THE NEW TRANSSEXUALS

Siobhan Meow

Artist & Cat Rescuer

Photo: George Petros

George Petros: SIOBHAN, HELLO. YOU WERE TALKING EARLIER ABOUT GENDER, AND YOU SAID THAT ONCE YOU HIT MENOPAUSE IT DIDN’T MATTER ANYMORE, RIGHT?

Siobhan Meow: Yeah. Actually, I felt that way even before I got the surgery. Gender wasn’t the issue.

REGARDING GENDER ROLES —

Siobhan Meow: Now that I can tell you about. Gender roles are just fucked. You’re not supposed to do all these things like smoke a pipe, for one thing. [lights her pipe] I have two daughters and I don’t want them to fucking grow up thinking that they’re limited in anything that they do.

WHAT IF YOUR DAUGHTERS WANTED TO HAVE SEX REASSIGNMENT SURGERY?

Siobhan Meow: I would tell them to make god-damn sure that that’s what it is first, because sometimes people jump into stuff. I went ten years where I tried — I did everything I could to go, “No, I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to be this. I’m going to live within the body that I have” — and I just got more and more and more suicidal. I used the twelve-step program to try to cure the gender dysphoria — and it worked for about three years, and then I had literally had a physical and a nervous breakdown where the real part of my brain took over the character I had created to cope with society. It’s like I got a multiple personality having to deal with the dual role — and so there was this huge fight. This was in ’92, when a lot of physical stuff was going on in me — the female was talking to the male —

HANG ON — I WANT TO START FROM THE BEGINNING, IF I MAY. WHERE WERE YOU BORN?

Siobhan Meow: In Brooklyn.

AND WHAT WAS YOUR FAMILY LIKE?

Siobhan Meow: God, Irish, Catholic Republican — they voted for Nixon. Anti-abortion, so super Right-wing — it was hell. I had to eventually just drop out of that one, and I made my own family at this pet store I worked at in high school, where there was this woman who was twenty-something years old and I was like fourteen. She was totally the opposite — like, all liberal. She was more like a mother to me than my own mother.

WHAT WERE YOUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS LIKE? WERE THEY ON YOUR SIDE THROUGH ALL THIS?

Siobhan Meow: They didn’t know until I did it. My family was never that close because there were so many kids. I’m the oldest of eight children. It wasn’t that close knit, really.

WHAT WERE YOUR EARLIEST SEXUAL EXPERIENCES?

Siobhan Meow: Earliest?

WELL, YOU KNOW, THE FORMATIVE STUFF. WHO WERE YOU DATING FIRST, BOYS OR GIRLS?

Siobhan Meow: Nothing. I was asexual — and then I didn’t get laid until I was in college — and that would be a situation where I would just sit at a party and get wasted out of my mind. I’d get wasted, and then usually some fat girl would drag me off and fuck me — and that’s how it worked. I was totally not out there pursuing it.

WERE THERE ANY ENCOUNTERS WITH MEN AT THAT POINT IN YOUR LIFE?

Siobhan Meow: No, just pervs that kept trying to hit on me when I was a teenager. Like, I’d hitchhike and always get picked up by a perv. I’m lucky I didn’t end up in a ditch somewhere because, you know, as soon as you get in the car they’re going to reach for your leg and stuff like that. I’d be ready to jump out the door — but that was the only thing with men at that point. I got pretty grossed out by them from the get-go.

WHAT CHANGED THAT?

Siobhan Meow: I met a fetishist. That’s what a pedophile is, is a form of fetishist — and fetishists objectify this thing they’re having sex with. They’re in their own head. They’re just using you as this thing to jerk off on. But it’s true — this is what it’s about, and so that was my first experience with men. My first experience with women was a fat girl dragging me off to have sex with me because I was that easy and I was that wasted. So, I wasn’t having enjoyable sex then, either.

WERE YOU A NERD?

Siobhan Meow: I was more than a nerd. I was like semi-autistic from the conflict that was going on inside.

