Digital Transgender Archive

Interview with Margaret Deirdre O'Hartigan

An interview with Margaret Deirdre O'Hartigan, an Irish Catholic transsexual woman, transsexual health and rights activist, writer, and retired secretary and typesetter living in Portland, Oregon. Prior to her retirement, O'Hartigan was involved in a number of trans civil rights and nondiscrimination campaigns in Oregon, Washington, and Minnesota, including successfully suing the state of Minnesota to cover the costs of sex reassignment surgery for low-income trans people, challenging transphobic policies at Seattle-area gay and lesbian organizations, and heavily influencing Portland's trans nondiscrimination legislation. In addition to her trans activism work, O'Hartigan published many articles in a variety of mainstream, gay and lesbian, trans, and feminist publications over the decades, worked as a typesetter at a number of publications, and founded and ran the Filisa Vistima Foundation, a Pacific Northwest transsexual advocacy and resource-linking organization. In this oral history with Myra Billund-Phibbs, O'Hartigan discusses her upbringing in rural Minnesota and early adult life as a transsexual in Minneapolis' gay scene, her experiences with Donald Hastings, the University of Minnesota's sex reassignment surgery program, her lawsuit against the state, and lobbying the State Senate on funding for surgeries, her move to the Northwest and various transsexual rights campaigns in Washington and Oregon, specifically her suit against the Washington State Patrol related to their pre-employment polygraph policy, her cases against Seattle-area gay and lesbian organizations, her work on the Portland nondiscrimination legislation, her work with the Filisa Vistima Foundation, and her thoughts on Filisa Vistima's work, life, and events surrounding her death. Additionally, she discusses her thoughts at length on contemporary trans politics, athletics, and movements, the use of trans issues as a right-wing political wedge issue, and the future for trans people.