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Bellow everyone, and welcome to being Frank. We're the only way to be is well, Frank. I'm your host, Frankleburn, and I'd like to thank you for joining us on what we like to call the Intelligent Conversation podcast, where no conversations out of bounds in all points of view are welcome. You know, we record live to tape, but I give you the date for context and relevance. It's the first of April, April Fool's Day, but we will not be fooling with our conversation today. We've got a
great one lined up for you. You know, I feel it fair to say that most Americans are feeling apprehensive about the future of this country. The economy lies mostly in tatters, with the cost of living escalating at unmanageable prices. We're also involved in an unpopular war with no defined ending in sight. President Trump and his administration seem hell bent in defining America in their terms, regardless of the consequences, and perhaps no one is feeling the pain more than
the LGBTQ plus community, and particularly transfolk. The administration's assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion is a direct attack on people whose only crime is to live their authentic cells. Their policies will erase years of gains earned through blood, sweat, and tears. That's why celebrating the Transgender Day of Visibility yesterday on March thirty first, has become more important than ever.
These people are family and friends and deserve the respect any one of us deserves and demands as we all do. They have stories to tell of their life's journeys, and here to share. Her most unique and interesting life is my friend, Abby Cohen. She grew up as a boy in a small town in the Texas Panhandle in a nineteen sixties. After graduating from high school, she came to
New York City to study at Columbia University. Distracted by her emerging gender identity issues, she dropped out of college and moved into an SRO Residency hotel on West one hundred and twelfth Street. While working as a desk clerk in the hotel, Abby began living full time as a woman on January first, nineteen eighty, at the age of twenty six. When the hotel closed, she found a job as a word processing trainee in the Central Office of
the City University of New York. In March of nineteen eighty eight, she was interviewed by Rafael Pineda on Univision, a week before her sex reassignment surgery was performed by doctor Roberto Granato at Physicians Hospital in Queen's This television appearance caused quite a stir among colleagues who had always known her as a woman. Abby would earn a BA degree from Hunter College, and by the end of her career as a database designer, she would become the administrative
equivalent of a full professor. Upon her retirement from Cuney, Abby opened the Coat of Many Colors bookstore in Nayak, declaring the venture a cultural success but a financial failure. She closed the bookstore after eighteen months of operation. Abby is currently writing a memoir and learning to draw. Welcome, Abbe. I really want to thank you for joining us today.
And thank you so much for inviting me.
You know, there's so much to be said, so much to talk about. You write frequently on social media, and your posts are well read, so well written, and so interesting, and I you know, in some ways have meant led an eventful life, but sometimes in comparison to yours, I look and I say, those are real life events, and I want to talk a little bit about them today, and I really want to thank you for sharing them with us.
Thank you.
All right, Let's go back to the beginning. Let's talk about the beginning. Your life as a boy in Texas. Tell us a little bit about that.
Well. I grew up in Panhandle, Texas. It's a small town about thirty miles northeast of Amarello in the Texas Panhandle.
And.
My mother moved there when I was one year old to get a job as a gym teacher in high school, and a couple of years later she remarried. I was not close to my stepfather, but there was a couple, a childless couple who were like godparents to me, Smokey and Emily. Smokey was a real man's man. He gave me a bb gun for my birthday one year. Emily, although she grew up there, she had lived in New York City during the twenty She was a flapper. Emily
got me tap dancing lessons. So maybe Emily saw that maybe I was a different kind of boy than other boys, So that was it.
Well, would you say your childhood was standard in a sense, especially as a boy at that time, things like boy scout sports, et cetera. Did they play any role in your life at that time?
Well?
Absolutely say maybe a little background. Christine Jorgensen, she was the first famous transgender person, and she wrote in her memoir that when she was four years old, she was so disappointed that she got a red firetruck for Christmas instead of adult which she really wanted. So that's become part of the narrative that was kind of standard for transgender people, and that goes back to Harry Benjamin, the
so called father of transgenderism. He was a sex allegists from Germany who came to this country and he came up with this diagnos differential diagnosis that there are the fetishes who get excited by ladies underwear, There are the transvestites who are attracted to women that like to wear women's clothes. There are drag queens who are attracted to men that also like to wear women's clothes, and then
there are the true transsexuals. And they fit a very specific profile and including this profile was the idea that this was something somebody was aware of all their life, from the very beginning. And so of course people seeking medical transition they read his book, and so they began to tailor their stories to meet the diagnosis. So I'm not saying that these stories aren't true for some people, but they weren't for me. And what this really comes down to is the question of whether or not gender
is something a person is born with. And uh yeah, and that's uh so, I certainly, But I had an identity as a boy. Very much as a boy. My hero was Fest Parker as David Crockett, I mean, but kind of things that attracted me to him, as you know, he was He was honest, he didn't want to break the deal with the Cherokees, who lost his seat for that.
He was helpful in the riverboat episode. He rescued that guy and his animals that were stranded on an island, you know, and then that guy showed him the short cuts. So it's kind of where I got this idea that what goes around comes around, and so yeah, and I was in Boy Scouts. I took it very seriously. I managed my imagine myself being Davy Crockett or Daniel Boone in the wilderness. So it wasn't until I was in third grade that things changed.