TELL US ABOUT THAT CONFLICT —

Siobhan Meow: Well, at the time it was repressed so deeply — I wasn’t aware. I knew in the back of my head, but I wasn’t even looking at it anymore. I was just in this weird, like almost autistic state where I just closed off to everything outside of me except my art work, and I read a lot and shit like that, you know? And then, I even fell into a marriage to try to escape and try to do everything right. It just pushed me further into depression — and that’s like where you’re literally living one life and your whole being is stuck down. It creates this weird, heavy conflict.

HOW DID YOU MEET THE PERSON THAT YOU CAME TO MARRY?

Siobhan Meow: I met her in a dream first. That was the weird thing — about five years before I met her in person. So, when I met her in person at a party, I turned to my brother who was with me and I said, “I’m marrying her.” The minute I saw her, I recognized her from a dream. That’s cuz we were supposed to have those kids. But I didn’t want to get married.

WELL, YOU HAVE TWO DAUGHTERS.

Siobhan Meow: Yeah.

SO YOU DIDN’T WANT TO GET MARRIED, BUT YOU GOT MARRIED TO HELP RESOLVE THE CONFLICT.

Siobhan Meow: No, to satisfy everybody around me who were giving me shit constantly because of my conflict. I had to conform. I didn’t feel I had a choice. I had to conform because I got beat up so much when I was a little kid for trying to be who I was.

WHO WERE YOU?

Siobhan Meow: I was just me.

WERE YOU FEMININE?

Siobhan Meow: I was whatever I wanted to be.

I SEE.

Siobhan Meow: I was mostly more towards the female end of things. I behaved more girly than a boy should have.

OTHER BOYS RESENTED THAT?

Siobhan Meow: Oh, fuck yeah. They terrified me.

BACK TO WHEN YOU WERE MARRIED — HOW WAS SEX THEN?

Siobhan Meow: That was the other totally twisted aspect of it, was the fact that sex — in order for me to get anything out of sex, I started doing what I call “psychic vampirism”. I would actually become the woman I was with. I’d live vicariously through her experiences. So therefore I was so totally into pleasuring her and seeing how she was reacting to it, so I could experience it — because that’s who I really was.

SO YOU WERE PROJECTING YOURSELF INTO THE GIRL?

Siobhan Meow: Transferring myself, more like. It got really creepy because later, after marriage, I started seeing other women. I started realizing what I was doing and what happens in my relationships with women. At first, what I was doing was really good, and they were having a good time and everything. As I started becoming — or taking — their actual personality traits on and their movements and everything, it got really creepy — because it’s kind of right back to fetishists. That’s kinda like this thing where you’re substituting something for something, and so it’s kind of false and it’s kind of weird when you’re using another person to get these other things from them that they’re not aware of. And it creeps them out. So, all my relationships would always end miserably. By then, I was so invested in being that person that when that person was ripped away from me, I would try to kill myself. I wasn’t anybody anymore. I had no ego. I didn’t exist because I was the woman I was having the relationship with.

NOW WHEN YOU SAY YOU’D TRY TO KILL YOURSELF, DO YOU MEAN LITERALLY THAT YOU MADE ATTEMPTS AT SUICIDE?

Siobhan Meow: Fuck yeah.

WERE YOU EVER HOSPITALIZED?

Siobhan Meow: Yeah. Numerous times.

AND WERE YOU MEDICATED BECAUSE OF THAT?

Siobhan Meow: Uh, yeah — they overmedicated me at this one clinic, and they almost killed me because they diagnosed me as bipolar. That’s a problem with many women who went through what I went through — they end up getting misdiagnosed. Well, not any more, thank god, I hope — but back in the days when I was doing this and getting diagnosed, it was like multiple personality disorder. You keep getting misdiagnosed. “Oh, you’re bipolar.” “Oh, you’re borderline.” “Oh, you’re schizophrenic.”

WHAT WOULD THE CORRECT DIAGNOSIS HAVE BEEN?

Siobhan Meow: Well, first of all, I’m from the movement who doesn’t think we should pathologize it. It’s a state of being, but in the DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] — whatever it was back then — it was a pathology: gender dysphoria, which means you’re totally uncomfortable in your body’s physical gender.

RIGHT.

Siobhan Meow: And Transsexualism means you have to get the surgery to cure it. There’s no other way to deal with it outside of surgery. Now there’s a whole other thought, and there’s been more research done into what this is, so there’s a lot more viewpoints now, thank god.

