Michele de Lafreniere has passed away.

Michele de Lafreniere has passed away.

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Michele de Lafreniere has passed away.
by: dyssonance
Sat Oct 31, 2009 at 01:34:29 AM EDT

I know many who read PHB don't know her, or of her, or what she's done.

Or why her passing, today, just a few hours ago, is something for me to write about.

But tonight I am sitting here, teary eyed, upset, that we here in Phoenix have lost her.

Trans folks don't get large writeups and glossy obituaries, you see. In our deaths, we are are all too often mistreated, from the moment the flesh is empty, by society once again; and we have to go to extra efforts that are frequently denied us even after all the effort to preserve our sense of self, once the self has left.

So I am going to tell you just a few things about her. Just a few. Because she deserves it.

You can google her, of course -- these days its easy, though so few avail themselves of it. When you do, you find that she took a moment in time and challenged power and modesty and prejudice and money.

And in doing so, she energized something that, ultimately, leads to something larger than herself.

dyssonance :: Michele de Lafreniere has passed away.


On Saturday, November 25th, 2006, Michele and several other gals gathered at a local club they'd been going to for a long time.

All were partying sorts -- Michele herself was involved in many areas of the wider community, including the leather community.

The Bar was called "Anderson's 5th Estate" and it was a popular bar in Scottsdale, which is a suburb of Phoenix to which the moneyed elite ourney to play and party, and it was in an area where freedom was more the norm than not.

A patron of the bar complained, however, that a man was using the restroom next to her, and as a result, the transgals were ejected.

And told never come back.

I won't get into all the details, but it basically became something big. Michele filed a lawsuit. The local media had a field day with it (with the local "village voice" rag, the Phoenix New Times -- once a liberal rag that has become unabashedly anything but -- misgendering and insulting her on purpose, literally picking her as a target of derision and defaming.).

She spoke to the press, to the public, and, mostly, to those of us in the trans community.

At that time, there was really only one "big" group in the valley. It was TG Harmony. Founded several years before, meeting every two weeks or so, run by the same people, featurig the same stuff in cyclic habits, it was the sort of place that many transsexuals come to dislike, staid and stale and static and she tried to get them into standing up for themselves.

For a year the fight waged on. The Attorney General for the state picked up the case. He issued a preliminary finding that there was no law in Arizona regarding bathroom use.

Which we already knew.

I agreed about the fight, coming into the whole thing early on, but concerned that the presentation often given was join this fight or you aren’t worth a damn – the demand that one *had* to be out, and willing to risk things.

I came out to myself in October – only a couple days before the event, I had started hormone treatment. And, just as I do here, I stepped into a fray and reminded people about *others*.

A year later, through a series of private meetings, and public aggravation that was amplified through nasty reporting in the media, Tom Anderson, the owner of A5E, agreed to allow transfolk into the bar and we won.

There is a great feal of interpersonal politics surrounding that, but if you talk to Tom or Erica, who were there, you’ll fid that it was Michele herself who kept things fired up in that long year, and who never gave in and who won Tom over – not merely as willing to allow us to enter, but as a supporter of the community.

And not just the trans community.

He also became one of her close friends, and he even went to her hospital room last week, before she moved into the hospice. He was among the people personally notified.

She won him over not only with her will, but with her wits, and her knowledge of business – A couple months later, A5E closed, and a new bar opened in its place: Forbidden. An upscale LGBT bar, one of only 2 in all of Scottsdale.

During that year, there was a schism in the trans community in Phoenix. TG Harmony had a public ad often nasty split, as they did not wish to be publicly allied (nor privately involved) in this fight. IT led to a lot of hurt feelings, and from much of that, a new group was formed: Arizona TransAlliance.

Michele founded it with Erica K. It became the first political organization on behalf of transfolks in Phoenix, and even today we fight for recognition and an end to erasure in Phoenix. We organize rallies and protests and letter campaigns and we are not quiet, not silent and we are the product of Michele, who has passed today.

She served on the Scottsdale Human Rights Commission, and tried hard to get the Scottsdale city council to pass an accommodations ordinance – we lost that one, but it was the first big fight here.

She became ill. It sapped her strength physically, but not her spirit and drive, and she kept on pushing until finally she could not move forward any longer.

She served with me on the Board of This Is H.O.W., invited at my strong suggestion, and she became as tireless in supporting the involvement of communities of color as I am. She came to understand the importance of counseling not just for us, but for our families, and how substance abuse is both rampant and devastating in our LGBT community.

She supported a move to send our own representatives to Washington DC for fighting for hate crimes and ENDA, and even donated what she could, despite unemployment and difficulties.

Erica and I went. For three weeks, I stomped through those halls, first one building and then the other and I was fighting hard.

I fought then, and I still fight here, because Michele inspired me. She led me – and I take leadership poorly, lol.

As her illness progressed, she asked me, twice, to step into her position at AZTA, and twice I turned it down. I am not Michele. She and I didn’t always agree, but each of us could argue passionately, and she had a charisma that is incredible.

I was asked again by Erica, and I accepted, but even then I wasn’t happy to do so. Michele wasn’t done, and somehow I knew it, and sure enough, she came back and organized the first meeting of major representatives in the Phoenix area and beyond dealing in trans issues.

Michele, almost singlehandedly, beat the Alliance Defense Fund. They aided Tom Anderson (although he didn’t exactly ask for their help, lol).

For those of you who don’t know what that means, she beat the lawyers who argue over and over again in courts you don’t deserve rights. The one’s backed by 40 million dollars a year given to them by all the opponents and hate groups allied against us.

And lest you think this is *just* about trans issues, She considered herself a lesbian for a while, before getting a little broader overall, lol.

She worked hard with east valley LGB causes, and encouraged us to become involved in LGB orgs and issues and to maintain visibility, such that these days, they are starting to see locally why we are important to the movement overall.

Arizona has bred a lot of trans leaders. Phoenix is a community that is easy to transition because no one really cares here. Yes, we have our violence and our idiots, but they aren’t the mainstream.

My run for office was supposed to be a tag team. Her and I, running at the same time. We were going to do what hasn’t been done yet, and win, as well.

Now its just me, and I feel alone, and even more determined.

Today, we lost a woman who started something huge. She stands on the shoulders of many others before, and, like all really good leaders has people who disliked her as much as people who liked her.

She never gave up. She was reduced to a point where she couldn’t speak, could barely move, and yet she cried in joy at the passage and signing of the Hate crimes bill.

Something that she *did* help to make happen – make no mistake. She helped to get people there in congress, to lobby for it, to fight for it.

She wasn’t killed by AIDS/HIV.

She wasn’t the victim of violence against her person.

She was killed by melanoma.

And in her passing, she leaves a legacy that will, I Promise you, change the way that Phoenix, and, ultimately, Arizona, treats all LGBT folks.

And so long as I live, I will make sure she is remembered for it.