Born on a summer day, June 17, 1949, at Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, Cathryn Platine emerged into a world that would soon come to know her as a pioneering force at the crossroads of activism, spirituality, and community leadership. An intersex woman born with both sets of genitalia, Cathryn’s life journey has been one of navigating complex identities with courage and grace in a society often resistant to nuance. Over the course of more than three decades, she has stood as a vital voice in transgender and feminist movements alike, tirelessly working to expand the understanding of womanhood and create inclusive spaces where all marginalized people can find acceptance and belonging. Cathryn’s journey as a trans activist began in the early 1990s, a period when transgender identities were often misunderstood, dismissed, or erased altogether.
Amid this climate of invisibility, she emerged as a vital voice within the National Transgender Action Coalition (NTAC), one of the pioneering organizations dedicated to offering support, education, and advocacy for trans individuals. Through her work with NTAC and other grassroots initiatives, Cathryn played a crucial role in shaping a nascent community, one striving to find its own identity and dignity in the face of pervasive societal rejection. During these early years, Cathryn had the rare opportunity to work alongside trailblazers like Sylvia Rivera, a foundational figure in the transgender and queer liberation movements. Rivera’s fierce dedication to the rights of marginalized trans people, especially those of color and those who were homeless or incarcerated, profoundly influenced Cathryn’s approach. While their paths sometimes diverged, given the different eras, identities, and strategies, the shared commitment to visibility and justice connected their work.
Cathryn was among the first to challenge prevailing notions that trans women had to be “post-op” to be considered authentic women. At a time when transgender narratives were dominated by surgical transition, she pushed for a broader understanding that respected diverse experiences, including those of women with penises, a reality many struggled to accept because it defied conventional gender expectations. She has been candid about the strategic missteps within the trans movement, including the overemphasis on genitalia in public discourse, which she warned would fuel backlash and deepen divisions. In 1998, Cathryn breathed new life into ancient traditions by founding the Cybeline Revival, a spiritual movement devoted to honoring the Great Mother Goddess Cybele. Through a blend of deep scholarship, ritual innovation, and heartfelt community building, she rekindled a timeless connection to the sacred feminine. As the guiding force behind the Maetreum, a modern pagan monastic community nestled in New York’s serene Catskill Mountains, Cathryn seamlessly intertwines spirituality and feminism. Her visionary philosophy of Wholistic Feminism centers on equality, compassionate outreach, and the reclamation of the sacred feminine, standing as a powerful counterbalance to patriarchal dominance.
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| Cathryn as avatar of Cybele for the Season of the Tree. |
Her activism has not only been ideological but deeply practical. She co-founded Gallae Central House, one of the nation’s earliest transitional housing programs specifically designed to support newly transitioned women. This pioneering initiative created a safe, inclusive space for trans and cis women to live together, fostering community and mutual support during a time when social services for trans people were almost nonexistent. This project demonstrated her belief that activism must include tangible care, not just theory or protest. Her activism spans legal and religious arenas, where she has fiercely championed minority religious rights, securing important victories for marginalized communities like the Maetreum. Seen by some as a controversial figure, Cathryn stands as a warrior woman at the crossroads of faith, identity, and justice. Today, she warns against the dangers of rising anti-trans sentiment and societal division, advocating for compassion, dialogue, and intersectional understanding. Through her work with the Cybeline Revival, she envisions a spiritual and cultural renewal that honors the sacred feminine and builds inclusive, sustainable communities as well as restoring the place of transsexual priestesses in the ancient world.
Monika: With such a rich and complex journey behind you, Cathryn, I want to begin by sincerely thanking you for accepting my invitation. There is a special kind of joy and pride that fills me when I get to celebrate the remarkable deeds of the older sisters who have courageously paved the way for all of us. I feel truly honored and excited to welcome you here to my blog.
Cathryn: Thank you for inviting me and the wonderful introduction. In a couple of weeks, I’ll be turning 76 with a bionic heart, two artificial valves, a pacemaker, a somewhat broken body, and cataract surgery behind me. I’ve never cared much for attention, and when I did get it, it often wasn’t the good kind. But lately, it’s occurred to me that I may not be around much longer, so the chance to chat about my life is most welcome.
Monika: Before we dive into your activism, I’d love to focus a bit more on you. What was your childhood like? Did you get along well with your parents?
Cathryn: I was born a poor white child. :) Actually true, I was born at Cottage Hospital in Grosse Pointe Farms. My father taught at the Grosse Pointe University School, and we lived in the caretaker’s house across the street from the school. Near Detroit, it was one of the richest communities in the US at the time, we were the token poor folk. I joke I was born with a plastic spork in my mouth.
Until kindergarten, I played dress-up with the little girl who lived across the stream from us. I remember a lot of my dreams from around age three, although not much of my waking experiences. I dreamed of a giant woman in white who comforted me and told me things I didn’t remember upon waking, but somehow knew were important. I was to learn later in life this is how the Goddess called Her people in the ancient world. I also learned lucid dreaming at this time and used it to convert my nightmares.
I knew I was different and decided I was born with a ‘girl brain,’ and there was nothing I could do about it. One of my classmates was Charlotte Ford, and I was invited to a playdate with her, but I must have committed an atrocity because it only happened once.
My parents kept all my school records, and when I was undergoing gender therapy, I showed them to my therapist, whose response was, “Wow, you can actually see when they tried to make a boy out of you.” My first-grade teacher was Jean Harris, later famous as the Scarsdale Diet Doctor killer.
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| Gallae Central House, now the Maetreum. |
Monika: Did things get any easier as you got older, or was it still a struggle to fit in?
