Monika: How did that debate eventually lead to Eva-Lisa being excluded?
Sam: The whole thing came to an end when Eva-Lisa received a letter from the board saying that they had decided that trans women were no longer welcome and that she could get that year’s membership fee back. The letter wasn’t signed by an individual. It simply said, “Kind regards, the board of the Women’s House.” For her, this was the loss of an extremely important place and the end of almost 20 years of engagement with the house.
Monika: It sounds as though the experience stayed with her for many years afterwards. Did she ever talk about it with you?
Sam: I think this was probably the time when she felt most let down. It’s a moment she returned to when she talked about her life. It was such a betrayal by the women’s movement, where she had put in so much time and effort. She actually described this moment in several letters because, at the same time, she was involved with something called Föreningen Benjamin, an organization for transsexual people that she helped start in 1979.
She was responsible for communication and for organizing the transmasculine people in the organization, who lived all over Sweden. She made sure that they met occasionally, and she also corresponded with them. It’s really interesting, sad and beautiful to read these letters because she tells the story of this very traumatic event to several of the transmasculine people she corresponded with. For me, that’s also very valuable because I can see exactly what happened, and when, during this very dramatic event in her life.
Monika: She also experienced exclusion within the trans movement when it became increasingly focused on definitions that did not accommodate transsexual people or homosexuals. How did these repeated experiences of exclusion affect her, and did they change the way she approached activism?
Sam: What practically happened was that, at the end of the 1970s, FPE became the main trans organization in Sweden, and it excluded transsexual people, gay people and women. So Eva-Lisa understood, “Okay, this is not for me. I have to look for somewhere else where I can be myself.” That’s when she found the lesbian movement. Of course, it affected her in that there was perhaps a grudge, or some bad blood, between her and FPE.
I think it’s such a fun and cool story that says a lot about her that, when she was invited to the 10-year anniversary of FPE as one of the founders, she chose to give a speech about feminism as a sort of protest, which didn’t go down very well. Even though she was quite shy as a person, and wasn’t the one with the loudest voice or the person who stood at the forefront, she did all this other work. Still, I think she was very brave in that way. She had a lot of integrity and she stood her ground. If she was going to be a feminist, she had to be a feminist also within FPE. I think that says a lot about her and about how she worked as an activist.
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“She had a lot of integrity and she stood her ground.” |
Monika: Despite being pushed out of some spaces, she kept finding or creating other communities, including RFSL, Golden Ladies, Lash and Wish. What do you think allowed her to keep returning to queer community instead of withdrawing from it?
Sam: I think there was no other way for her to be herself. I get this question often when I talk about her. People ask, “Why did she persist when so many people worked against her or she met so much resistance?” But I think she had no other choice but to look for spaces where it was possible for her to be herself, because her alternative was to be a man, and I don’t think she would have survived that.
Monika: Eva-Lisa received RFSL’s Hedersregnbåge in 2010. What did that recognition mean in the context of a life in which she had sometimes been marginalized by the very movements she had helped build?
Sam: It was a recognition, and I think she always understood that she was right. It was meaningful for her to receive this recognition. At the same time, when I look at what she said and at how she built her archive, I think it’s very clear that she knew, in a way, that she was right. Why else would she have kept, for example, the letter from the Women’s House saying that she was no longer welcome? I think she knew. But of course, it was a big recognition for her to receive this award. She also received another award a few years later.
Monika: She spent much of her later life collecting, organizing and preserving queer and feminist history. Do you think she understood herself as an archivist, and when did she begin to realize that she was preserving history for people who would come after her?
Sam: I think that saving all these things, the records of meetings, the photographs from the first parties at Transvestia, came very naturally to her as someone who was brought up in Sweden, where organizational culture was very strong. There is a long history in Sweden of organizing in small associations. Of course, it started with the workers’ movement, the feminist movement, the sobriety movement in the 19th century, and the trade union movement, but it developed into people organizing themselves in small groups. They didn’t have to be political. It was simply a way for Swedish people to engage in social life, which can be good for very shy people, as Swedes are.
Monika: Did that culture of organizing also influence the particular role she took within these groups?
Sam: This way of organizing, where everything is put into archives and you always have a record of a meeting, was very familiar to her. It came very naturally. And of course, if you are part of an association, there are certain roles. There’s a secretary, and you have all these very clear roles, which I think was also helpful for her as a shy person. If you have your role, you’re sort of safe in a way. She often took on the role of archivist in these different organizations. I think it was partly because it was natural for her, but it’s also something that most people don’t enjoy very much. So when she did it, it was also perhaps a way for her to feel important and needed.