SO NO DOCTOR CAME CLOSE TO THAT DIAGNOSIS —

Siobhan Meow: I actually knew when I was nine, when I first read about Christine Jorgensen in the Daily News. When I was nine years old, the light bulb went “bing!” I knew right then. Because of the environment I was living in, I knew I could not expect that. I had to suppress it. Then when I was thirteen, I was reading the big thick book The Three Faces Of Eve — disassociative identity disorder — and, “ding!” This is what happened to me because of a biological quirk which this society couldn’t deal with.

COULD YOU EXPLAIN THAT BIOLOGICAL QUIRK? TELL US WHAT WAS OUT OF SYNC —

Siobhan Meow: There’s all different theories on it.

BUT IN YOUR CASE —

Siobhan Meow: In my case — it’s in all the cases. Nobody knows yet for sure, but the way I think it happened was, at a certain point as a fetus, my mother — something went on in her body, and I got hormones while I was developing — because a fetus, at a certain stage, it starts turning — all embryos are female in the beginning, and they don’t become male until later on. I think at that one crucial point where the body was already done but the brain forms last, and the brain was still forming, it got that dose of hormones — and that disrupted the chemistry. That’s one version. The other version is, it could actually be in the DNA. They’re finding that out now, when they’re tracing the genomes. So, it could end up that was the real reason I was this way — a mutation.

I SEE.

Siobhan Meow: So it exists. It exists in the DNA already.

IF IT EXISTS IN THE DNA, IN YOU AND IN OTHERS, THEN THERE MUST BE SOME PURPOSE IN THE BIOLOGICAL SCHEME OF THINGS THAT A PERSON SUCH AS YOURSELF WOULD BE —

Siobhan Meow: Nah, I don’t think there’s any purpose in biological schemes. I think what happened is, it’s all about human beings being superstitious, egocentric beings — as compared to the other mammals, because we got this extra brain stuff that we don’t know what to do with. We make shit up — like god and religion, the meaning of the universe and all that. There is none. Ask a cat what they think, you know? It just is. That’s the nature of the universe, and this is what happens. Now, in the culture I was born in, on this planet, in this space-time continuum, it was very repressive about sex, about gender roles, about everything. So naturally, I got squished — but then all of a sudden we were lucky enough — our generation — to go through this thing that happened in the Sixties, where everybody got sick of that repression. Otherwise, I could have been dead.

WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE BEEN DOING HAD YOU BEEN BORN IN ANOTHER TIME?

Siobhan Meow: I’d be a cat, because I’m technically trans-species. I’m not human, though. I’m trans-species. I should have been a cat. Look at it this way: Think about two-hundred years ago — what would happen to someone who was a Transsexual then?

WELL, THERE WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN A TRANSSEXUAL, BECAUSE IT’S A FUNCTION OF TECHNOLOGY AND MEDICAL SCIENCE —

Siobhan Meow: No. No, no. We’ve established there’s Hermaphrodites already. This is a DNA thing. It’s a genetic thing. So they couldn’t get it; there wasn’t the technology. They just had to live in the body they had and make whatever adjustments they could. I’m trans-species. I should have been a cat. Five-hundred years from now, they’re going to be able to make you whatever you want to be — whatever animal you want to be.

OKAY. WOW.

Siobhan Meow: I say, a hundred years from now people will be doing the Transgender surgery just as a style statement.

ALRIGHT — LET ME COME BACK TO YOUR HISTORY. YOU’D TRANSFER AN IDENTITY INTO THE GIRLS YOU MADE LOVE WITH AND—

Siobhan Meow: No, I would become them.

YOU WOULD BECOME THEM.

Siobhan Meow: I had no identity. I lived vicariously through them. It’s like a parent living vicariously through their child. It’s really creepy and it fucks up the child. I lived vicariously through the women I had a relationship with. It was really creepy and it fucked up the relationship that I had with the woman.

BUT IT HELPED YOU TO ESTABLISH YOUR IDENTITY, DIDN’T IT?

Siobhan Meow: No. It didn’t help anything. It was just a bonding mechanism I used to deal with the situation I was in at the time because I was so horribly repressed. Do you know what repression is? Repression is when you don’t even know that you stuffed it down, it’s stuffed down so far.

