Hacker Cinema
The Lady and the Dale
2021 · TV series · documentary · 57 min episodes · 1 season
This documentary series explores an audacious 1970s auto scam centered around mysterious transgender entrepreneur Elizabeth Carmichael, who rose to prominence when she released the Dale, a fuel-efficient three-wheeled vehicle during the 1970s gas crisis.
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> It was an oddity, but trans was perhaps not the cultural flashpoint like it is now.
That's a wonderful wish, but I don't think it holds up to the evidence.
Off the top of my head:
1. If you watch HBO's Lady and the Dale, you'll see that in the mid 1970s a local reporter was hounding the company not because he suspected fraud. (Apparently the entire company was fradulent.) Nope, he wanted to reveal that Carmichael was really a man who was dressed as a woman. (If someone told me that Eugene Levy's character from Splash was based on this reporter, I'd believe them. :)
That documentary had later commentary from the same reporter (in the 80s/90s, I think)-- still proud that he outed a trans person.
2. Check out Gloria Steinem's mid 70s musings on transgenderism. Her thoughts in a 1977 essay on the subject would be right at home today on the alt-right podcasting space, and there are probably also many HN'ers lurking here who agree whole-heartedly with her anti-trans surgery statements.
Unfortunately, I don't have access to the relevant article ATM, but I'm pretty sure this quote was written in the context of the same anti-trans-surgery chapter-- "If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?"
The point is-- we're talking about Gloria fucking Steinem! And her non-apology apology to the trans community didn't appear until 2014 or so[1].
The fact that Amazon sells trinkets with the "shoe doesn't fit" phrase tells me that there's probably a lot more anti-trans history that's been swept completely down the memory hole.