Tell us about that. Was there an epiphany moment? Abby? Was Was it a more gradual thing that came upon you or was there a single episode or thought a moment that made you connect if you will, if that makes sense to you.
Not really, I mean, I guess maybe part of it is we didn't have language for it back then. So now third grade, third grade, I started being teased by the boys, the other boys, and because I cried easily, and they had these hand gestures and they would do them and I didn't know what they meant, and I would start crying and I just thought it was so funny, you know, And they called me a sissy, so I guess I was a sissy boy. And that didn't what's kind of funny, is yeah, my response to that sort
of thing was to cry. But I tried to do the boy things. I went out for Little League baseball. And then when I was in fourth grade, there was this boy who was teasing me because I closed my eyes when I was trying to catch a fly, and I got so angry that I charged him, and he was like the biggest kidney class and he just pushed me aside into this thing holding up the swing set,
and I got a black eye. So that was kind of my little purple badge of courage because I acted like a boy was supposed to act with violence and anger, you know, instead of fear and crying and so but no, so I I in high school, my mother left my stepfather. I went to a much larger high school, larger town, and kind of had a chance to start over. And I reinvented myself as a hippie. And it was very important for me to grow my hair long, even like had a petition, you know, got signatures, went to the
school board. It was like really really important for me to grow my hair long. And I wore the hippie clothes, you know, like the Jimmy Hendrick shirts, that sort of thing. A lot of people assumed I was gay, but I like girls, so I knew I wasn't gay, but I didn't know what I was. There was maybe one episode when I was ten eleven, previewbescent. I would dress up on my mother's clothes and because my stepdad would take everybody else for a ride, in the country and I
got to stay home, so I don't. I mean, yes, her girl, her stockings, her dress, sometimes put her makeup on the mirror, and I would just stare in the mirror. I was looking for something. I guess I wanted to know what it felt like to be in my mother's skin, and I was looking in the mirror. I was looking for something, but I didn't know what it was.
If you couldn't, I might be retorting. How did it make you feel when you saw yourself? That? Was there? A sense of satisfaction, confusedness, This is where I need to be, this is where I want to be. Maybe I shouldn't guilt. I mean, it must have been a huge range of emotion.
Yeah, I was.
Mostly it felt queer. I mean not in the old fashioned sense of the word, not in the sense of the LGBTQ word. But it just felt I guess, a little bit, a little bit of elation. But it was just yeah, it was just it's very hard to define.
Interesting, was just incredible.
So it wasn't really until I was in college and I had a steady girlfriend that I began to understand.
Well, explain that, how did how did that turn? And the fact now you're older, you're more mature your relationship, uh head of sexualiz whme, you're still a man at this point or seen as such with a relationship with a woman. How did that start to change your head if you could?
Well, I mean in high school I had a few hit and runs, you know, as the battle of cars like boys do. But it wasn't until my sophomore year in high school, I mean college, excuse me, Columbia, that I had a steady girlfriend and it was a lot of fun at first, and I would think, and I became, you know, more acquainted with female anatomy than I had been before you close, And I think what really ruined it was that she got birth controls, she went on
the pill. And so before that we you know, we were I guess what you call it petting whatever.
You know.
It's when we started really having heterosexual intercourse that I thought, no, this doesn't feel right, this is not me. I would you know, I want to be her and uh yeah, so I know that may sound a little pervy, but yeah, that's that's when I began.
Think at all. I think it's very interesting to I have. I worked with a friend who came out years after after relationships with women and had a similar experience. At one point you said, this is just not right to feel right.
Yeah, so one time I yeah, so, I know, when I was breaking up with her, I had this thing with the guy. Took me down to the village, took me to the ninth circle, to the anvil, you know, trying to give me an idea of that community and trying to find, you know, my taste level. And spent a night night with him. But that didn't feel right either. I mean, the syntax wasn't right. It was like a double negative. It just I knew it was not a gay man. You know.
You mentioned that terminology and how it's more often changed through the years, and the what is the importance of terminology, you know, calling people, defining them, I guess in the sense or lack of a better word or concept. But how important is we used to say transvestites, for example, is not used anymore. Transsexual has changed, even the LGBTQ adds more letters, et cetera. So it's an evolving thing. So how important is the terminology? To understand?
It's basically all political. It's and again it goes back to this thing I brought up. I mean, are we born with a gender or are we like, do we get a gender? And if we develop a gender, you know, can that gender be changed? You know? I mean gender is a gender is a cultural artifact. I mean, it's kind of like a language, like I was. I was very effeminate. I mean, and I don't know. People are born with a capacity for language, and there are different languages.
Maybe people are born for capacity for gender, but that people are born with a specific gender and whether or not it should match match their you know, a sex assigned at birth, as it said, Now we don't see so it's so so the thing is so transsexual is out of vogue now. I mean I still identify as a transsexual. And I think that's largely because we don't want to privilege people who have had so called bottom surgery.
That somehow people like me aren't more real women than people who than trans women who don't want bottom surgery, which is certainly true. I mean, surgery in itself isn't something that makes anybody more or less a woman. Okay, so we have transsexual, we have transgender. We now have so called biological sex, which was being mentioned. You know by the people in this anti trans rhetoric, you know that we shouldn't have biological males in the ladies room.
