CHAPTER ONESHE’S A GIRL
By the midpoint of the twentieth century, the United States had already experienced the booms and busts of its growing global power.
The Great Depression during the 1930s sent the world into an economic crisis and left people in a cloud of uncertainty. While families scraped by to survive, political leaders in Europe were focused on the Second World War, which had begun after the German invasion of Poland in 1939. The United States entered the war following the Japanese bombing of the American naval station, Pearl Harbor, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu in 1941. The demand for wartime soldiers and materials created jobs for Americans and profit for the economy. Not only did World War II pull the United States out of economic depression, it encouraged Americans to believe their financial security was determined by the country’s ability to conquer outside enemies.
By the mid-1940s, the United States and Allied nations, such as Great Britain, declared victory in the World War. Shortly after, the United Nations was established with fifty-one nations committing to maintaining peace, while the Allied nations established themselves as permanent members of the newly created UN Security Council. But global tensions soon reemerged as the United States and Soviet Union became superpower rivals in a standoff known as the Cold War that lasted throughout most of the second half of the century.
Within the United States, divisions among Americans also deepened. Many groups of marginalized people banded together to demand change and equality. Women campaigned early in the century for their right to vote. After World War II, they demanded to be included in political discussions that previously only men were welcomed into. Black people and other people of color also spent decades in local communities organizing toward racial justice and the dream of equality for all.
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Sylvia Lee Rivera was born into a family that deeply understood the impacts of a divided world. Throughout the first few years of her life, learning how to make do with little would need to become second nature.
Sylvia was born on July 2, 1951, at 2:30 a.m. in New York City. Her mother, twenty-two-year-old Carmen Mendoza, birthed Sylvia in the back of a taxicab outside the old Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx. Born with her feet first, Sylvia’s grandmother would tease and joke that she had been “born ready to hit the streets.” As Sylvia grew older, she laughed about her grandmother’s omen but never denied it.
Living in the US with familial roots in Latin America meant the Rivera and Mendoza families had to build their livelihoods from very little. Like other migrant families, they had to adapt to life in the states. Often, newly arrived migrants could not rely on American state protection or support without also risking further family separation. Nevertheless, they persisted.
Sylvia’s parents were young and needed to learn how to sustain a family. Jose Rivera, Sylvia’s father, came from a Puerto Rican family. Her mother, Carmen, was raised by a Venezuelan migrant single mother, whom the neighborhood referred to as Viejita.
Shortly after Sylvia was born, Jose left Carmen and their newborn child, Sylvia. Jose returned to reconnect with his daughter when she was four years old. But by then, Sylvia refused to accept Jose as her father.
“I don’t have a father!” Sylvia yelled before running out of the apartment.
Carmen entered a new relationship after Jose left the family and gave birth to Sylvia’s sibling, her half sister Sonia.
Living with Sonia’s father was not easy for Sylvia or her sister. He showed no interest in the children and refused to support Carmen in raising either Sonia or Sylvia. He also struggled to control his anger when upset, and his actions left everyone afraid. Scared for herself and her children, Carmen was desperate to find a way out of his influence. In this desperation, Carmen tragically passed away at a local hospital after poisoning herself.
Although Viejita was devastated by the death of her daughter, Sylvia and Sonia were moved into their grandmother’s care. Viejita had spent months trying to support Carmen as she tried to leave her unhealthy relationship. While grieving for her daughter, Viejita found comfort in how Sonia’s features resembled young Carmen’s. On top of Sonia looking like her mother, she was lighter-skinned than Sylvia was, which was one of the many reasons Viejita treated her grandchildren differently.
Sonia’s father eventually returned to remove Sonia from Viejita’s care. He set up for Sonia to be adopted by a Puerto Rican couple, as opposed to the Venezuelan-led household of Viejita. Viejita was even more devastated to have lost yet another part of Carmen.
Sadly, Sylvia was left to receive the brunt end of Viejita’s despair.
Viejita struggled to care for Sylvia. She was still working through the loss of her daughter, but she had also began to fear who Sylvia may become. From Viejita’s perspective, her grandson was trying to become una niña, a girl.
After Sylvia was born, her doctor assumed that she was a boy based on what her body looked like. They then filled in Sylvia’s birth certificate gender marker as male. Using what she had learned from watching other women raise children in her family, Carmen began raising Sylvia as a son and gave her a name thought to be fit for a boy.