WERE YOU ABUSED AS A KID?

Siobhan Meow: Fuck yeah.

I MEAN, WERE YOU SEXUALLY ABUSED?

Siobhan Meow: Oh, I don’t know about that, other than those pervs who tried to hit on me when I was hitchhiking all the time as a kid. I don’t have any memory of actually getting fucked by anybody.

SO ANYWAY, HOW LONG WERE YOU MARRIED?

Siobhan Meow: I would say functionally for three years, and then it took a full seven before finally it — it was like three years of functional marriage and four years of fucking living hell. Fucking Gulag, Siberia would have been better. Yeah, it was technically seven.

AND YOU HAD SEPARATED FROM YOUR WIFE DURING THAT TIME?

Siobhan Meow: Not until the last two years. I kept trying to separate, but I missed my kids. I’d go back, and it just got worse.

DID YOU HAVE AFFAIRS?

Siobhan Meow: She had affairs. I stayed at home, took care of the kids, did my painting, and she went to work. Then one day she comes home and says, “I want to be the woman now,” and I said, “No” — and then from there on she started having affairs and torturing me with them. You have to study Lesbian relationships — they get like really hot and dramatic with that kind of shit.

YES, THEY DO.

Siobhan Meow: And it was the worst. It was horrible. It was bad.

ONCE YOU WERE DIVORCED, HOW LONG WAS IT BEFORE YOU WERE HAVING SEX WITH OTHER PEOPLE?

Siobhan Meow: That would resume the way it was in college. I would wait until some girl just dragged me off.

OKAY —

Siobhan Meow: But I didn’t really. No, wait — no, no. Here’s what happened: The marriage ends in ’85. ’85 is when it hits me. I’m drinking like constantly, like — oh my god. I would be drinking from eight in the morning until four at night and then still go to work and everything. When you drink like that, there’s one point where you’ll be drunk and then you’ll be totally sober and have a wake-up moment. I realized that the trouble with me was, I’m a girl — and that’s when it hit me. ’85 is when I separated for good, to do the stuff necessary to get towards the surgery.

Photo: George Petros

ONE DAY YOU REALIZED, “I’M A GIRL” — AND THAT WAS THE MOMENT AFTER WHICH EVERYTHING WAS DIFFERENT IN YOUR LIFE?

Siobhan Meow: No. It’s not like that. It’s a wake-up moment. It’s not, “everything is different.” It’s a “ding” — like, what goes on? And it’s all that stuff which was repressed. It goes like, “Oh — duh!” So then I realized I have to do this — because the reason I’m so fucked-up is I’m not doing this.

AND “THIS” BEING, “I HAVE TO BECOME A GIRL.”

Siobhan Meow: I have to self-actualize myself as who I am, which is this brain with a female body instead of a male body. Okay, because that’s who I am — so, I begin a big thing. I started in Brooklyn, working for minimum wage at some McJob, and I started going to see a doctor and get hormones and stuff like that — and that was a beautiful thing. When the estrogen first hit me, it was like, “Whoa!”

WHO PAID FOR IT?

Siobhan Meow: I did.

WAS IT EXPENSIVE?

Siobhan Meow: Yes. It was very expensive, but oh my god, colors changed — everything.

IT WAS A SENSORY CHANGE?

Siobhan Meow: Yeah, it was totally sensory because it’s like, back to DNA. Women were always looking for the berries and differentiating between colors — no poisons and stuff like that — and men, who are color-blind in their DNA, were trained to see motion. So, that’s why the colors changed. It was like the testosterone was getting flushed out and the estrogen was connecting to the right terminals which my brain had plenty of, as opposed to a male brain — and I knew everything was right then. I was becoming myself. So, anyway, I work at this shit job, and I’m trying to save money to get stuff done — and it was impossible. So, eventually, I started dressing the right way and everything like that. I was still ignorant of the whole bullshit gender-role thing. I was trying to appease everybody in society, like you’re supposed to. So I’m starting to feminize and everything like that, but I’m in that awkward stage and so I’m getting a lot of serious fucking discrimination and shit like that. You know, jobs and stuff like that. It was really bad. Eventually I ended up homeless. I couldn’t afford the hormones anymore. I couldn’t afford the surgery. The whole thing is about getting the surgery — and how am I going to do that? I went into this total suicidal despair, survived the suicide attempt, ended up homeless, and went for ten years without doing anything towards gender reassignment — and then, as I said, in ’92 came the great breakdown. Things started happening. I went back. I got the right doctors. I got the psychiatrists — and all of a sudden my brother just threw the money at me and said, “Go for it.”