You know. Of course, the problem with that is there's no standard definition for biological sex. I mean, are you talking about someone's chrominols, chromosomes? Are you talking about someone's hormone levels? Are you talking about their gonuts? You know they're reproductive organs? Are you talking about secondary sexual characteristics?
And I'm kind of skipping ahead here, but that's one of the I guess, real ironies that they that they're changing the rules for the International Olympic Committee that women have to be tested now, I mean, people have forgotten that they did that because people were suspected that the East Germans were entering men to compete in women's supports.
It's a big deal. People forget that it was a big deal, yes.
And then what they found out a lot of women found out, oh no, they were not genetically female. So I find it's interesting at least the language and these
things has changed in terms of the executive orders. Instead of saying biological sex, they're now saying the sex on the birth certificate, which in the parlance, so the queer community is sex assigned at birth as opposed to yeah, and people who people who want to live socially different than the sex that were assigned at birth are called transgender, and people who live in the gender associated with the
sex assigned at birth are called cis gender. But you know, some people you know don't like being called cis gender. They consider it a slur. But you know, it's it's just like, you know, it's just like you know a lot of times says you know, who was that person you know who is a person in college and says, oh, that's a black person. If you don't say it's a
black person, I assume it's a white person. So I mean SIS people don't like sis genders because they like cis gender should be the default for what a real gender is. Right, Sorry, I.
Don't know, this is just I'm just fascinating. I always, as I said, I love your writing. I love the fact that you share so honestly helps people to understand, and that's I think what is ultimately most important, certainly in any discussion to come to an understanding. You know, you mentioned and we mentioned it also in the intro. You did go through sexual reassignment surgery without no no, I'm looking details. But beyond the physical, how did it
change you? Did it change you? And if so, in what ways.
I can I I mean the standard answers. I felt like my real self. That's not your words. And I like to say that I did this little would it's little performance piece where I said I went from the imaginary vagina to the frank concon vagina. So I think people forget that with puberty there are radical changes that happen in the body. But they don't happen overnight. They happen gradually. And also they're happening to everybody in your peer class at the same time, so there's a lot
of support for that. I would say it was it was a radical physical change, and it wasn't like anything I imagined, I would say, And I would say that, I mean I didn't I mean I didn't regret losing a penis. I mean there was no phantom limb or anything like that. I didn't have any dreams about it. But I would say that my vagina did not become real to me until I had sexual relations with a
man who accepted me as a woman unconditionally. I mean so this is before we got this is one of the points I wanted to make in this podcast is besides being an identity and a language, gender is also a social relationship that you know, how we respond to people depends upon how we perceive their gender, you know. And again going back to the racial comparison, sometimes you see someone you say, this is African American? Are they Hispanic?
Are the East Indian? I'm not sure. Ambiguity, you know, and these so called physical traits, which are you know, kind of superfluous. It's just culturally they mean something because of our history, because you know, you know, the history of slavery, the history of the of the genocide of American Indians, or the history of imperialism, you know, the British Empire. You know, that's why these you know, these so called races or ethnicities means something, you know. But
it's the same with men and women. I mean, the way that we respond to people depends upon the way we gender them. And so I would say my feeling is I didn't become a woman until people began treating me as a woman. But the other side of that is I didn't get treated as a woman unless I acted the way women were expected to behave. So I kind of went from one bar to another box. You know, that's the nature of a society. I mean, I don't. I mean, if you want to know why, I mean,
why should gender be privileged? You know, in terms of identity, driver's license, par certificates, passports about something like eye color. Well, it's only because of the society we live in. It's because men. Like I said, gender is a social relationship and which in which men are privileged. I mean, that's what it's all about.
Not like your thoughts on one of the things that I observe, if you will, Often I see trans when gender women who tend to sexualize their femininity glamorous poses,
you know, glamorous jewelry, makeup, et cetera. And sometimes I wonder if that's the right approach as well, too, to be overly sexualized, where where women are looking for a certain identity of equality, but yet trans women are going into the traditional what you like you were saying, they make themselves look their image of what a traditionally glamorous woman might be.
Your thoughts on that, uh, are you paying attention to how thirteen year old girls dress?
That's that's amazing to me. Absolutely, Yes, it's a phase, you know, want to.
What can I say? There's nothing I can say about that when someone first comes out, they want to be Yeah, just trying things on.
I was gonna say, is that it's it's that kind of burst of freedom that you're really spreading wings. Just trying to understand that's.
Part of it. But I mean they're women like I don't know, Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, I mean, who trying to be flirtatious, you know, way past her prime. I mean, yeah, so I don't. I mean, I hear what you're saying, but I mean I can't say anything negative about it. But yeah, but that's but that's the problem. See, I would say socially, there's a difference. I did not grow up with a mother telling me you can't do this, you can't do that. A lady doesn't do this, A
lady doesn't do that. I mean, And so sometimes there are cracks and my facade and my performance. I use words I shouldn't. And I had one friend tell me that, you know, women never say tits, women say boobs. You know, there's little things like that. So when you don't grow up with the kind of social conditioning when you don't have this inner voice that tells you got to behave then of course, yeah, but yes, I think that's where that's coming from.
