David Strachan is perhaps best known as a member of the Board of Directors of the Intersex Society of North America or as a founding member of the San Francisco Transgender Civil Rights Implementation Force. He is married to Pete Tannen, who was a city transit planner and the first manager of San Francisco’s Bicycle Program.
Strachan’s personal story has much that makes it of interest in the current moment. His family immigrated to the East Bay in the 1940s from Canada. In 1951, he and his two brothers were hospitalized with polio (prior to the vaccine). He was always extraordinarily tall (the genesis of the book’s title). After puberty his parents noticed he was developing differently from other boys. A doctor reassured his mother (without blood or semen tests) that he would eventually grow up to be “normal” and give them grandchildren.
Around the same time, Strachan discovered he was mostly sexually attracted to boys. As this was well before Stonewall, the way Strachan discovered homosexuality existed was by reading about the Boise homosexuality scandal of 1955.
He hesitantly came out to his parents. His conservative Presbyterian mother made clear that he would need to be straightened out, whether by prayer or psychiatry. After a failed suicide attempt, he managed to convince her that it was just a phase.
Strachan’s youth featured travel to a variety of exotic locations. As part of his church’s missionary program, he traveled to Alaska in 1964. In 1966 he moved to Tripoli, Libya when his father took a job there. There, he had a sexual relationship with a 25-year-old Libyan that solidified his sexual identity.
In 1970 he accepted a job as a teacher at a mission school in Chiang Mai Thailand through Whitworth College, the Presbyterian school his parents sent him to. In Thailand he was exposed to Buddhism as well as seeing kathoey performers in Bangkok (called “female impersonators” by Westerners but in Thai culture perceived as a different kind of women). In 1972 Strachan traveled to Alexandria, Egypt, where he taught creative arts at the Schutz American School.
Bay return
In 1973 Strachan returned to the Bay Area, moving to San Jose to attend San Jose State University for a teaching credential in art. While there he began experimenting with drag, attended gay pride, and joined the Gay Student Union. In 1974 he came out to his parents again as bisexual.
In 1976, asked by a girlfriend if they would ever have children, Strachan went to the Kaiser Infertility Clinic for testing (he knew by then he was sterile). At age 29 that he discovered he had Klinefelter’s syndrome with XXY chromosomes, though it took the doctor three months to tell him.
This was just the start of problems with the medical establishment, with Strachan’s doctor adding, “If you want more information, go down to the medical library and read about it yourself.” He began testosterone replacement therapy, though as Strachan says not with informed consent, as he was not told of the side effects of the therapy.
The other major change in Strachan’s life in the ’70s came about through the San Francisco Bisexual Center. Wanting a bisexual community in the South Bay, he and his roommate Sue held a bisexual potluck on March 19, 1978. It was there that he met Tannen, and they have been together ever since.
The late ’70s and ’80s held a plethora of changes for the couple. The Briggs Initiative scared Strachan away from teaching. In 1979 they moved to San Francisco. Strachan applied his artistic talents restoring Victorians, becoming a woodworker and millwright with San Francisco Victoriana. Strachan’s friend Mark Feldman was among the first AIDS deaths, dying in 1983. Through the AIDS Cohort Study at San Francisco General Strachan found out in 1986 he was HIV-positive.
Intersex community
In 1994 Strachan became involved with the Intersex Society of North America in an effort to further explore gender issues related to Klinefelter’s. Via Cheryl Chase, who founded the organization, he learned intersex children were affected by surgical interventions at the hands of parents and doctors, that can have lifelong psychological and physical implications.
He volunteered for the organization and attended conferences and spoke with groups like PFLAG, nursing organizations, schools and churches. He went on to publish essays in journals and to lead an intersex support group in the late ’90s. In 2002 he joined the ISNA board of directors.
It’s clear from the memoir that being involved with other intersex people gave Strachan purpose and direction. He served on the San Francisco Human Rights Commission’s LGBT Advisory Committee from 2003 to 2006 and while there founded their Intersex Task Force. In 2004 the Advisory Committee made history by becoming the first government organization to hold a hearing on the concerns of the intersex community.
He and Tannen provided funds for “Both,” a film by the Peruvian director Lisset Barcellos with an intersex plot. The film premiered at the 2005 Frameline Festival.
From 2007 to 2008 he was the Intersex Outreach Director for Marriage Equality USA, a role that provided the opportunity to enlighten people about intersex people and provided an entirely different perspective on “same-sex” or “opposite-sex” marriage topic.
Strachan’s memoir grew from his journals, which he began in the ’80s to tell his nephews about his life. There are a variety of writing styles included, from a linear narrative style to poems, songs, prayers and metaphysical musings. He also writes about his experiences with the Radical Faeries.
As it was initially geared toward his family, it also covers a good deal of personal territory, including his relationship to his parents and their eventual deaths.
What is most valuable from a historical viewpoint was the growth of his identity and activism as a Bay Area resident, his grounding in both his identity as an intersex person and a long-term survivor of HIV, and his long-term relationship with his husband. His story is one that is seldom told, is enlightening and a celebration of community and personal growth.
‘Memoir of a Reluctant Giant’ by David Cameron Strachan as told to Davi Barker
Norton Press $35 paperback, $10 Kindle.
www.instagram.com/nortonpress
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/memoir-of-a-reluctant-giant-david-strachan/1146887450
Partial proceeds go to InterACT, Advocates for Intersex Youth.
https://interactadvocates.org/
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