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“There is a long history in Sweden of organizing in small associations.” |
Monika: And when did she begin to see the material she had collected as something that could become a record of queer history for future generations?
Sam: As time went on, I think she obviously understood that it was important material. Especially in the 1990s, when she was in her 60s, she realized that she knew a lot that earlier generations didn’t. That’s also when she started giving lectures about queer history together with Märta, Jerry’s partner, and writing about queer history. I don’t know if she used the word “archivist”, and she probably didn’t, but she absolutely understood, or took on, the role of making queer history accessible to her community. And when you look at the archive, you can see that there are attempts to organize it in different ways. So I think, or I’m pretty sure, that she wanted the archive to be accessible after her passing as well.
Monika: When you inherited the archive after her death in 2018, you inherited not only documents but someone else’s understanding of her own life. How conscious were you of the responsibility involved in deciding what to show, what to contextualize and what to leave private?
Sam: Yes, of course, this has been very important to me, and I’ve been very conscious of it. She wasn’t the one who gave me the archive. It was her daughter, so Eva-Lisa never asked me to use it. At the same time, I’ve felt a great responsibility to share it and make it accessible. So of course, there is a balance. There are absolutely parts of the archive that I have not used because they are simply too private, and some of them also concern other people. Those parts are private and aren’t accessible to anyone.
My point of departure has been to look at the archive and think, “Okay, what is important? What says something about our queer history? What says something about where we are now in Sweden?” And then I use that material in an accessible way. If something is too private, I have no reason to use it. From the start, I’ve also been in contact with her daughter and her friends to talk about what I do, just to have them on board. I would never do anything that I thought would hurt anyone, and if someone asked me not to do something, I wouldn’t do it. If it was her daughter, for example, I would not do it. It’s not that important.
Monika: Your project is called Eva-Lisa’s Monument, but it is not a conventional monument made of stone. You have created walks, readings, films, texts and now a book. Why was it important to make the monument something people could encounter and participate in rather than simply something they could look at?
Sam: In my work as an artist, I often involve my community as a way to make queer history accessible, for example. I want it to be something that you can not only look at or read about, but something that you can experience in your body. I’ve worked a lot with city walks, and I also have a background in dance, so I know a lot about the importance of being in your body. I think that, especially as a trans person, with a particular relationship to the body, it’s also very important to be in a space together with other queer people, in your body, experiencing things with your whole body and mind.
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| Eva-Lisa's Monument. |
Monika: The city walk takes people through actual places connected with her life, from Transvestia to Lesbisk Front, Kvinnohuset, Jerry’s damklubb and Golden Ladies. What happens when history is told through streets and buildings rather than through a museum display?
Sam: Well, I think it’s the same thing: being there with your body, looking at your own city and understanding, “Oh, this place that I pass maybe every day is also a part of my history.” When we did the anniversary celebration for Transvestia in 2021, we actually used the old house where they had their Transvestia parties. I think it’s also a way of saying to myself and my community that this city belongs to us too. In a way, it’s like a pride parade, but a quieter one. Still, I think it can be a very strong realization that these streets and these houses are also a part of us, and they belong to us too.
Monika: Your work has been described as “arkivism”, activating archives in order to bring forgotten histories into the present. What does this archive reveal that conventional institutional histories of the Swedish LGBTQ movement have left out?
Sam: I think maybe the biggest thing is that Swedish trans history hasn’t really been written by anyone. There have been small parts written about it, but this archive and story just fill a lot of gaps.
Monika: In 2017 you filmed a series of interviews with Eva-Lisa herself. What did she tell you in those final conversations that you think is particularly important for people today to hear in her own voice?
Sam: I think a big theme in her life that she came back to, and that I also try to talk about a lot, is that on one hand you have the exclusions, where people have drawn up these lines and excluded people they didn’t want to collaborate with. For example, some parts of the feminist movement didn’t want to collaborate with lesbians because they didn’t want anyone to think that they were lesbians, and some so-called heterosexual transvestites didn’t want to work with transsexuals, and so on. These examples are, of course, sad and painful. But at the same time, you also had other examples throughout history, from Transvestia to Jerry’s Ladies Club, Lash and Wish, and Golden Ladies. These were examples of small, vulnerable groups that did the exact opposite: they opened the door and showed solidarity with other marginalized groups.