I really appreciate appreciate that answer, and again comes to come to an understanding. We talk a little bit about your husband and your relationship with him, if if I remember correctly, he was an Orthodox Jew. When you often associate your situation in an Orthodox any Orthodoxy, ultra Christian, ultra Jewish, Muslim, etc. That seems to me there would
be bound to be some level of conflict. But yet it's obvious to me through your writings and speaking with you and knowing you you loved each other very much. Talk a little to that, you know, getting into a situation that was loving but also dangerous, if you will.
Yes, well, I came to Judaism separately. I mean it was Actually maybe I shouldn't say that. It is very common for people who go through gender transition to change religions, and I guess partly because I feel that the belief system they grew up with wasn't meaningful anymore. So, Actually this isn't unusual at all. But I two years after the surgery. I was invited to a boss s mitzvah and I had some kind of experience, and there was a synagogue I would pass on the way home that
had a beginner service. Happened to be a modern Orthodox synagogue, Lincoln Square Synagogue. I'll say that out loud. Now, A lot has changed in twenty five or thirty. This was nineteen ninety, so that's what that's like thirty six years now. Yes, And the beginner service was actually designed for people who grew up without any kind of foundation. But the programming was perfect for someone who didn't know anything about Judaism. I like to say I was a dolphin that got hot in the tunanette.
You know.
They weren't fishing for me, but they got me, you know, they was what want? Yeah, And when I started keeping coach. So the man that became my husband, he worked in the Kosher Delhi around the corner from where I lived, and I would go there and I always like they sold chicken in quarters and I like tops, and he would flirt with me. He would say, like tops for a top lady, And sometimes he gave me a little extra chicken. His name was Mendel By the way and
one day, oh, so there was this thing. Oh, this is really intimate. But so I started to ask about conversion, and I found out that my history would be a problem for an Orthodox conversion, and I prayed to God. I said, if you know, maybe this isn't what you wanted for my life, but I've come so far. Please let me know love is a woman, even if it's only for a year or two. And then I'll do whatever I have to do to become Jewish. So you
have to mind understand my mindset. And so that week Mendel asked for my phone number, I said, and he was like twenty years older than me. And I'm like, God, this is who you send me? A daily worker, twenty years old enough to be my father, but my number. And I think he's going to say, you know, you want to go up for drinks, maybe dinner, And he says, I want you to come to Brooklyn for Shavis and meet my father. And that's how I knew he was
the one. Okay, that's that's a big deal. Yes, And when I yeah, also, I mean I went with this total stranger. Turned out I was he's staying in his apartment, not his sister and yeah, and when I told him, I said, well, well we'll slow down. And I said, there's something I have to tell you. I wasn't born a girl. And she says, it only makes me love you more because I see how much painess this cost you.
So yeah, but then things happened, right, so he was part of He was like, he came from this very religious family that goes back for generations Lithuania, then Jerusalem and then Brooklyn. And of course he's awesome. I don't know. I think he wanted to get caught. That's what he said.
In the end.
He knew it would come out in the end, and it did. But yeah, So and we lived in Borough Park, a very regimented community, and I wore a wig. I wore you know, skirts below my knees and blouses it came down past my elbows. And it's kind of funny because just because I know something. Somebody once said that because of the wigs and the heavy makeup and the
heavy jewelry, that the acidic women look like transvestites. And there's a certain truth to that, but yeah, but it's like it's kind of because they just looked at superficial things like the way I was dressed. My husband's ex wife was much more suspicious. She would say, why can't you say you're chuffs? I mean that's you know, it's a Jewish consonant, which isn't you know, part of the English language or certain like I say, there were cracks
in my first thoughts. People assumed, you know, that I was about to call a balchuva, someone who didn't grow up religious but became religious. So yeah, so and then uh they' and then my husband is diagnosed with cancer died eighteen months later. So his husband, his family found out about my past. Most of them shunned him. And so after he was done, after he died, and I mean, like I said, he was the one who made me real.
I mean, he chose me over his own children when they gave him an ultimatum, you know, and he accepted me as a Jewish woman. You know, I wasn't legally Jewish. I wasn't, you know. And so anyway, I was grieving, and but I remembered my promise to God. So I said, okay, so now I'm going to be the Jewish, whatever it takes, I would say in retrospect, it was also kind of
an active grief what I did. But anyway, so so I went to the rabbis, and although there was a loophole, there was always a loophole in Jewish law that would
have allowed me to convert as a woman. No one was willing to say that publicly, and so they were all saying what to the highest authorities in Israel, and they're always saying, well, I would have to that I was still according to Jewish law male, and I would have to accept all of the Mitzvahs commandments that men have to do that women don't have to do because they take care of children, like praying three times a day.
And there's also there's a specific biblical injunction against cross dressing, so I would have to wear men's clothes. I would have to be on prey on the men's side of the synagogue. And I don't think anybody thought I would actually do that. So yeah, so let's say it did not work out at all. It was uh, it's it was very disillusioning for me that these people have these rules and I say, we have nothing against you personally,
it's just we have these rules. And then when I follow the rules, then no, no, we can't have this because you know, you're obviously doesn't matter how you address your office like the woman. So I'm sorry, I even forget what the question was at this point.
