Trans activist Courtney Sharp is the recipient of the 2023 GAA Lifetime Achievement Award.
Like so many trans people, Courtney Sharp’s journey to self-realization was a long one. Growing up, she knew she was different but couldn’t quite put her finger on it. All she knew for sure was that she had better keep that difference secret. Her family was religious, and this was North Louisiana, after all. When her “difference” began to manifest, her family, which was Roman Catholic, steered her into traditional gender roles.
Sharp was born in New Orleans, but had moved away as a child when her father took a job near Vidalia, Louisiana. While attending college at Louisiana Tech in Ruston (near the Arkansas border), she attended a talk on campus given by Christine Jorgensen—the first widely recognized trans woman in the U.S. (she transitioned in the early 1950s). Most of the attendees came out of curiosity, but it was more than curiosity for Sharp. Sharp was looking for answers, a reference point, hope.
Sharp had dealt with her internal struggle by turning to academics as a coping mechanism. Incredibly bright, in 1976 she earned two degrees in Chemical and Biomedical Engineering. She then landed a job with a chemical company in Lake Charles, where she worked for seven years before being hired by another corporation, which relocated her closer to Baton Rouge.
When she anonymously asked the Human Resources Department what the company policy on being transsexual was, she received no response. She then asked a lawyer to assist her in obtaining information, but still no response was forthcoming.
Sharp kept working because she really enjoyed her job, but after a few years the struggle had become too intense to deny. When Sharp personally approached the HR Department, she was told that she would be fired if she began transitioning. The excuse the company gave her was that it would create a “hostile work environment.” Sharp later recalled, “I do not think anyone really understands what discrimination feels like until they confront it personally.”
Sharp then began seeing a psychiatrist at a Gender Clinic in Galveston in 1985. She kept working, but gradually became depressed to the point of being hospitalized in 1992. Sharp eventually sued her employer in Federal Court, but her case was dismissed. Ultimately, she was terminated for long-term disability. Unemployed and on disability, she then began spending countless hours researching and educating herself on transgender legal issues. She regularly attended transgender conferences in Houston.
In 1993, Sharp moved to New Orleans. She had lost her career as well as her family, who rejected her when she began transitioning. She was lost, lonely, broke, and depressed. She considered suicide. But a nagging thought kept her from ending it all.
She had learned of a statistic that haunted her. In her own words, Sharp recalls “40% of the kids in my community are killing themselves and I know exactly why. What am I going to do about it?” The answer was to get involved with PFLAG and the community. She volunteered at the LGBT Community Center, and also worked with LAGPAC. Sharp also served as the first transgender person on the Mayor’s Advisory Committee (MAC) and the following year joined the Board of Directors of LAGPAC.
In 2000, when a Louisiana Winn-Dixie grocery store fired Peter Oiler for cross-dressing when he wasn’t working, he reached out to the LGBT Community Center for help and was referred to Sharp. Sharp met with Peter Oiler and his wife Shirley, and helped organize a protest campaign consisting of 38 different organizations. While a lawsuit was working its way through the federal court system, Sharp said, “The transgender community had demanded that Winn-Dixie institute a non-discrimination policy for gender identity & expression and sexual orientation. We also asked them to institute sensitivity training. Those demands have not been withdrawn and were not dependent upon the legal case.”
In addition to battling politicians and corporations, Sharp also waged a subtler campaign within the LGBT+ community to foster greater understanding and inclusion of transgender people.
When she joined PFLAG, she asked why the group did not include transgender young people in its mission. The question caught the attention of the local chapter’s leadership (Sandra Pailet, Julie Thompson, and Randy Trahan), and they took Sharp to dinner to discuss the matter further. Sharp emphasized to them that the path to understanding was education and then offered to educate PFLAG. And educate she did.
Sharp began bringing other trans people to PFLAG support meetings and providing reading material to anyone who would accept it. Thompson remembers one book Sharp made her read about a trans person who ended up committing suicide. Thompson was so depressed by the tragic story, she told Sharp she didn’t want to read anymore. Sharp replied, “You have to.” Thompson, Pailet, and Trahan were receptive to Sharp’s message, but the rest of the board, at least initially, was not.
Sharp had put transgender youth on the local PFLAG chapter’s radar but there was still much to do, namely convincing the local PFLAG’s Board of Directors that the trans issue was something the national organization needed to address. When the PFLAG board read a letter Stewart Butler had published in the local paper which took the local HRC to task for ignoring trans people just before their gala fundraiser, they were incensed that Thompson, as President of PFLAG, was one of the signers.
In 1995, neither Sharp nor Butler were on the PFLAG board. President Julie Thompson recalls that the board, which consisted of 14 members, had been split about the transgender issue. Before the board meetings, Stewart would call Thompson and coach her on what to say and how to respond to objections. After board meetings, Sharp would call Thompson and ask her if the board “fussed” at her. “Yes,” Thompson would reply.
Ultimately, however, largely because of Stewart and Sharp’s efforts behind the scenes, the PFLAG board came around. Together they gradually persuaded the local chapter to lead the fight for transgender inclusion in the national PFLAG Mission Statement. Julie Thompson recalls the group first writing letters to the national office urging the inclusion of trans people in their mission statement and not receiving a reply.
But the local chapter would not be ignored.
The New Orleans chapter of PFLAG formally proposed that the national organization vote to include the word transgender in its mission statement. The resolution would be voted on by the national board at the national conference in San Francisco in 1998. The board required written arguments both for and against the resolution before they voted. Sharp wrote the argument for trans inclusion. The resolution passed and PFLAG became the first national LGBT+ organization to include trans people in its mission statement.
Sharp served as a regional director for PFLAG and was appointed to the National Board. In 2000, Sharp became the first transgender member of the national PFLAG Board of Directors. In 1997, Mary Boenke and Sharp, along with Jessica Xavier, whom Sharp had met at a transgender law conference in Houston, wrote a booklet entitled Our Trans Children which was published by the PFLAG Transgender Network.
The 2023 Gay Appreciation Awards will be held on August 19 at Oz.