I think that is really the big lesson, and it’s also how Eva-Lisa worked. She was extremely inclusive all the time. She never seemed to feel that she was better than anyone else, and she was very empathetic. When she talked about, for example, the BDSM community, there were already many people from the BDSM community in Transvestia, even though it was a club for trans people. The way she talked about them was with so much care and empathy. I think she really embodied that solidarity and inclusion. So I think that is one of the most important parts of what she had to say.
Monika: Her story is often presented through the language of pioneering and activism, but the archive also contains parties, friendships, clothes, flirtation, clubs and ordinary social life. What do you think we lose when we remember queer pioneers only through their political achievements?
Sam: Maybe we lose the humanity, in a way. We may also lose a sense that we could do the same. There’s this elevation of people into these magical heroes who simply do this amazing work, and that can create a distance between ourselves and them. We can’t understand how it is possible to put all this time and engagement into something when we also want to think about our love life or other ordinary things. But I think it’s so important to understand that in all these movements, the community building, the clubs, and all these feelings of belonging, lust and love are the base of everything. And because you want to keep all these beautiful things, you then have to engage in activism.
Monika: One of the most striking things about Eva-Lisa’s story is that she was repeatedly at the edges of movements while still helping to sustain them. Do you think her position on the margins gave her a particular perspective on what community actually means?
Sam: I think another very important part of her activism was the role she took in these movements as the person who made the sandwiches, took the notes at meetings, and cleaned up after the parties. All these unglamorous tasks are, of course, essential for any kind of social justice movement. So I guess she understood what it took to sustain a movement. Alongside all the beautiful things, like the parties and so on, you also have to put in this sort of hard work.
Monika: Today her archive is preserved at Queerrörelsens Arkiv och Bibliotek in Gothenburg, and your work has introduced her story to new generations. What would you most like a young trans or queer person encountering Eva-Lisa’s story for the first time to understand about the world she lived in and the world she helped make possible?
Sam: I think the most important thing we can learn is to see how history is always in the making, and that it repeats itself. We have to be very careful not to think about history as linear, but to see that what was happening in the 1990s, for example, in Sweden is also happening today, when we have a big backlash, especially concerning rights for trans people in Sweden and elsewhere. So it’s important for a younger generation to see all the work that they put in, not only Eva-Lisa, of course, but so many other people, and to see that it is possible to change things. I think that’s also such a big part of our society right now: there’s this feeling that things can’t be changed, that we’re stuck, or that there’s no other alternative but to just be on social media and I don’t know what else. So I think that’s what I would love for people to see: that we have changed things in the past, and therefore it’s possible to do it again.
Monika: You have now spent years living with Eva-Lisa’s photographs, letters, memories and voice, and you have turned that material into a book and an ongoing public project. After all this time, what is the part of her life that still surprises you, moves you, or makes you wish you could sit down with her one more time and ask a question?
Sam: This is something I think about a lot: “Why didn’t I ask her this? Why didn’t I ask her that?” I think I’m constantly struck by people’s absolute basic yearning for community, and by how important it is to be seen as yourself, and by what lengths people will go to in order to find community, love and friendship. Everyone is so vulnerable, and you can see this especially in the letters, both the letters Eva-Lisa wrote and the letters she received. It’s just a big reminder of our vulnerability and our dependence on each other.
Monika: Sam, thank you so much for sharing Eva-Lisa’s story with me, and for helping bring her life, her struggles, her joy, and her remarkable legacy into the light.
Sam: Thank you, Monika!
END OF PART 2
All photos: courtesy of Sam Hultin.
© 2026 - Monika Kowalska
Hultin's most extensive recent project, Eva-Lisa's Monument, grew out of their meeting with Eva-Lisa Bengtson in 2016. Bengtson entrusted Hultin with her personal archive, which documented decades of Swedish trans, lesbian and feminist history. After Bengtson's death in 2018, Hultin developed the archive into exhibitions, films, public readings and city walks, and in 2025 published Eva-Lisa's monument: Berättelsen om en transpionjär.
In 2024, Hultin received the Ganneviksstipendiet, an arts scholarship from the Swedish Arts Grants Committee. Their work is represented in the collections of Moderna Museet, Statens konstråd, Göteborgs konstmuseum, Gotlands konstmuseum and Malmö konstmuseum.
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