So no, No, that's very important that how you after the death of Mendel, your husband, and you keeping your promises and yet still not finding the satisfaction in it that you really, I think were seeking. If I might say that.
Yeah, I would say it's kind of interesting. Again, it depends gender is culturally specific. I don't know if you remember. There was a movie and then early nine he called The Stranger among Us with Milanie Griffith, and she was working undercover in this Jewish community where there's a murder
and she's like the ultimately liberated woman. I mean, she's a police officer and she has a gun, right, she has this phallic symbol, and she goes into this community where there's a very different definition of what it means to be a man. And I don't know if I'd known about that, I would have this interest earlier that I couldn't be couldn't have been happy living as a Jewish man, you know, instead of growing up in Texas with cowboys and oil men and that sort of stuff.
I don't know, but anyway, but yeah, but that that ship sail and yeah, so I mean I definitely did not want to continue living in Borough Park as the widow Cohen. I wanted to go on with my life and I couldn't do that in an older Orthodox community.
So well, I'm when you talk a little about your moved to Tanaiak and making that change, but before we do that, and we do that after the break, but before the break, you mentioned being revealed to his family. Tell us about how you revealed yourself as a woman to your family and what was how did that happen, how did you go about that and what was their reaction?
Okay, well, so I guess the first person that knew about my proclivities was my college girlfriend, and she was not into that. And so I went to see a college counselor who says, well, it's perfectly normal. Normal. I mean a lot of men, you know, get erotically aroused by wearing women's clothes and that, Okay, this is not the person I need to speak to. H And when I dropped out, I had moved into this residential hotel which had all kinds of people, which didn't have the
same kind of rules that I grew growing up. There was yeah, there were some transgender women living there. But what really made a difference for me was the movie Outrageous about a drag queen, and I thought, well, if she can perform as a woman on stage, why can't I do that in real life? Well, I mean, it doesn't really work that way. But I found this person in the Village Voice who was a coach for transsexual and transvestites to help them pass in public, you know.
And I made the transition there in this hotel, and I think and of course men assumed if I was wearing a dress and lipstick, then then I must want a man in my life, right, you know. So that that was scary, you know, Thank god I survived. And then by the time the hotel closed, I was able to get an office I passed well enough to get an office job. So yeah. So my mother was one of the first people I told during this period of transition, and she told me that I it's like I put
a knife in her back. I could not be a daughter, I could not be a sister, And nobody spoke to me for three years. So I'm not one to hide my light under a bushel. So this was like a year after I started working at Cunie. I went back from my jeniorar high school reunion and I said, do you want to see me or not? I kind of put my family on the spot. Yeah, I mean, I mean I'm always testing people. You know, it's guilt, something I'm guilty of. But my mother did something very funny.
She told one person who was a horrible gossip and I told everybody else, so everybody knew I was coming. And like I said, this was nineteen eighty three, this was I mean, there had been Christine Jorkinson, there had been Renee Richards, but this was before being friends was the kind of thing it is today, and so people didn't know how to react. I think they were mostly curious, you know, so that I know that kind of repaired your relationship. I would say this that my mother ultimately
accepted me as her child. And I know that because she remembered me in her will. She wanted me to know that she left me as much as she did her other two children. But I don't think she completely forgave me for taking away her son. You know, mothers and son. That's a very special aunt, and we never did the kind of things that mothers and daughters do when they're growing up. So that's and that's the thing
about Like I said, gender is a social relationship. The relationship between a mother and a son and a mother and a daughter is very different. So that was but I mean, I was very happy that we were reconciled, but I was, Yeah, I think in her mind I wasn't the person that she knew growing up.
If I might found it interesting, believe it or not. In a Crazy Family Guy cartoon, okay, one of the main characters is the sex fiend Quagmire Big as you well know, and if you know the plotline at all, his father starts out as this macho fighter pilot and he transitions to a woman. What are your thoughts on this?
There was an interesting conversation where the father is speaking boldly and how he's come out and he feels strong about it, and he's he's been transitioning it, certainly in his own mind for years, and Quagmire says, but what about me. I don't know where I don't know where I fit in, And you know, you don't have children as I don't, So it's again maybe a rhetorical but I just thought the reaction, especially when I see other people who have transitioned, who are parents and transitioned later
in life, and the struggles. Sometimes I think there is acceptance but then also understanding. And I thought, for that moment in a brief in a crazy comedy thing, there was that poignant moment and he said, well, I don't know how to deal with this. You've had time to deal with this. Now you're asking me to do it on the spot, and I can't. Just kind of your thoughts on that, I think.
If if I had to do it again, I wouldn't have done that. I think I didn't I And why did I do it? I don't know. I mean because I wanted people to know the truth that I wasn't a gay guy in high school, that I was at this secret desire I wasn't aware of to be a woman and to sort of rewrite history by going back.