HOW MUCH DID IT COST?

Siobhan Meow: It was twenty-five grand, all together. That’s not counting the electrolysis. The electrolysis itself was like ten or fifteen.

WHEN DID YOU FIRST HAVE SEX WITH A GUY?

Siobhan Meow: That was back in my first try at it, in Brooklyn when I was working down there. I always came to Manhattan on the F train. I blew a couple of cops, construction workers, Mafia guys — you know.

WERE YOU IN FEMALE ATTIRE WHEN YOU DID THIS?

Siobhan Meow: I was in female attire — but I still had male organs.

DID THEY KNOW THAT WHEN YOU BLEW THEM?

Siobhan Meow: Of course they did. Of course they did — and that’s what they were into. That’s where you get into that fetish thing. That’s where I got grossed out by men again.

SO THEY WERE REAL MACHO GUYS WHO WERE TURNED ON BY THE FACT THAT THAT YOU WERE A —

Siobhan Meow: They weren’t interested in me. They had this thing in their head — like I had a thing in my head — and they were jerking off to this thing in their head, and I wasn’t even there. You know? But there’s women who deal with that every day — and they actually work in the sex trade doing it all the time, and make money at it. I wasn’t even making money at it.

HOW DID YOU COME TO BLOW A COP, IF YOU DON’T MIND ME ASKING? DID YOU DO SOMETHING WRONG, AND WERE TRYING TO GET OUT OF IT?

Siobhan Meow: No, no, no. I was standing on a platform waiting for the F train, and this guy came up to me. He just started coming on to me, and I said, “Okay, let’s go.” You know?

AND YOU WERE DRESSED AS A GIRL?

Siobhan Meow: Well, of course. What’s dressing like a girl? I’m dressed like a girl right now.

I’M JUST WONDERING WHAT SIGNALS IN PARTICULAR HE WAS RESPONDING TO —

Siobhan Meow: He was responding to the fact that he was a sex addict and he had to fucking get some, and I was standing there and he knew he would get some from me. Something just told him.

OKAY. SO, YOU’VE FIGURED OUT THAT YOU NEED TO HAVE GENDER-REASSIGNMENT SURGERY, AND YOU’RE TAKING HORMONES AND SEEING A PSYCHIATRIST, AND EVERYTHING’S GOING SMOOTHLY IN THAT REGARD, RIGHT? HOW LONG WAS THE PREPARATORY TIME OF TAKING HORMONES?

Siobhan Meow: The second time I did it, it was two years.

AND THAT WAS A TIME OF HORMONES AND THERAPIES — AND YOU NEEDED ACCREDITATIONS FROM THERAPISTS —

Siobhan Meow: Yeah, a psychiatrist actually. Can you believe that? Like you have to get permission to be who you are.

YOU HAVE TO GET PERMISSION — IT’S LIKE GETTING A LICENSE. YOU GOT TO GET A LICENSE TO BE A CHICK. ALRIGHT — HOW DID YOU FIND A SURGEON?

Siobhan Meow: That’s just well-known stuff. I’d go to a group meeting for Transgenders, and people would start talking about doctors — and then I’d know.

I SEE. DO YOU WANT TO NAME THE DOCTOR YOU WENT TO?

Siobhan Meow: Oh god, I can’t even remember his name.

WAS HE IN MANHATTAN?

Siobhan Meow: No, he was in Arizona.

OKAY, SO YOU GOT OFF A PLANE IN ARIZONA — WHO WERE YOU WITH?

Siobhan Meow: Myself.

HOW OLD WERE YOU?

Siobhan Meow: Oh fuck, ’95 minus ’56 — I was 39. That much time’s gone by — that’s scary shit.

YOU MUST HAVE BEEN PLENTY SCARED, STANDING THERE WITH YOUR LUGGAGE ON THE HOT TARMACK OF THE ARIZONA AIRPORT, RIGHT?

