Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is a San Francisco-based author and activist. She has written two novels, So Many Ways to Sleep Badly and Pulling Taffy.

In January, 2009, Sycamore initiated a public postering project called Lostmissing, which she describes as:

You know when you have a friend who you think will always be there -- no matter what, at least you'll have that friendship, right? Lostmissing is a public art project about the loss of that relationship, a specific relationship for me -- right now it's missing.

Sycamore was involved in ACT UP in the early 1990s and Fed Up Queers in the late 1990s. She was the host of the first Gay Shame event in New York, appearing with performer Penny Arcade, writer Eileen Myles, cabaret artists Kiki and Herb, and queercore band Three Dollar Bill held in Brooklyn, NY in 1998, which was captured in the documentary film entitled Gay Shame 98, by Scott Berry. She was one of the instigators of Gay Shame in San Francisco, which started in 2000 and became "a year-round direct action extravaganza dedicated to exposing all hypocrites." Sycamore was involved in the cultural center Dumba, and is a leading critic of assimilationist trends in gay culture.

Sycamore opposed the push among the LGBT movement for same-sex marriage, arguing that it distracts from more pressing issues like the securing of universal health care and housing security for all. Sycamore contributed to Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage, an anthology printed by the Against Equality in 2010. In 2008, Sycamore was named as a “visionary” as part of Utne Reader magazine’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing the World.”

Regarding gender identity, Sycamore identifies as genderqueer and uses the pronouns 'she' and 'her'.

Sycamore was awarded the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Non-Fiction on June 2, 2014, for her 2013 book The End of San Francisco.

Bibliography

• Tricks and Treats: Sex Workers Write About Their Clients (2000)
• Pulling Taffy (2003)
• That's Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (2004)
• Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving (2004)
• Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (2007)
• So Many Ways to Sleep Badly (2008)
• Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform (2012)
• The End of San Francisco (2013)

Filmography

• All That Sheltering Emptiness (2010)

External links

• Official website
• An interview with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, August 2008
• Does Opposing "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" Bolster US Militarism? - video debate by Democracy Now!
• New York Journal of Books review of 2013 title, The End of San Francisco
• The Brutality of Believing: Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore in Conversation with Kathleen Rooney. Brooklyn Rail, February 2014