Donna Lee Parsons isn’t particularly well-known in hardcore/punk circles, but she should be. She played a pivotal role in rock history.
Before she transitioned, she founded Rat Cage Records, a record label that released the Beastie Boys’ first two EPs; she signed them at their very first show. Twenty years later, after Parsons came out as trans and the band’s meteoric rise to fame, the artists quietly paid for Parson’s gender affirmation surgery.
According to member Adam Horovitz, since the men knew she wouldn’t accept the money if she saw it as a charitable act, they claimed they owed her royalties from their EP Polly Wog Stew.
Parsons died from colon cancer a year after the surgery but spent the last year of her life proudly living as the woman she wanted to be…
Was not prepared for that ending.
Trans people tend to die of
preventativepreventable health problems at a higher rate than cis people, either from being unable to seek care due to poverty, reluctance to seek care due to past experiences with transphobia, or just straight up transphobia from doctors not taking us seriously/blaming it on HRT (“trans broken arm syndrome”).So yeah, it’s a dark turn but not an uncommon one.
“trans broken arm syndrome”
Had to google this one. Somehow…not even fucking surprised. I hate people so fucking much.
That sadly makes sense. I don’t want to jinx it but that makes Wendy Carlos even more impressive.
There’s also failure to understand the cause of gendered symptoms. The classic thing is heart attack symptoms where the set you’re most likely to get is based on your hormonal sex. Most ER doctors don’t know this because they don’t have to learn about trans bodies, and learning the feminine symptoms at all is still something that some practicing physicians didn’t do until after school. This means that my life may be saved by the doctor not knowing I’m trans.
Some of their earlier lyrics were a bit homophobic or misogynistic but they really were solid, stand up guys. They all came out later to apologize in different venues for their words, to try to make amends for any harm they’d done and show their fans (mostly young, male) that it was cool to be cool and accept everyone for who they are.
