Thanks to activists like the late Vicki Marlane, documentaries like "Screaming Queens" and "Beautiful by Night" and books like The Tenderloin, the neighborhood’s long history as a refuge for gay, lesbian and transgender individuals is quite well-documented. Until recently, however, few outside of the LGBTQ community would recognize the name Transgender Tuesdays.
Transgender Tuesdays launched in the Tenderloin in 1993, when healthcare providers at the Tom Waddell Health Center (50 Lech Walesa) teamed up with trans activists to offer healthcare services specifically to transgender individuals. In addition to making gender reassignment hormones available to people with few resources, the clinic provided the community with the full spectrum of healthcare services at a time when the AIDs epidemic was putting many transgender residents at risk but distrust of the health care system kept most from seeking medical assistance.
More than 20 years later, the clinic has assisted more than 1,600 patients and is featured in the 2012 documentary Transgender Tuesdays: A Clinic In the Tenderloin, which the Tenderloin Museum is screening tomorrow evening.
The film gets up close and personal with 12 of the clinic’s first patients, revealing the reality of life on the streets of San Francisco and around the country for transgender people through recent decades. According to the documentary’s website, their stories take viewers from the ”bad old days" in the 1950s, to the sexual freedom movement, “drug ravages” and liberation of the '60s and '70s, to the HIV epidemic and queer activism of the '80s and '90s. In addition to educating the masses on the historically underserved community’s struggles past and present, the film aims to instill pride and hope in today’s transgender youth.
The Tenderloin Museum’s screening begins at 7pm tomorrow (Sept. 15th) at 398 Eddy St., and the film's director, Mark Freeman — who worked as a family nurse practitioner at the clinic from its inception until his recent retirement — is expected to be in the audience. Tickets are $5 and can be purchased in advance here.
