This isn’t a fight about semantics or who is transphobic and who is not. This is a fight for people’s lives and happiness.



This isn’t a fight about semantics or who is transphobic and who is not. This is a fight for people’s lives and happiness.
My birthday marked the 7th anniversary of the start of my transition.
All in all it’s been remarkably successful. It’s a journey you start with no idea how it will turn out, you just know with incredible certainty it’s a trip you have to make. Despite numerous blessings in my life there was a sadness at my core that wouldn’t go away, a lot of people saw it. Once I named it-I am transgender-this light went on that never burned away. Once I let Robyn speak she wouldn’t shut up until she was free to walk the earth.
They call us delusional to think we are truly of the other gender, and in a way, there is a kind of madness that takes hold that carries you through the rough times, blinds you to the stares, helps you march inexorably through the awkward stages and to the other side.
I’m so grateful I listened to that voice, and I’m so appreciative of the warm welcome I received.
From Issue #2 of Venus Castina: The Art of Gender (1991), a wonderful interview my Ms. Bob Davis (Louise Lawrence Transgender Archive). Diet was the creator of Klubstitute, the legendary queer underground femme-trans cabaret.
At the same time I was publishing Homozone5 my friends and I published a zine about gender called Venus Castina. It was a place to showcase our art and poetry and write articles about our friends. It was a project of the House of Pancake: Kent Taylor, Micah, Randie Flame, Jade, Jude Hererra, Deanna Oliver and myself. We published it on a Macintosh Quadra and pasted up on gridboards on my kitchen table. It was a really great time.
I recently found the master pages of issue #2 and wanted to share articles about two of the towering figures in San Francisco queer culture, especially in the age of Klubstitute.
This is a 12 page comic book story I was invited to submit to an anthology of LGBT Horror Comics. I told a haunted house story starring a character that looks remarkably like myself. Digital ink and color. It is for sale at Northwest Press.
See my art website Secret Fan Base for more.
It’s been forever since I updated this site and no one is following it anyway, but I’m glad it’s here and I should make use of it. I love keeping track of my life. I guess these days a lot of us publicly diary our lives on social media. I do the Facebook and Instagram thing and keep track of my history that way. I guess a blog is for more long form work? Maybe?
It’s the middle of 2022. I haven’t posted here since 2019. Gosh. A few things have happened in the intervening years…………..
A friend of mine said, with love and humor, “Robyn is the most self-satisfied, self-celebrating transwoman I know. She’s always so frikking delighted with her transition….it’s inspiring.” Hell yes! Today with fresh new amazing red hair color that makes jade green pop and sing I’m definitely in a place of gratitude and delight. We all have so many diverse tools of self-expression, it’s just wonderful when they resonate for us. Everyone should have fun being themselves and sometimes that’s the hardest thing to reach. I feel like it’s my life’s work, making friends with myself, being good to myself, celebrating who I am.
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
—Walt Whitman