Transcript of Barbara Satin

From the Long View: LGBT Elders and Experts Speak, Episode Three

You’re listening to the third in a five-part series of interviews conducted by Amber Hollibaugh at the National Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Aging Roundtable in February 2007. Amber Hollibaugh is the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s senior strategist and LGBT aging expert.

For transcripts, photos and more, check out www.theTaskForce.org.

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AMBER HOLLIBAUGH
Where do you see yourself in 15 years?

BARBARA SATIN
(laughs) I’m Barbara Satin, I’m from Minneapolis, and actually very active within the transgender community but also within the local GLBT community. Mm — active nationally within the church community. I have the honor of sitting on the executive council for the United Church of Christ, which is the governing body of the church. Which I think is an honor simply because it shows the openness of the church to, uh, actually extend itself to someone who’s transgender and put me in the position that I’m in. My activities primarily focus around the church activities, around aging issues and trans issues in general.

Where do I see myself in 15 years? I’m 72 years old. That would make me . . . 87. I think I probably see myself in one of the facilities I’ve helped create (laughs) that’s open and affirming to — to who I am. And, uh, that they will not bat an eye when I say I need my nails done or I need to have a permanent or I need a new nightgown. I hope that’s where I am.

AMBER
Is that part of why you do your — this work, is that you couldn’t find a place as it now exists that you would feel safe and valued?

BARBARA
No, not really. The reason I started into doing this work had to do with a transgender woman who came to Spirit of the Lakes Church, the church I attend in Minneapolis, and was attending as Gail, and at home one Sunday evening she suffered a stroke, and in order to get the services that she needed both immediately and post her stroke, she had to go back to being Glen. And it made us realize that we needed to think about the aging issues that are gonna face LGBT people as they, as they get old and are in need of services from others.

The point many people make — we have a human rights act in Minnesota that protects gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. And people would ask Gail, “Why didn’t you fight?” And the fact is that when you are in a situation like she was in, a medical emergency, or where you’re in a crisis where you need somebody else to help you, you’re not gonna fight. You may win the battle and lose the war.

So we realized that we had to do something more than just sit back and, and say, “Oh, how sad this is.” We had to really begin doing some work around aging issues because it’s a — it’s an issue that a lot of the GLBT community just won’t even think about. So we formed GLBT Generations as a way of educating both the broader community, the service providers — health, social services — but also the GLBT community about what’s involved as you get older and what are the things you have to be thinking about, and what are the services that you want and need.

When we started Generations, we had this grandiose vision of having a nursing home, an assisted living facility, a whole campus of services. And we realized very quickly that we had no expertise and no resources to do that. But interestingly enough, about four years after Generations started, Spirit of the Lakes Church is in a very, uh, an area of Minneapolis that’s, the development has just gone crazy. So our property became very, very valuable. We were approached by developers who wanted to take over our property, send us to the suburbs, buy us out and allow us to build a new church in the suburbs and they’d build a Borders or a Starbucks or whatever.

The neighborhood didn’t want that. The neighborhood was heavily Latino and Somali. They had great ethnic businesses. They wanted people to be there. They wanted residents. So we said, “We’re gonna stay.” The church, because of Generations, decided that it would use its property to build a cooperative unit for GLBT seniors. And that’s where I’m spending a lot of my time, is around that project. And we hope to begin construction at the end of this year. It’ll be 41 units of limited equity co-op, so that it’s a mixture of market rate housing and subsidized housing.

On top of that, Spirit of the Lakes Church will have its new church in the first floor of this building. It’ll be owned separately from the co-op. So if this all goes through, everybody’s gonna really benefit from it. The advantage of it to the GLBT community is it begins to have them realize that there are people who are getting older, and that they have to prepare for that and that there are opportunities — ’cause housing is such an important part of the aging process. A safe, secure place where they can feel comfortable and affirmed and welcomed, and this will be a community — it’s marketed to the GLBT community but we’re also hoping that it’ll be a mixture of gay and straight, but people who are welcoming to be with each other and welcoming to the GLBT community.

AMBER
For you as an LGBT person, what are you most concerned about in terms of your own aging issues?

BARBARA
Well, as a trans woman I guess the issues that I face are concern that I won’t be treated respectfully, that services that I receive will be not affirming of who I am and that I’m gonna have to fight for services. If Generations does its work well, we will have accomplished maybe removing some of those barriers. And that’s, uh, that sort of motivates me to do what I’m doing.

But you know, health care for trans people is very difficult, very challenging, because we have incongruent bodies that oftentimes people have difficulties wrapping their minds around the fact that, you know, I had prostate cancer a year ago and, uh, had surgery and it, you know, that’s just not something trans women are supposed to have. Like cervical cancer is not something trans men are supposed to have. And the other, maybe more minor, uh, health issues that are still incongruent to the biological sex are challenges for health care providers. And for service providers. Social service providers.

So that’s my concern, that I’ll not have the treatment that I believe I deserve, and respectful treatment and affirming treatment.

AMBER
Speak about what you’re most concerned about in terms of the broader issues in the community, in our community, both trans-specific and then kinda the broader LGBT or questioning community. ’Cause I don’t think questioning stops at 20.

