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Description
Susan Stryker interviews Felicia Elizondo, known as Felicia Flames, who was a sex worker, drag queen, and trans woman strongly associated with San Francisco's Tenderloin district. In this section, Elizondo tells her life story; she was born in Texas and moved to San Francisco as a teenager, staying for much of her life, with the exception of an early period when she returned to Texas and joined the Army in an attempt to become straight and cisgender. She extensively describes the scene of sex workers and LGBTQ people who spent time at Compton's Cafeteria and the neighboring Chukker Club, as well as her transition, professional history, and the experience of sex work in the Tenderloin. Elizondo witnessed the 1960s cultural shift among gender-nonconforming sex workers in the Tenderloin, in which they ceased to present themselves as feminine men and embraced the identity of trans women. Portions of this interview were used for Stryker and Victor Silverman's documentary Screaming Queens.
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