Siobhan Meow: Yeah. I worked out. It was like training for the Olympics, because I knew it was going to be a big, heavy physical surgery.

YEAH —

Siobhan Meow: It was going to be heavy. Very heavy — like, for the body to just come out of that, you know? So, I trained for it. I was in great shape. I was psyched. They were so nice over there at that place — everything was just so beautiful. The best attitudes and everything like that. It went smooth as anything — until I came back here.

THE SURGERY WENT SMOOTHLY — HOW LONG WAS IT UNTIL THAT COULD BE ASCERTAINED? WHEN COULD THE DOCTOR LOOK AT THE RESULTS OF HIS WORK AND KNOW THAT YOU WERE GOING TO BE OKAY?

Siobhan Meow: Oh, he knew it the minute he did it.

DESCRIBE YOUR OPERATION —

Siobhan Meow: It’s called a vaginoplasty.

DOES THAT INVOLVE THE INVERSION OF THE PENIS?

Siobhan Meow: Well, that’s kind of a weird way to look at it. It’s more like they removed the meat in it, and line your vagina with it— with the nerves and buckles of skin. And they make the clitoris out of the gland. It’s the same thing as the woman’s, except — see, it’s so simple to go surgically from male to female, but it’s nearly impossible to go from female to male. But that’s only because the whole medical profession is dominated by men, you know?

DID THEY REMOVE YOUR PROSTATE?

Siobhan Meow: No. That’s not even an issue anymore because I’ve been on estrogen for so long. That would be like what the Bartholin gland is in the female — it’s like the prostate gland. You gotta just open a biology book and look at the two — because they’re really the same material in different positions — and that’s all the surgery was, was rearranging the positions of the genitalia.

AND HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO HEAL UP?

Siobhan Meow: It took me two weeks.

OKAY — HOW DO I WANT TO ASK THIS — IF SOMEBODY COMES INSIDE OF YOU, WHERE DOES THE SEMEN GO?

Siobhan Meow: Where it goes for anybody — down your leg.

I SEE.

Siobhan Meow: Better, in the fucking condom — where it belongs.

VERY GOOD. AND AS FOR PEEING — THEY REARRANGE THE CANAL THAT THE PEE TRAVELS THROUGH —

Siobhan Meow: Yeah.

SO, LIFE GOES ON, IS WHAT YOU’RE SAYING —

Siobhan Meow: Why wouldn’t it?

DID YOU ORGASM THE FIRST TIME YOU HAD SEX AFTER THE OPERATION?

Siobhan Meow: Double orgasm. Multiple double orgasm — but that was me doing it. I don’t ever expect a guy to be able to do that shit.

IS THE MECHANISM OF MASTURBATION THE SAME, WHERE YOU’RE RUBBING IT —

Siobhan Meow: That’s the way it is with everybody. I have more area to rub than guys do now.

I SEE. AT WHAT POINT DID YOU HAVE BREAST AUGMENTATION?

Siobhan Meow: I had that — let’s see — two years before the vaginoplasty.

SO, TELL US ABOUT THE FIRST TIME THAT YOU HAD SEX — WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST ENCOUNTER AFTER THE SURGERY?

Siobhan Meow: After the surgery? Sex? That was as a stunt for the Howard Stern show.

BUT WERE THERE ANY GUYS WHO WERE PURSUING YOU?

Siobhan Meow: I had this one guy pursuing me for a bit — and honest to god, there was a chemical reaction. It was so fucking strong — but he turned out to be too fucked-up to make anything out of him, so I had to cut him off.

ALRIGHT — SO YOUR FIRST TIME HAVING SEX WAS FOR THE HOWARD STERN SHOW —

Siobhan Meow: Yeah. It was filmed in my room.

AND HOW WAS THAT?

Siobhan Meow: It was comedy.

HOW DID IT FEEL? DID IT HURT?

Siobhan Meow: No, it felt normal.

HOW LONG DID IT LAST?

Siobhan Meow: Not too long. By the time we got around to letting him in me, he was like — he couldn’t hold it anymore. So, he didn’t last too long.

HOW DID YOU COME TO BE ON THE HOWARD STERN SHOW?

