Marsha P. Johnson (August 24, 1945 – July 6, 1992)
“I may be crazy but that don’t make me wrong.”1
In 2022 I decided I wanted to make a perSISTERS print for an out trans person. I knew a little about Marsha P. Johnson and so started some research on her. Through Marsha’s story I learned about Sylvia Rivera. Here were two BFF trans people, active and well-known and key to the beginning of the gay rights movement in the U.S. I decided in 2022 to do a piece on Sylvia instead. Although she was an activist and famous in her community, Marsha’s story was so sad and I couldn’t figure out a message. From my research, Sylvia appeared to have been much more active and effective in the gay liberation movement, which is a movement for justice, even though her story is also sad.
But I kept thinking about Marsha, I knew there was a message there for me to find, and also she just kept coming up. Marsha’s name and picture continue to be used for many, many things. She is an icon. I’ve realized that Sylvia’s power comes from what she did and Marsha’s power comes from who she was. There are just some people that enter the imagination of the culture, are adopted/adapted, and live on in many of us, and Marsha is one of those people. (Another example is Frida Kahlo, see Queer Trickster Medicine, Making My Peace with Frida Kahlo).
First, a note on terminology. Both Marsha and Sylvia called themselves transvestites and drag queens, and they used feminine pronouns. I don’t think Marsha called herself a woman. Transgender was not a term when they were young and still forming their identities. Marsha would probably say when referring to precise terms for her particular kind of gender-non-conformity: “Pay It No Mind”. She just knew who she was, she chose her name, she chose her fam.
Pay it no mind is what the “P.” is for in the name, Marsha P. Johnson
“Because I try and pay a lot of those little things that happen to me in life, absolutely no mind.”2 On the one hand, this might sound like adaptive dissociation. (There was trauma in her early life.) On the other hand, this could be spiritual detachment. Without a doubt it is humorous. There is a story about when Marsha had to appear before a judge and when she told him what the P. stands for, he laughed and dismissed the case against her.
In the documentary, “Pay It No Mind—The Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson”, many people describe Marsha as a kind of saint, a holy fool, or a bodhisattva. In the first place, she was exceedingly nurturing to the other street queens and sex workers, and immensely kind to everyone, and she radiated joy and humor, and seemed to do whatever she pleased. Usually, that is, unless she was in a dark and violent funk (interesting that at these times she would present more as a man). She lived so far outside the norms of respectability, as an unhoused, HIV-positive, be-sparkled and be-ribboned and be-flowered, gender non-conforming, occasionally psychotic person when not on meds, drag performer, sex worker, and Black person. She was so “othered” that she fell into this kind of beyond-category/hyper-marginalized personhood seen as divine by some people, because she was also charismatically kind and loving. She was a neighborhood character, someone that people recognized. She was at all the gay rights protests, all the marches, all the sit-ins, all the parades. “I want my gay rights now” she shouted into the microphones held to her face. She sat with and nursed the people who were dying from AIDS so they would not die alone. She prostrated herself before altars in churches. She described herself as a bride of Jesus.
Sylvia said that Marsha saved her life. Sylvia was only 11 in 1962 when she came to New York and turned to survival sex work. It was illegal to “cross dress” in New York and AMAB people3 were regularly arrested just for wearing makeup. Marsha was six years older and hadn’t been on the streets much longer, but she was a mother to the queer street kids around her. She would protect them, teach them, show them love. It was Sylvia’s idea to create STAR with Marsha (Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries) which was mostly a way to house these kids in run down buildings. It was also a banner and group identity for protests and parades. It was tough to get funding and housing so it didn’t last very long. Many of the young people didn’t survive after STAR fell apart.
When I began this series of prints, the perSISTERS, I had to refine the purpose I was aiming toward. When I was doing a piece about Sophie Scholl I realized clearly that I am not talking about “role models.” For example, I didn’t want to encourage people to have their heads chopped off while resisting fascist tyranny. I am talking about exceptional people, sometimes in extraordinary circumstances, in whose stories I could find messages that might give us courage. Because they were women’s stories, they might be particularly encouraging to women, and tell us something about women. Also I hope the build up of all these power messages might lead iteratively to a working definition of what Female Power is. I think these stories should be interesting to EVERYONE and I say to men who hesitate to enter the Female Power situations, “Female Power is for everyone.”
“If women aren’t perceived to be within the structure of power, isn’t it power itself we need to redefine?” —Mary Beard, Women & Power, A Manifesto
It’s been forever that women have been hearing that their highest calling is being a mother. Here I am showing that “mother” is also a verb that can be conjugated for all pronouns. Language shows us how our minds work or can work, how what we thought were rules can be flouted, and meaning can still be preserved, and maybe subcultures and poets show us how to make language into a bio-engine of justice. In which case I proclaim this piece (the print, I mean) to be a work of concrete poetry.
“She was a good queen,” a cop smiled and said when he helped close off the street to traffic so the funeral procession of hundreds could make it to the river to scatter Marsha’s ashes.
There is much more to Marsha’s story, many more funny, charming, inspiring and sad details. You can look it up on Wikipedia. You should watch the documentary, “Pay It No Mind” on YouTube. You can look at the resources I mention below. You can Google her name and see the artworks and institutes and programs inspired by Marsha P. Johnson.
1. Marsha quoted in “Pay It No Mind—The Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson”, a documentary by Michael Kasino on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjN9W2KstqE
2. ibid.
3. AMAB = “assigned male at birth”
OTHER RESOURCES
https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/marsha-p-johnson
https://www.tatler.com/article/who-is-marsha-p-johnson-drag-queen-gay-activist
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