Cathryn: We moved back to Massachusetts when I started second grade and moved every two years after that, making me always “the new kid.” I got beat up a lot. I felt my father’s disapproval of my less-than-manly ways. My relationship with my mother was similar to most daughters with their mothers rather than a son. We fought a lot over clothes and other things. I lived in the wild places around us, sometimes staying away in the woods for a couple of days at a time.
My maternal grandmother treated me like my cousins my age, all girls. She had been present at my birth and I suspect she knew what I was as a result. She made me these wonderful stuffed animals since I was not allowed to have dolls. I played village with them since I wasn’t allowed to play house. I obtained (stole) a complete wardrobe of girls’ clothes, including a Girl Scout uniform, when I was in Boy Scouts and lived a closeted girlhood growing up. I found a girl who had the Nancy Drew books, and I traded my Hardy Boys books with her, both of us being avid readers.
For three summers in a row, I was sent away to camp with my great-uncle Foster, whom I had been named after. He hated women, he hated me for being named after him, and especially the fact that this girly boy was actually better than him at woodcraft, archery, tracking, etc., skills he valued highly. I was tortured those summers and probably sexually abused, but if so I buried those memories deeply.
Monika: Was there a moment in your childhood that shaped how you saw gender roles or influenced your views on feminism?
Cathryn: My father made me a feminist. Around the age of nine, I overheard my mother and father fighting one night and my mother saying she was leaving him. His response was that if she did, she would never see the kids again. My mother had been my father’s student in high school, and he always treated her with disdain. She got in the car and left. I came out of hiding crying, and my father told me, “Don’t worry, she’ll be back because she has nowhere to go.” He meant it as male bonding, but it had the opposite effect on me, and I distrusted men after that and considered myself a feminist at the dawn of the second wave of feminism as a result.
By the time I was 13, I was mediating between my parents, more the adult than the child. I basically emancipated myself from them after we moved to India.
Monika: I've been to India more than once, and I could honestly wear a sari every day! I've always been touched by the empathy of the people there. It's also such a fascinating country when it comes to spiritual growth. How did your time there shape you?
Cathryn: I loved India. My father was the principal of the American International School in New Delhi. It was a true international school, with kids from all over the world, not just Western kids and military brats. We were there from ’64 to ’66, my sophomore and junior years of high school. India at that time was closer to Raj India than modern India. It was also the same time the Beatles came to India. We traveled slowly both to and from, seeing much of Europe and the Middle East in the process, with my father using an outdated version of Europe on Five Dollars a Day that had us well off the beaten path the entire trip. I wandered the bazaars of Istanbul and Cairo, which prepared me for those of Old Delhi. The Giza plateau was still in the desert then, not a suburb of Cairo, and you had to reach it by bus, horse, or camel. The Istanbul I saw was the same as the one in From Russia With Love, and the Beirut I saw was then considered the Jewel of the Mediterranean.
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| Babushka Cathryn on a cold winter morning. |
Monika: You must have met some truly fascinating people during your time there. Did any of those encounters leave a lasting impression?
Cathryn: India exposed me to a myriad of personalities. I had dinner with Indira Gandhi, met Joseph Heller who wrote Catch-22, and met General Tibbets, who flew the Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I met Ravi Shankar and Dick and Dagmar Celeste, who later became Governor of Ohio when I lived there as well. I learned about sharing the wealth. We had a duplex house and still had a live-in cook, a sweeper, a gardener, a guard, and even a driver before we had a car. Our cook, Laksman, could speak seven languages and read and write in five. He never called me by my birth name; instead, he called me Jackie, as in Jackie Kennedy, which was his way of letting me know he knew who I was. I spent hours with him learning the myths, stories, and lore of India, and he warned me never to be seen as female outside the city because my red hair would brand me a witch. I debated international politics with a kid from Russia and had dinner with high-ranking military men whose kids I went to school with.
Monika: It sounds like your time in India was filled with unforgettable adventures! What are some of the wildest or most unexpected things you experienced while living there?
Cathryn: I used to joke that I invented extreme sports because while at Dehradun I had a local craftsman make me a skateboard and I used it on the roads in and out of town. I ran smack dab into Dan Blocker, Hoss of Bonanza, while doing so! I still claim I was the first to skateboard the Himalayas. I did volunteer work at a leper colony, saw the Taj Mahal by moonlight, travelled to Jaipur, spent the night in the jungle at Jim Corbett Park where I swam in a crocodile-infested river, camped in the Himalayas in winter, and wandered the desert outside of Delhi.
We were in Kashmir when the first Indian-Pakistan war broke out there. Having spent a couple of weeks in a houseboat on Dal Lake and then a cabin further north, we caught the last plane out of Srinagar and decided to sit the war out in Delhi instead of going back to the States. We had ordered several custom rugs and fancy leather clothes, but never got them because of the war.
I met a number of gurus during my travels and learned basic techniques to control body temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure, which I used my senior year to embarrass a science teacher. I got arrested for espionage, chased by a wild boar, and explored the storm drains under most of Delhi no one knew about back then. On the way back to the States, I travelled separate but parallel to the rest of the family. We took the SS United States from England to New York. All in all, the culture shock from moving from New Jersey to India was nowhere near as much as India to West Virginia, where we moved next.
Monika: Is that when you met your future wife? Was it love at first sight, or did it take a little longer for sparks to fly?
Cathryn: I didn’t meet my former wife until my senior year of college. There was no “love at first sight.” We moved in together after I returned to Columbus, Ohio from New England after college. She was told about my “gender weirdness,” as she called it, when we first started living together. Apparently, I was almost unique in disclosing before marriage among trans folks my age. I did not disclose to anyone else back then.
END OF PART 1
All photos: courtesy of Cathryn Platine.
© 2025 - Monika Kowalska
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