BARBARA
Mm-hmm. The broader issues? I think that, particularly within the, uh, the gay community as opposed to the lesbian community, I think there’s still a great reluctance to even think about aging. And it’s a heavily youth-oriented culture, you know, even when you’re 40, 50 and 60 years old, you’re still — you’re thinking about the young part of your life. And I think that’s an issue for the gay community, is to get them to understand what they need to be thinking about as far as their future goes.

And I love the model that so many in the lesbian community project, and that is respect for age. That age is something that you have earned and you — the respect that needs to go with it.

I remember one day sitting at a local GLBT bar in St. Paul and a lesbian came up to me and she said, “You are a perfect crone.” And my reaction was, “Did you just insult me?” I didn’t say that to her, but I looked perplexed, obviously, and she said, “Go home and look that up.” So I did, and I realized she paid me just the highest compliment. The idea of respecting age is something that’s so foreign to the American culture that, you know, those who work on that issue need to really be pioneers on it and need to out there really working on people accepting age as something not only inevitable but it’s something to look forward to.

The greatest experiences of my life have come after age 60. I shouldn’t say they’re the only great experiences, but they have been just magnificent experiences after, after 60. As long as I have the vitality and the energy and the health, I’ll keep doing this work primarily to get people to understand that aging is a wonderful part of the life process and, uh, not something to be dreaded but something to be prepared for.

AMBER
When you were 30, could you have imagined yourself at the age that you are now?

BARBARA
Oh, when I was 30 I still was thinking that being transgender was this horrible, horrible thing — that I was cursed by God. And it wasn’t until I was 60. I went to a therapist for the first time when I was 60 years old. My son asked me to go. He’s also a therapist. It was an incredible experience because I realized quickly from her conversations with me that I’m created by God this way and it’s up to me to decide whether this is a curse or a blessing. And so I made it a blessing.

I have been blessed by the fact that I’m able to be out, and there are a lot of my brothers and sisters who aren’t, and I feel I have an obligation, since I am able to be out and since I have access that others may not have, to be a presence in both the queer and the straight community. And I live in an area of Minnesota where transgender rights are protected. So I have the ability to be out and about in places where in other parts of the country you couldn’t do that.

But it’s important for the trans community particularly to be present in the broader community, because until people understand who we are and get to know us, they just can’t wrap their minds around what this is.

AMBER
What do you think needs to most be paid attention to in terms of the broadest aging issues that our community faces?

BARBARA
I guess I would think that it’s the understanding that while all of us are human beings and we all age, that there are specific issues to the process of aging for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. And for the most part policymakers and decision-makers locally and nationally don’t understand that. We’re just older people. And the things that fit the straight community older people better work for us.

And they — some cases, yes, some of those issues are true. But for the most part there are some specific issues for the GLBT community that nobody wants to pay attention to. And I think the broadest issue that I’ve seen is trying to get the attention of the broader community, particularly decision-makers, about the differences between aging as a gay, lesbian, bisexual and [sic] transgender person and aging as someone in the straight community.

That’s why the [National LGBT Aging] Roundtable work that I’ve experienced over this weekend has been just incredibly rewarding but also energizing. Because I see the Roundtable as being this coming together of resources that just are incredible and are just so unknown to the rest of the community. And I think, you know, we owe it to the broader GLBT community to take the Roundtable and make it something that can move decision-makers. That we can use the creativity and the energy of the people who are involved with the Roundtable to move decision-makers to enact laws, enact policies that respect who we are.

AMBER
I think the distinct and unique characteristics within our community often get lost in the G, the L, the T, the B, so we become generic in those categories. So as a trans woman, what is it that people really need to understand that’s unique and specific, different perhaps than a trans man or similar, but is unique to the way that you’ve organized your understanding of yourself and how that intersects with aging?

BARBARA
Well, obviously one of the challenges we face with the acronym GLBT is the fact that it tends to get people focused on sexual orientation rather than identity. And that’s a — you know, that’s a significant issue that the trans community has to defuse before we can even get people to think about what gender identity is all about. Once we get past people thinking, “Oh, you’re gay,” then we can begin to actually have some conversations about who we really are and why we really are.

So I think that’s a significant issue. And it’s a significant issue from the standpoint of those who are gonna be providing us services. They just don’t have a clue as to what we are and why we are and who we are. And we need to do a much better job of educating them around the differences.

AMBER
Is there anything else that you feel is important to add?

BARBARA
Yeah, I do. One of the significant things that we as a queer community have to be aware of is the fact that as many people age, they are looking for a continued connection or a reconnection to a spiritual base. That’s why the — the welcoming church movement that the, uh, the Task Force is involved with is so important. It’s important for the broad GLBT community, but as, as people age, they begin to look towards end-of-life issues and, uh, for many they want a reconnection if they’ve had a severance of that connection. Or they want to make sure that the connection that they currently have is strong for them.

So I think the faith issues that the GLBT community faces just get exacerbated as people get older because they’re looking for something to sort of help them bring a culmination to their life on a broader base than just running out of time.

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Barbara Satin being interviewed by Amber Hollibaugh. Produced by Rebecca Fureigh for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Check out www.theTaskForce.org for photos, transcripts and resources from the National LGBT Aging Roundtable.