PrideSource.com – By Chris Azzopardi
BrainKate and Jamie ducked behind a parked car. After dodging beer bottles to the head and hearing “faggot” echo beneath the Long Island, N.Y., sky, the two friends weren’t sure they would make it out alive.
“I felt pretty scared,” says BrianKate, 30, a transgender and intersex person who doesn’t identify as a male or female.
She and Jamie had just finished seeing a Winona Ryder film in August 2000 and were headed to BrianKate’s aunt’s home when a hoard of people began following them. Dressed in flannel shorts, a Nirvana T-shirt and work boots, BrianKate, who was living as a male then, wasn’t certain why they were being harassed. But BrianKate thinks it was her long hair.
“They didn’t necessarily see us as trans but as violating so-called rules based on gender stereotypes,” she says.