As Sylvia grew, her family tried to teach her what was expected of boys, like how to act, dress, and even what to dream about. Both Puerto Rican and Venezuelan cultures have clear ideas of what gender should look like and how people should act. Gender has often been used as a way to categorize and control different groups of people. In Latin American cultures, the concept of “machismo,” or male dominance, is rewarded, while girls are taught to play a supporting role.
But acting in the ways expected of boys did not come naturally for Sylvia. From early childhood, Sylvia refused to be boxed into the gender roles traditionally held for boys. In the short time she had with her mom, Sylvia learned there were more options for her as her mother relaxed her enforcement of Sylvia’s gender.
“Before my mother passed away,” Sylvia remembered, “my mother used to dress me in girls’ clothes.” Over the few years that Carmen had raised Sylvia, she lessened the rigid rules of how Sylvia could explore gender. She let Sylvia play around with her accessories and dress in her clothes. When Sylvia looked interested, Carmen let her try on her heels and makeup.
Viejita usually looked the other way when Carmen let Sylvia dress in feminine clothes. After Carmen’s passing, Viejita eventually bought Sylvia clothes from the girls’ section herself.
“My grandmother kept on buying little blouses and girls’ slacks until I was about six or seven years old, before I went to school.”
Yet as Sylvia reached school age, Viejita’s worries about her grandchild’s gender expression grew. This created tension between Viejita and Sylvia.
“My grandmother used to come home and find me all dressed up. Just like … I’d get [myself] whipped,” Sylvia remembered. “‘Well, we don’t do this. You’re one of the boys. I want you to be a mechanic,’” she recalled Viejita telling her.
“I said, ’No, but I want to be a hairdresser. I want to do this. And I want to wear these clothes,’” Sylvia explained.
Outside their home, members of the community disapproved of Sylvia’s appearance and gender-bending. They expressed shame and discomfort with how happily feminine Sylvia was. Taking what they understood of their Catholic faith, the community believed anybody who was breaking out of traditionally accepted gender roles was also defying faith. Young Sylvia didn’t care much about that, but her grandmother was conflicted.
Viejita’s insecurities about raising Sylvia led Viejita to distance herself and try to avoid her responsibility of caring for her grandchild.
At the time Sylvia started school, Viejita became ill and enrolled Sylvia in St. Agnes, a Catholic boarding school. Although Viejita recovered six months later, she delayed bringing Sylvia back home. When Sylvia visited from school on the weekends, Viejita often arranged a different place for Sylvia to stay. Viejita sent Sylvia to live with family friends and sometimes migrant women she sponsored.
With little encouragement to explore her identity, Sylvia tried to understand what about her made the people surrounding her so upset. Why were the adults in her life not supportive? Sylvia continued to dream about a world where young people could be free to just be themselves.
Luckily for Sylvia, there were some adults who took their time to show her how special she was. One of these supporters was an upstairs neighbor named Sarah. Sarah was an older woman who had taken notice of the young, sweet girl. The little interactions between Sylvia and Sarah usually included Sylvia complimenting her outfit and accessories, something Sylvia had an eye for. Since Sarah could tell how fascinated she was with pretty jewelry, she often gifted her small trinkets that Viejita couldn’t or wouldn’t buy. Supportive adults like Sarah helped Sylvia to not only keep moving toward her potential but also to know that it was possible to find people who loved her for who she was.
Fashion helped Sylvia express herself and feel joy. Sylvia was full of creative ideas and dreamed about becoming a hairdresser. In a salon, she could someday transform her clients into the fabulous beings she knew they were. She was excited to use her talents to help those around her realize their beauty!
Sylvia looked forward to school as the place where she felt support as she focused on her goals. She also saw her time at school as time away from her grandmother, where she was safe to be herself. Sylvia made friends with other girls and explored wearing makeup to class. In the same ways adults in the community teased her, kids at school also bullied Sylvia and some staff even treated her as an outcast. And in the same way that Sylvia didn’t care what adults in the community said about her, she made it clear to her bullies that she wouldn’t back down. Over the years, Sylvia’s strong heart and bold mouth, as well as her time in school athletics, helped her to develop a reputation of the girl you shouldn’t mess with.
