 Stu Rasmussen is the mayor of his hometown Silverton, Oregon. He’s been elected to that office three times. But that’s not what makes him unusual. Rasmussen is the first openly transgendered mayor in the United States, and he has the breast implants to prove it.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
I haven’t fully grown up yet. I’m still enjoying the process. It’s hard to tell. My earliest ambition for a career was to be a telephone repair man.
Why that?
I think the highest tech thing in Silverton, Oregon when I was growing up was telephones.
So who was your inspiration when you were growing up?
Well, that was probably around the age of 15 or 16 when I got my first job that wasn’t working around the home. A fellow named Victor David. He was the local operator of vending machines and amusement devices, like pinball machines. I went to work for him and he was like having a second father who had a much more interesting lifestyle than my father.
What did your dad do?
Well, when I was born he was working for the movie theatre in town and the bottom dropped off of that business in around 1955 or 56, so he went to the post office and spent 20 years there as a mail carrier.
You own a movie theatre in Silverton. Is that the same one your father worked at?
Same one I grew up in.
How did it fall back into your hands?
My father leased the business from the owner and when my father got out of the business in the 50s, the owner started operating again—or his wife did—and I went to work for her in high school as a projectionist in the theatre. So my business partner and I were in high school together and both working at the theatre and we decided at that time if the business ever came up for sale, we’d buy it and we did in 1972.
So let’s get to you being the mayor of Silverton. This is the third time you’ve been elected.
I was originally elected to the city council in 1984, elected mayor in 1988, mayor elect again in 1990, elected to the council in ’92, library board in ’96, then I took a couple of years off, made some changes to my life, actually my body. The life stayed the same but the body changed around a little bit. I figured my political life was over, so I could go ahead and do what I wanted to do. I came back on the scene because I didn’t like the direction I saw the community going and enough people agreed with me to put me back on the council in 2004 and made me mayor in 2008.
You’ve said your first courageous act was coming out. You live in a small rural town. I can’t see most small rural communities embracing what you did.
Silverton is a very special community and I was a well known quantity before I transitioned. I was and probably still am trusted in the community, a well known business person. They were well acquainted with the product, it was just the packaging. The package changed.
How difficult was it for you to come out and be the person you wanted to be?
It was a slow evolutionary transitional process. I was a cross dresser from teen years, puberty on, and closeted. I didn’t know what I wanted to be until I found the internet and found there were other people like me. It was like, well, I’m a freak. It was terrible. So in the mid ‘90s when we got internet access and saw there were other people around and found a support group in Portland, the Northwest Gender Alliance, and started going to meetings and started getting much more comfortable with myself and finding out you may be different but that’s not a bad thing. It was just one little success after another…and I got the breast implants in 2000.
That’s an unusual step to take. It’s one thing to be a cross dresser but to get breast implants is a whole other thing.
For me it was the right thing to do. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.
You’ve said you’ve done this to blackmail-proof yourself.
If you’re in the public life and in the light and people find out, oh my god, he dresses in women’s clothes. As soon as that hits the gossip circuit, your career is over. So you’re out about it and say, well, yeah, I’m gay or yeah, I’m a cross dresser or yeah, I’m transgendered, so what? It just stops them in their tracks.
I really applaud you for wearing those 3-inch heels.
Well, you get used to it. I have to be good at it because people are watching.
You’ve made a difference on a level that helps the community.
That’s what the community responded to. This community is the love of my life, other than my girlfriend. It’s what I’m dedicated to and I don’t want to destroy it. The community responded to the issues, not to the fact that I wear a dress or a brassiere. It was a fairly major step for the entire world but Silverton has pretty much said, “Well so what? It’s just Stu.” I’ve made a step and I hope that other trans people can do the same thing and say, hell if Stu can do it, I can do it. But the issue is not going to be, elect me because I’m trans. The issue should be elect me because there are issues that should be addressed and I have a plan. Oh, and by the way, I happen to wear a dress. |