But I recognize now there was a certain emotional violence in doing that, you know, and maybe it was unreasonable to ask people who had only know me as male to accept me as female and then the same but the same thing happened when I when I moved to the men's side of the synadogue. I had a very good friend, Susan, who was with me when I was in the hospital. She was like a second mother to me,
and she just could not accept that. I mean, they were And of course the thing is because you know, when they met me, they met me as a woman, and they gendered me as a woman, and they related me to as a woman. So for them for me to put on this facade, it was a violent thing. And I have no answer for that. I mean, I think this is really an attribute of our society that
we is again, I mean, Ginger's a social relationship. How we gender people depends a lot on how we feel about the relationship, and that's really what makes it so hard. I wish we had seemed to be moving in a direction that was more fluid, and now we seem to be regressing, and I think that's really unfortunately.
Yeah, it absolutely is just one again rhetorical questions.
I have a funny thing to ask, I to tell you, so please do so. I have this half sister I did not grow up with my father's side, who came to visit me, and so she did not know me as a boy and she is much more accepting. But you know, and we had these conversations and she was very supportive. And then when I told her that I was interested in Judaism, She's saying.
Why in the hell do you want to become at you?
So, I mean it's not just gender. There are other identities that people find it very difficult.
Well, you know I brought that up. Could you choose a little more difficult or orthotoxy to boot to make it a little more difficult yourself? But be that as it may. Just one more question, if you will. Again it's a rhetorical nature. Your opinion is so valid and your honesty has just been so wonderful. Do you see yourself? And again this as a rhetorical I hope I'm stating it properly. Do you say yourself as kind of a before and after, almost as like two distinct people? Or is it something?
So what I found out now, what I found out, I mean it's evolved. I mean people's identities evolve. I mean you certainly, I think you yours has professionally, your family's expectations, you know, and the things that you know you would that you didn't the choices. The things you didn't do you would have liked to have done. The things you do you didn't know you were were going
to do. So I think what I found out when I moved to the men's side of the synagogue is I had investments in male identity and I did not realize that because saying, like Davy Crockett being my childhood hero, I would say if I described myself now as someone who's bigendered or well, the term is I forget non binary, right, That's what they say, non binary. But for me, it's not neither nor and it's not in between. It's not androgenists.
It's just there are times when I think of myself as a woman and there are times when I think of myself as a man. I mean, if I'm shoveling snow, I'm shoveling snow as a guy. I'll tell you that. You know, if I'm fixing something with tools, I'm doing it as a guy.
You know.
But but you know, like Bob Dylan's song, you know she what is it? She breaks like a little girl.
But yeah, just like but she breaks just like a little girl.
Yeah, yeah, So you know, I may be a little butcher on the streets. But I'm fim beneath the sheets and the problem is, you know, but to be legible, I mean, to be legible, I have to pick a line. I mean, I'm not brave enough to live publicly is non binary and to use you know, they then pronouns like that, and I prefer she her she. Yeah. To be legible, I have to publicly identify as a woman.
So I usually don't talk about being non binary because it's just this is a very hard thing for people to relate to.
Well, yeah, I My thought is it's just kind of hard enough to be one person, uh to one, it's one person to one person, and try to be everything to everybody just not going to work out for me, that's for sure, Abby. I just really appreciate We've got more to talk about. We talk about the future. I want to talk about some of these and you mentioned how we're retrogressing at least politically. You want to talk
a little bit about your feelings towards that. I want to talk about your your move to Nayak and your your bookstore, and also your yours your vision for the future, both personally and professionally. Glad to hear whatever you can share with us, so uh don't go anywhere. Yeah, okay, please, this has been absolutely terrific. I'm your host, FRANKL. Bonna. This as Being Frank. My very special guest is Abby Cohen.
It's truly intelligent conversation today. Don't go back with the second portion of our program right after these brief commercial messages.
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Welcome back to Being Frank, the Intelligent Conversation podcast. Thanks for sticking with us. I'm your host, Frank Ubono and as always our engineer as the mailman, mister Neil Richter. We bring our audience a fresh topic every week and we stream from Hudson River Radio, located and beautiful and historic Stony Point, New York. But remember you can catch Being Frank anywhere you get your favorite podcasts like Apple, Spotify,
iHeartRadio and all the others. And because every Being Frank is archived, you can listen to any of our programs anytime you like. You can find a link to Being Frank on the Hudson River Radio Facebook page or at our website, Hudson Riverradio dot com. Just click and you're there. We're back with our very special guest, my friend Abby Cohen, and we're celebrating Transgender Day of Visibility, and Abby is giving us plenty of that sharing her life story with us.
We so appreciate her honesty and integrity. It's just wonderful. Anyway, let's we talked a little bit about the past. Let's bring things up to the future. You wound up in Nayaka is where I first met you, and you had a bookstore. What brought you from Texas? And if you might we have a little bit of time, so I've got to do the funny story of you and I and our Abbot and Costello team. When I first met you and you said, oh, I'm from the Panhandle. Oh
I'm from Panhandle, Texas. And I was thrilled because I was in the Panhandle. And he said that's great, No, this is Panhandle. I said, yeah, the Panhandle. No, the town. James anyway, got like a band app in catchtell routine, who's on first? But what I just thought you could share that with folks that you've come such a long way from the small town in Texas, then New York City, Brooklyn for a short time, and now Nayak and now
New Jersey. Actually for a short time in Nyack. How did you wind up here where you are now?