Siobhan Meow: Oh, that was back when I first came to New York. And that was just being on a Dial-a-Date. I wrote to them — that was back when they were just on K-Rock.

GOTCHA.

Siobhan Meow: He was only on one station here in New York, and he had this dry spell where he didn’t have any celebrities or weird people for Dial-a-Date. So I wrote a letter. I moved here after the marriage; I turn on the radio and I hear this radio show that was the funniest thing I had ever heard in my life — and so I was listening to it all the time, and I was like, “I can be the Dial-a-Date for that show!” So that’s what I did.

AND YOU HAVE GARNERED QUITE A BIT OF NOTORIETY SINCE THEN.

Siobhan Meow: It’s not that big a thing now. I haven’t been on that show in a long time. But back in the day, it was more of a thing. I was notorious — and I think that kept me alive. It kept me from getting the shit beat out of me, because people recognized me. But eventually it got to the point where he was becoming a superstar, and I remember getting mobbed one time at one of his events by fans — and it was so scary, but it was weird because they were all really protective.

FROM AMONG HIS FANS, WEREN’T GUYS WRITING LOVE LETTERS TO YOU, OR COMING ON TO YOU?

Siobhan Meow: Not his audience. I was more of like a — well, the Wack Packers are more like mascots.

WERE YOU ONE OF THEM?

Siobhan Meow: Yeah. I was one of the original ones.

WERE ANY OTHER TRANSSEXUALS WACK PACKERS?

Siobhan Meow: I don’t know — I think I was the only one at the time. There weren’t that many people going out on the radio like that before me.

DID OTHER TRANSSEXUALS, OR PEOPLE WITH TRANSSEXUAL ASPIRATIONS, CONTACT YOU OR LOOK TO YOU FOR GUIDANCE?

Siobhan Meow: No. I was buried in Brooklyn at that time.

WHAT ABOUT AFTER THE HOWARD STERN SHOW —

Siobhan Meow: Yeah, I’ve had people come up to me. I’ve had people thank me for doing what I did.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT?

Siobhan Meow: That’s great. That’s like the reason for existence. If I made it easier for kids who are born like I was, to go through this process — if I made it any easier for them, then hey, that’s the greatest thing in the world I could have done with my life.

SOME DERISION CAME YOUR WAY AS ONE OF THE WACK PACKERS. I MEAN, PEOPLE WOULD MAKE FUN OF YOU —

Siobhan Meow: It’s derision — but it’s cathartic derision. It’s show biz. So it’s a way to deal with the very real derision.

IT’S CATHARTIC; IT’S SHOW BIZ — TELL US ABOUT THAT.

Siobhan Meow: Yeah, yeah — you’re talking about derision. Yeah — the real derision that I would get, like getting biased against, is in like, say, the museum — where I tried to have a job as a busperson; where there was a lot of discrimination against me back then. On the Stern show, it would be like a catharsis. It would be like a Greek drama. I come out as a scapegoat. Everybody gives me shit and everything. I talk back. It gets it out. It gets it up into the airwaves. It gets it into the consciousness. It’s doing something productive, instead of just saying, “Imagine me in some town going through this and getting shit on every day and having no outlet for it.”

AND YOU MENTIONED SHOW BIZ — THERE’S AN ELEMENT OF SHOW BIZ TO IT?

Siobhan Meow: Yeah, it’s part of taking something that’s ugly and making art out of it.

MAKING IT BEAUTIFUL?

Siobhan Meow: I wouldn’t call it beautiful. I would call it what it was: kind of a weird catharsis comedy.

I DON’T KNOW HOW TO ASK THIS — DID EVERYTHING CONTINUE TO BE ALRIGHT IN YOUR SEX LIFE, OR WAS THERE A POINT WHERE PROBLEMS AROSE BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU HAD DONE?

Siobhan Meow: I don’t know. What do you mean?

DID EVERYTHING WORK FINE THEREAFTER?

Siobhan Meow: Of course.

AND YOU LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER, RIGHT?

Siobhan Meow: I’m living like everyone else lives — whether that’s happily ever after or not is yet to be determined.

HAVE YOU FOUND LOVE?

Siobhan Meow: Yeah.

IN YOUR CURRENT INCARNATION?