While Sylvia tried to avoid conflict and stay safe at school, by the end of elementary school she was forced to decide between her education and her safety.
One day, in the sixth grade, Sylvia found herself in a confrontation with another student. The other student had been bullying her and pressured Sylvia to react. When Sylvia defended herself to avoid being hurt, both she and the other student were sent to the principal’s office. Sylvia explained to the school principal that she had been defending herself and was not causing harm—she was actually trying to avoid being harmed. Both students were suspended from campus. This didn’t make sense for Sylvia. Why was she in trouble for trying to defend herself?
After years of being targeted by others and being punished for choosing to care for herself, Sylvia felt desperate and lonely. She wondered if this was a little of what her mother felt before choosing to leave. Sylvia felt that she could not return to a place where she wasn’t protected or allowed to protect herself.
WHAT IS TRANSPHOBIA?
TRANSPHOBIA describes the different forms of hate and violence targeted at transgender people. A transgender (or trans) person is someone whose gender is different from the gender they were assigned at birth. In many Western cultures, children are usually split into girls and boys and expected to follow the strict ideas of gender roles. Trans people experience gender differently and sometimes TRANSITION toward a gender that feels right for them.
When people are taught strict rules about gender their entire lives, it can be hard to understand why others would choose to not live out these rules. When they allow curiosity to turn into fear or anger, they may choose to act out these negative feelings onto others; this is transphobia.
Transphobia works to make people feel “othered” and inferior.
Looking at human history around the world, gender and gender expression are much more diverse than a two-option binary. Gender has been experienced differently for humans and celebrated in cultures in a variety of ways throughout history.
Today, transphobia looks like some of the following moments:
Not believing trans people’s experiences or narratives.Refusing to use the name or pronouns someone chooses to go by.Bringing or encouraging harm to trans people physically.Communities kicking someone out because they are trans.Transphobia hurts everyone. By pressuring trans people to conform to the gender binary, all people are pushed further away from self-determination. The more limiting our options of living life are, the more we limit our own potential. BODILY AUTONOMY, the idea that people have the right to decide what to do with their bodies, is at the center of this issue.
Gender should be fun, free, and enjoyable.
By the time she turned ten, Sylvia boldly refused to hide her truth: She was not a boy, even after so many people tried to convince her otherwise. She was not a boy, even if this meant her community would push her away. She was not a boy, even though the world was determined to force the idea that she was one on her.
She was a young girl whose dreams of the future were growing too big for the box she was born into.
This left a heavy impact on Sylvia.
Just before Sylvia’s eleventh birthday, Viejita came home in tears after hearing someone insult Sylvia with a transphobic slur. Although it took time for Viejita to accept that Sylvia was not going through a phase, Viejita had slowly opened her heart back up to her granddaughter. While she had moments of uncertainty, Viejita cared for her family. Hearing her neighbors speak ill of her grandchild was devastating.
“It hurt her so bad because they were doing this to me. And she knew where I was coming from,” Sylvia remembered. “She knew.”
When community members called attention to Sylvia with mean words, all that was on Sylvia’s mind was how embarrassed and hurt Viejita probably was. Viejita felt conflicted between her desire to care for her grandchild and the pressure of her community’s expectations. A fear of judgment and cultural rejection led Viejita to hold on to the hope that Sylvia would one day blend in, and she tried to limit the ways she expressed herself. Sylvia felt sympathetic to her grandmother’s concerns.
“I had that much respect for my grandmother. I didn’t want her to suffer. It wasn’t my suffering. I was worrying about her suffering,” Sylvia recalled.
Sylvia did not have a safe place to call home with Viejita’s support wavering. And she did not have a safe place at school, where she was punished alongside her bullies. When she realized that the adults in her life would not be able to support the person she was becoming, Sylvia decided it would be safer to leave. She needed to find people who would love and care for her, no matter what her gender was.
At only ten years old, Sylvia left her grandmother’s home in South Bronx. She took the train to Manhattan, heading south, toward Forty-Second Street, a place she had overheard her family talking about. Apparently, people—girls like her—would sometimes set up camp there when they were kicked out of their family’s homes.
She prayed she had heard correctly and went searching for her people.
Copyright © 2023 by We Are All Human