Okay? Well, I right, so Manhattan for a long time. Brooklyn. When I got married, Queen's to annoying my husband's family, and when I got tired of that, I wanted to buy a house. I had dogs. I had a problem with my landlord. I mean, buying a house because you have dogs maybe the worst decision. I have very few regrets in my life. One was not going to Hunter College. As soon as I started working at Cuney. I wanted my Ivy League degree. That was part of my identity
I would not let go of. The other regret was buying a house and Spring Valley, of all places, but that was where I could afford to buy a house. It was theoretically and communing distance of New York City. I mean it was like two hours each way. It wasn't fun. And then I decided, no, I don't want to live in Spring Valley for the rest of my life. I didn't know anybody except the taxi drivers, so and I heard about Nayak. It was a cool place. I moved there, and when I retired from Cuney, I opened
a bookstore I had been. I don't know if you're familiar with the Last Picture Show. It was written by Larry McMurtry, made into a motion picture by Peter Bogdanovich. Yeah, so Marchery grew up in the town much like mine, although twenty years earlier. But he got rich and famous and he went back and he bought up a bunch of buildings. He turned them into bookstores. So that's I guess kind of where I got the idea of having
a bookstore. I'm also I'm not a big joiner. I kind of like to be the big cheese, so I kind of wanted to create a community around myself. And also, bookstores traditionally have been a meeting place for queer people. I mean before before stonewall bars and bookstores. There aren't many of them left anymore. I guess people have too many of their options. So I created I mean the name of my bookstore and Hebrew Katona passim the coat
of many colors. That is the phrase used to describe the coat that Jacob gave his son Joseph the coat of many colors made into the Technicolor Dream Code.
Right, Yes, Joseph and the technical dream Code. Yes, I remember. I mean Joseph is.
Kind of a queer character. I've identified with him, so and yeah. So I mean it was I never said this out loud. It was a queer Jewish bookstore, and so.
A little niche, I would say, a little nichi, a little too n Yeah.
Someone someone once told me, it says, this looks like your personal library. That's true. So I was unfortunately, I mean, I didn't know anything about retail. I was a bureaucrat. I worked with computers. I worked for a large public organization. I did not market myself well, starting with the name, my signage and everything. And I worked with someone from New York State Small Business Association. But it was I mean, well, I would like to say it was a cultural success.
I had open mics, I had art exhibitions, I had music. I had a lot of people come to my bookstore. It's everything I dreamed about it. But it was a financial failure. I did not sell enough books, and I certainly could have done a better job. I could have and what I realized when I found out how much work retail was. I decided I didn't want to spend my life trapped in that bookstore. I mean I would have had to be open six days a week, ten hours a day. I would have had to market more aggressively.
I would have had to try to sell the things that people wanted to buy and some of the kind of things people wanted to read. But that it was great. It was a great experience. I mean, I I had retired, I had the money to do it. I decided there was so much I was going to spend before I gave up. And so no regrets about that.
Regrets, you know.
So I met you, right, That's how I met.
You, Yes, exactly, and Fross and yeah, Rustling and the whole and the whole gang.
Yeah, I mean, in a way, it was coming out. It's the thing I do, like, you know, like going to my high school reunion, like uh, living in Queens and bugging my husband's family, kind of getting into people's faces. And I was, yeah, it was kind of a way to be. Actually, I did have an agenda. I went to show people that a transgender person could be a business owner. They could be, you know, a player in
the community. You know, apart from the Price Center. I mean, the Price Center does great work, they have great programming. I mean they've brooken you know, the boards and her staff at don a wonderful job. But I went, I want to show the world in this case, my audience was nayak that a transgender person could be someone could be an important part of the community.
Before the break and we were talking a little bit about the policies of this administration, and we've taken major steps backwards in so many ways, and certainly in the area of LGBTQ rights and particularly with trends people one I want to kind of concentrate on. I think of all of them, they're in the bathroom bills, the military athletes, etc.
But the one involving youth gender reassignment surgery. And it's just recently, I mean today, or yes, very recently, as of our taping, the Supreme Court knocked down a decision I believe by a lower Colorado court that was preventing gender reassignment surgery. Your thoughts on that would have made a big difference in your life to have changed at an earlier time. Were you really truly ready for it? Is there a pathway that people who feel like you
did as a kid should follow. That's holistic, that treats mind and body.
