DAVID STRACHAN:

a third arm, sure. But three arm people might be acceptable in the future. It's why, if everybody believes in a God, and some of us do, and some of us don't, there's all kinds of babies that are born, and I was really shocked when I learned that 80% of

DAVID STRACHAN:

people of babies with Klinefelter's syndrome get aborted I mean, what's normal? I think some people think they know what normal is, but the normal to me is a spectrum of all possibilities. I feel like our culture is still evolving. It's an ongoing process.

DAVID STRACHAN:

But some people just want to be stuck in the past. Not me. I wanna move forward.

BETSY KALIN:

Well, I mean, I think that's part of what makes you an activist, the desire for change and to make the world better.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Absolutely. Yeah. If they got rid of the surgeries, who knows, maybe intersex wouldn't be an issue anymore.

BETSY KALIN:

I know there's so many -- I mean, even over my lifetime, there's so much change that has happened. When I was younger, people didn't even know what trans was. So I do see change happening. It's just, I wonder -- This is a question for you, I wonder, what would you want to see in the future?

DAVID STRACHAN:

No pandemic, for one. Although I don't think that's gonna happen. In the future?

DAVID STRACHAN:

I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I would hope that people would be accepted for who they are and for who they state they are and not be put down and shamed for who they are. I think there's way too much of that in our culture. I also think that the binary needs to be done away with, because

DAVID STRACHAN:

corporations are making lots of money having the binary in place, women look like this, men look like that. I get really upset that I feel embarrassed if I wanna be a little more fun with my gender. Like, why is that? I'm really glad I live in San Francisco because

DAVID STRACHAN:

you can pretty much do anything here, within limit.

BETSY KALIN:

We're nearing the end and I have some last questions to ask you, but before that, I wanted to see if there was anything that I didn't touch on that you think is important that we haven't talked about.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Wow, Keith, Peter.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yes, I would. In 2013, Intersexion was shown at the Frameline film festival at the Roxy Theater. It's really a great film. Now there's three versions of it. If people want to get a copy of it, they can go to

DAVID STRACHAN:

intersexionfilm.com. They can see a trailer and they can order a copy. I believe, Frameline also sends it to schools for educational purposes. Now, there's the original documentary, which is 44 minutes long.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Grant Lahood was a videographer, and John Keir was the producer and they were from New Zealand. It played on New Zealand TV and Air New Zealand and other things. Then Grant reformed it into a film festival version, which is

DAVID STRACHAN:

68 minutes long. That's what played in 2013. I understand they also have a 52 minute version, which is appropriate for classrooms. But now we were on for it in 2009. The narrator of it is a very, very dear friend of ours. Her name is Mani Bruce Mitchell.

DAVID STRACHAN:

She has a trust in New Zealand. When Peter and I were there in 2003, I got to show some films to the trust and meet. Yeah. I just wanted to give voice to Mani Bruce Mitchell. She's an awesome person.

DAVID STRACHAN:

We premiered her life story, which was Yellow for Hermaphrodites, Mani's Story. In 2004 at the Koret Auditorium in San Francisco's main library. We did that then I guess that then. I guess that's it.

BETSY KALIN:

Okay. Thank you because that was something I had circled to come back to and I forgot.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Ah,

BETSY KALIN:

Thank you for remembering.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Sure.

BETSY KALIN:

I have four questions and your answers are supposed to be kind of short and pippy. These are the same four questions that I ask every person that I interview. If you could tell your 15 year old self anything, what would it be?

DAVID STRACHAN:

You're okay the way you are,

DAVID STRACHAN:

and stand up tall and be proud.

BETSY KALIN:

That's great. Thank you. Do you think there's such a thing as a queer superpower, and if so, what would it be?

DAVID STRACHAN:

A queer superpower?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, probably Harvey Milk, because he's still permeating our culture and he's at our airport now. Yeah.

BETSY KALIN:

I would love to think about Harvey in a Cape.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yes, yes. And stilettos.

BETSY KALIN:

I think that's a great image.

BETSY KALIN:

Why is it important to you to tell your story?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, when I'm gone, and who knows when that will be? I think it's important to have a story somewhere. Although I've been in

DAVID STRACHAN:

a few movies, I like the back and forth conversation that we've had. I think I've had a very unusual and yet cathartic kind of life. I've been very blessed with my travels and

DAVID STRACHAN:

where I've lived, and of course, being with my hubby. I think just having our love story somewhere is very precious to me.

BETSY KALIN:

That's beautiful. I know we have so few role models who have been in relationships for almost 44 years,

DAVID STRACHAN:

Right.

BETSY KALIN:

To have that history is so important for us as a community.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yeah. It seems like they all end between years three and five.

BETSY KALIN:

Well then that's good for me because I'm in 10.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, yeah, 10 years? That's great. Congratulations.

BETSY KALIN:

And I married a Canadian.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Oh, much better.

BETSY KALIN:

All right. Then the last question

BETSY KALIN:

is OUTWORDS is the first national project to capture and share our history through in depth interviews. What is the importance of a project like OUTWORDS and then please use OUTWORDS in your answer?

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, I first came upon the term OUTWORDS archive in a

DAVID STRACHAN:

Bay Area Reporter article last September was really intrigued by the concept, and because I consider myself an elder, I'll be 75 in six months. I think it's awesome to have this mission

DAVID STRACHAN:

to collect elder stories, especially queer ones. Going forth. We need a place to have these stories, and I think OUTWORDS is doing that. I really appreciate that.

BETSY KALIN:

Great. That's perfect. Thank you so much, David. I think that's the end of our interview.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Well, I like the name of your production stuff. Itchy Bees.

BETSY KALIN:

Yeah. Itchy Bee productions.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Where did you come up with that name? Well,

BETSY KALIN:

I am Betsy and my mom is Barbara and my grandmother is Beatres, so I thought, oh, well we're all bees, but truly if you don't know the real reason it's that in pig Latin itchy bay is [inaudible].

DAVID STRACHAN:

Good job.

BETSY KALIN:

I don't tell people the real reasons.

DAVID STRACHAN:

I forgot it already.

BETSY KALIN:

Thank you so much, David. It really was a pleasure getting to spend this time with you.

DAVID STRACHAN:

Yes. I enjoyed it too.