Unveiling Marsha P. Johnson: The Untold Story of Joy, Defiance, and Revolution in Tourmaline’s New Film
Decades before Disney coopted it, the area around the Port Authority and Times Square was a dangerous place. Sex workers, which Marsha would eventually become, were preyed upon not just by johns but by corrupt and brutal cops. New York’s bizarre “three items” law—you could be arrested for not wearing three items of clothing associated with the gender assigned you at birth—provided justification for abusing the trans community.
Yet Tourmaline credits Marsha’s often harrowing experiences in the city as an essential part in her evolution, the place where she began to create what would become a huge found family. “So much of the intention behind what came later in Marsha’s and other girlies’ lives—the bright international stage, the social movement work, the freedom to move around without being harassed—was dreamt up on Forty-Second Street.”