Siobhan Meow: Oh hell yeah.

DO YOU GET THE ATTENTION OF BOTH MEN AND WOMEN?

Siobhan Meow: Uh-huh.

DO YOU LIKE THEM BOTH?

Siobhan Meow: Yep. If they’re there and they’re pleasant with me, and we’re together, and it’s not like some sort of one-sided weird trip that one person’s having on the other — it’s got to be pure, unconditional love. I got that in spades.

AND IT TOOK TRANSFORMING YOURSELF TO GET IT, DIDN’T IT?

Siobhan Meow: You know, to be honest, I don’t know if that had anything to do with it, really — but the self-actualization I had to go through, physically — that did.

LET’S TALK ABOUT THE FUTURE. YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT BEING TRANS-SPECIES. TELL US ABOUT THAT.

Siobhan Meow: I can see five-hundred years from now, when they have the medical technology, that there will be people who want to acquire animal characteristics, physically — such as being covered in fur, having a long tail, having real canine teeth, having your actual face cut out into a snout, having big ears like a cat — people will be able to do that then. Right now they have the technology to implant a womb in me.

WHERE WOULD THAT WOMB COME FROM?

Siobhan Meow: They can grow one from my own cells.

SO THEY WON’T NEED GIRLS — BORN FEMALES — ANYMORE, WILL THEY?

Siobhan Meow: No, they’ll be able to — in any case, whether you’re gender dysphoric or hermaphroditic, male or female, they’ll be able to make you whatever you want to be.

AND WHAT WILL YOU BE, A CAT?

Siobhan Meow: I would be a six-foot tall cat.

YOU’RE WELL-KNOWN FOR YOUR CAT RESCUES. COULD YOU TELL US ABOUT YOUR LIFE AMONG THE CATS?

Siobhan Meow: Yeah, I started rescuing them in ’94 when I was being a musician and learning how to play bass.

WHERE’D YOU RESCUE THEM FROM?

Siobhan Meow: I wanted to get a couple cats of my own. I contacted a rescue group — and then once I contacted them, I’d get calls from them about very special cats in dire need of help. So, it was a gradual progression into taking in more and more cats — because I couldn’t bear for them to be killed and for bad things to happen to them, because I had always had an affinity towards cats my entire life, as long as I can remember. I even wanted to be a cat when I was a child. So, there’s something about my ability to communicate with that particular species that I’m able to develop relationships with them — and because of that, I have such a deep empathy for them, and I’m able to communicate with them and understand what’s going on with them. When I see a suffering cat, I get as upset as if it was my own child. So that’s how I started getting into rescue — and I even got a job at the vet so that I could learn everything about caring for them.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT DOGS?

Siobhan Meow: I had a dog when I was a kid but I really wanted a cat. I think the thing about cats is that they’re so beautiful and Androgynous to begin with. See, they don’t have really pronounced gender characteristics, and so that’s why people — I think the human brain — see, I don’t even consider myself human anymore, because humans behave in ways that I’ve found so incredibly bad that I can’t be a part of it — but anyway, cats are more Androgynous and they’re more lithe, and that’s what humans wanted their females to be like. In some cultures they actually killed women. They killed female children if they didn’t meet a certain standard.

YES THEY DID. OKAY — WAS THERE ANYTHING ELSE WE NEEDED TO COVER?

Siobhan Meow: Well, the whole gender thing is a bunch of shit. Don’t fall for it, you know? Just be who you are and whatever you are. Just make sure when you’re interacting with other people, you don’t objectify them. Try to grow some empathy.

ISN’T THAT HARD TO DO FOR PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN A WORLD OF SEXUAL SIGNALS AND FERTILITY CUES?

Siobhan Meow: I think that world is ending. I think that the height of it was in the Fifties. That’s when you had the real Transvestite thing going — because of the extremes in clothing. It was just so sick and twisted that women were binding themselves in these bizarre outfits that some Gay guy designed — destroying their feet; binding their feet in these fucking high heels. It destroys their toes.

DO YOU WEAR HEELS NOW?

Siobhan Meow: I’m six feet tall — why do I need to wear heels?

GOOD QUESTION. WELL, THANKS FOR TALKING TO US —

Siobhan Meow: Okay — you’re welcome. ~