But let me, okay, I am going to speak briefly to the other issues. Let's say the bathroom bill. Of course, I've heard, you know, on Facebook about cisterns or women who people are thinking are men. You know, this is a total disaster. But the point of it is all of this anti trans Rhetorican legislation is being pushed by the Heritage Foundation. They were the same organization that for decades worked to overturn Roe v. Wade, and now they're doing so. What this is really all about is controlling
women's bodies in the spaces they occupy. That's what this is really about in any of these bathroom bills, Military, sports, children, That's what it's about. It's about re establishing the privilege of white men, you know, are just beef. You like the military, I mean, the military has traditionally been a pathway to citizenship. Well, today the Supreme Court is hearing a case about, you know, some kind of exception to birthright citizenship. This is all about delegitimatizing certain kinds of
people who are not white Christian. Okay, As far as children goes, that's a tough one. I would say, first of all, adolescents do a lot of stupid things. They get drunk, they wreck cars, they kill people, they use drugs, they get addicted, they have unprotected sex, they get ads, they get pregnant. Adolescents do the CIS gender, non queer, straight adolescens do a lot of stupid things. They can
have an impact on the rest of their lives. So while it's true there are people who transitioned when they were children who've regretted, who get paraded around as proof. Well, I'm just saying. I mean a lot of kids make mistakes, and it's a very small number of people that regret it,
I think. Okay. But on the other hand, I think part of the problem is the medicalization of transgender And it's like the problem with anything, like if the kid is diagnosed to be ADHD, then you give them riddling right. It's this idea that we can solve any kind of social problem with a drug. I don't so. I think the problem is, yes, would if life had been different? I mean, well, I don't regret my life as a boy because being a girl in the Texas Panhandle in
the nineteen sixties for quite frankly sucked. Okay, so there, But you know, if I was a child today, what I feel differently? Maybe now now there's the language for it, now that there are therapists, practitioners that work with us. So I guess, I guess My concern is once you stick a kid with a diagnosis like they're transgender, then you try to facilitate things. I mean, what is that gatekeeping?
Like?
I don't know, so what I think? And again it comes to back to this idea that there's something essentially different between men and women, and it's something that's innate. It's not, you know, something that we're born with or something that's established in the first three years of life, and we have to pick a lane for them, you know. That's what I That's what I think the danger is. Otherwise, I think kids, you know, and the kind of thing.
I don't think hormone blockers are particularly dangerous taking harmone with harmoned just later and no one has surgery before eighteen years of age, for sure. So this idea that you know, little Tommy goes to school as a boy and comes back as a girl, it's just completely ludicrous. But what I want to say is I think kids should allowed to be kids. They should be able to explore their gender identity. That if they want, a boy wants to wear dress and pearls, he should be allowed.
She she, they should be allowed, you know, and traditionally tom girls have been giving much more leeway than boys.
But I mean, but what I was going to mention that generally speaking, tom girls or tom boys as they call them, or more generally more accepted than as you even called herself, sissy boys. Why is that? Just briefly, why do you think that?
I think men feel threatened. That's why very well I think I said, Oh, could I be like that? I don't know, I don't. I mean, what are really find disturbing is government getting involved with something which traditionally has been a parental concern that I mean, we had I think the case that was actually decided in Colorado was conversion therapy is legal. It was eight to one basically on First Amendment, right, so that you know that if parents want to send their their kids to conversion therapy,
they should be allowed to do that. Well, okay, if that's true, then why shouldn't parents be able to authorize gender affirming procedures for their children if that's what they think is best for their children. I mean, I don't you shouldn't have it both ways. But the people who are pushing these things are the people that want to say that we live in a world where men are men and women are women, and a man can't become a woman and a woman can't become a man, and
there's nothing in between. I mean, that's what's driving all of this.
I mean, before we close that, give you a chance and think about it for a moment, if you will, if you'd like to, but give us three words that best describe you. Just three words.
Well maybe one. I hope I'm authentic, so it would be authentic.
Okay, two, that's one word we got. You got two more to go?
Oh, they could be said I had.
No three, Just three words. Okay, authentic?
What else? I don't know? Pious?
Okay, that's two. I'll give you a chance. We get two. When what about a third? One?
Compassionate, terrific.
There you go, it wasn't so hard, right. You roll those things to your friends, you know, it's we love Abby for Abby, and I think that's uh uh, that's damn good enough, right Abby. You know, we want to thank you for being Frank, which this was truly intelligent conversation. Abby was so honest, so interesting. I really really do appreciate it.
Thank you. It's a real pleasure of being here. And thank you so much for giving me a platform. I really giving me an opportunity to speak my truth.
And you certainly you certainly did. We really really appreciate it, we do, you know. Of course, we offer special thanks to our listeners. They take time to give us a voice in their lives. Remember, we offer fresh topic just about every week. Catch us wherever and whenever you get your favorite podcasts. It's Apple, Spotify, all the others. Check us out on the Hudson River Radio Facebook page. You
can like us and leave us a comment too. We also ask you that you consider sharing Being Frank with others. You know, because we stream, you can share us all over the world if you like. We'd like you to do that. You know, always leave you with two last things. A slogan that I think is appropriate and some great original music. This is from Laverne Cox when she said I think trans women and trans people in general show everyone that you can find what it means to be
a man or woman on your own terms. A lot of what feminism is about is moving outside of roles and moving outside of expectations of who and what you're supposed to be to live a more authentic life. Okay, we've got some great original music from my friend Bob Narcission this great album, The Inconvenient Desography with I understand for our engineer, mister Neil Richter, you know him as
the male Man. I'm your host, Frank Lebono. We hope to have you join us on the next being Frank, We're the only way to be is Frank.
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Little wend lovebody what it is? Once again, I don't understand. You don't know. Understand? Got a man.
Where the mads God stus all ride lie you better say once to get in anywhere?
Understand. Thanks Rivers.
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