AIDS Diva: The Legend of Connie Norman
I am so honored to share the news of a screening of “AIDS Diva: The Legend of Connie Norman,” by LGBTQ documentarian Dante Alencastre, with the producing help of John Johnston. The Screening will take place on Tuesday, February 7 at Antioch University, 400 Corporate Pointe, Culver City, CA 90230 in Room A1000. This movie helps to reanimate Connie as a masterful spokesperson with ACT UP/LA in the late 80s and 90s.
You can witness for yourself Connie describing herself as “ex-drag queen, ex-hooker, ex-high rise youth and current post-operative transsexual woman who is HIV positive” to becoming simply “a human being seeking my humanity.”
I knew Connie as a member of ACT UP and the gay beat journalist for The LA Weekly for about ten years. This was before I had even considered becoming a therapist and was still in my own journey of self-discovery as an activist in therapy. I grew close to Connie the week we all slept outside the steps of L.A. County USC to agitate on behalf having an AIDS ward for people dying from AIDS in the hallways at that time. As captured in the movie, that was the time when her street activist colleagues, such as Peter Cashman, had noticed Connie capacity to be both beloved and confronting: A voce who could be a compelling bridge between the hardscrabble street activists and mainstream America.
When the news cameras swarmed onto the demonstration, looking someone to address the multiple needs of poverty, access, ability, gender and sexual orientation the DEMO was advancing, Peter pushed Connie in front of the camera. She had to think on her feet. And think we did. And also feel. From her heart. From her passion. From the urgency that people, including herself, were dying. A star was born!
During that week, I too slept on the streets. I got a chance to spend hours talking to Connie in a tent, warming up with sleeping bags, where she spoke as if we were around a campfire. Even though urgency made everyone anxious, Connie was a calming presence and she had so much to share about the experience trans emergence.
The nice thing about being a reporter, or perhaps a therapist, is that you can use that as an invitation to focus in on a kind of intimacy without wasting so much. And Connie, growing in her spiritual intuition, and having no time to waste, shared her journey with me. She was emerging in what we would today call a “trans-affirmative psychological space” regarding the need for congruence of thought, feeling, gender expression and in terms of honoring the need for greater spiritual meaning.
By then, she was reading a lot about various Two Spirit Traditions where trans people could be said to be mediators between different planes of reality. I learned about her difficult childhood, the bullying, her parents’ eventual acceptance, her transition and her feelings about life and death—and the future yet to come. As if she could divine her role in advancing a new generation of trans visibility, emergence and oppression. I believe that she was part of my journey of becoming a community therapist.
I captured some of these discussion in a Cover Story in wrote for the LA Weekly: “Born to ACT Up: The Life and Times of Transsexual Warrior Connie Norman,” published in March 29-April 4, 1996.
She could be both very sassy, hoping that upon her death, she might become a “star,” not in the Hollywood sense (for she already was that) but in the cosmic sense: “I’ve had a taste of pure spirit, and I’m done with the human condition.” And on her intergalactic star, queer would get the visas and she’d help them ditch their self-hatred.”
She could also be wise and soulful: “Society has tossed our contributions away. Yet look at society without us. We are the voice that says, ‘Don’t hard.’ We are the voice that says, ‘Bring the masculine together with the feminine—in each person.’”
The movie brings her images, thoughts, feelings, ideas back to life! In my work with queer clients, who are struggling, I invite them to see if they can’t locate an “ancestor” from the LGBTQ past who can offer them a sense of authority and support from the beyond to emerge as an “Enlightened Witness” for my client.
In my opinion, Connie’s work as such a beneficent presence in our community is only just beginning.
To RSVP: https://bit.ly/AIDSDIVAScreening.
See you at the screening, I hope!