Digital Transgender Archive

Interview with Diana Green

Diana Green is a white trans woman assigned male at birth. Around 5 or 6 she remembers hiding with her sister when she was supposed to get her haircut because she didn’t want to get one. When her mom asked them why Green didn’t want to get her haircut, her sister told her mom that they could both be girls playing together if Green didn’t get her haircut. Green explains that she was femmy growing up, carrying her books like a girl and walking like a girl with a slight build. She was raised Catholic and grew up in Roswell, New Mexico as a little kid where her parents were stationed in the Air Force. However, she mainly grew up in Minnesota. She lived on a farm in Springfield, Minnesota, and then Green moved up to the Iron Range in the Grand Rapids area in a little house in the country. After her parents divorced, at 15 Green moved in with her dad in Wabasha, Wisconsin until she was 18 when she moved back in with her mom after which she was homeless for a brief period of time. As a teen, she read Christine Jorgensen’s biography and read an article in Newsweek where she learned the name for what she was. Green now lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She married, but her wife, despite knowing that Green was a crossdresser or transsexual and was part of the crossdressing community, their relationship ended. She’s been on hormones 34 years at the time of the interview, and she had gender confirmation surgery in 1989 as well. She lived in section 8 housing in a building where 8 other trans women lived. The building was nicknamed Tranny Towers, which is also the name of Green’s comic strip that ran in Lavender Magazine. She was with her partner, Kurt, for five years which ended up being an abusive relationship. When her relationship with Kurt ended, Green was left with no money, job, housing, and little education. She reestablished herself, however, in Minneapolis, by going to therapy, getting a job, and finding housing.