Transgender activist and TV host Kitty Kastro (aka Nadia Cabezas), who died when hit by a car March 5, will be memorialized tomorrow at 2 p.m. at St. Anthony’s Foundation, 121 Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco.
Kastro, 40, was the host of San Francisco’s “Tranny Talk”, a cable access show that ran on and off for eight years. She was stopped on a soft shoulder on a highway in Indiana, traveling cross-country with her mother after her grandmother’s funeral, when she was struck by the vehicle of an unlicensed, uninsured septuagenarian man who had drifted off the road while eating.
“Tranny Talk” was hailed as the country’s first “serious” show dealing with transsexual isssues. Kastro interviewed police chiefs, children of transsexuals, and people on the street, often asking them what the difference between a transvestite and a transsexual was.
Bay Area Reporter columnist Gwen Smith said she and Kastro did not get along, that Kastro was “difficult” (a quick web search revealed that Kastro could be a polarizing personality) but paid the following tribute:
Yet I also know one thing: in spite of any of that, sometimes you need those who are bold, and brash, and difficult. Not everything can be done in your best suit dress, playing nice for lawmakers and others. Sometimes you have to be big, sometimes you are simply not going to move forward any other way.
Kastro is survived by her partner, Dina Boyer, who is the producer of “Tranny Talk”, as well as her mother.
Previously: Alexis Skye and conditioned thinking; Allanah Starr will try anything once
See also: Not Ready for Prime Time (sfgate.com), Dead Again (ebar.com), Tranny Talk
Emily Marilyn will be interviewed on Playboy Radio tonight between 5-7.
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