I am Cynthya Brynkattae and I am a galla, as in transgender Priestess, of the Magna Mater, the Goddess Cybele. I am writing here to talk about the times I met and encountered Cathryn Platine. I am telling the truth about what I experienced. I am doing so to show that what Viktoria Whittaker says about her is the truth. I am also writing here to warn my fellow transgender people that going to Platine is not a good or safe alternative to staying in a red state, now that Platine is trying to convince trans people to move to the Maetreum.
I met Cathryn Platine in the mid-2000s at a transgender spiritual gathering at Raven Kaldera's home. I can say that Platine acted as if she had to always be the center of everyone’s attention. She demanded that her constant smoking be acknowledged as a disability accommodation whenever she could get away with it. She tried to take credit for gender activism as if she had singlehandedly done what is recorded in the media as efforts by multiple people. And she treated Raven Kaldera and his wife with condescension while they worked to make Cauldron Farm accessible to disabled Pagans.
From the first moment I met her, Platine carried herself like she was the most important person in the room. You could just sense it in everything she said, the way she said it, her tone, the attitudes she talked. She acted like she was superior to you.
As several of us walked down part of the farm, Platine smoked whenever she could, and yes, she claimed this was a disability accommodation. She told everyone this was to mitigate a chronic back problem. Her exact words were "tobacco might rot your lungs out, but it's also good for pain relief." When not around the bonfire pit or near Raven or his family, Platine was always smoking, and if you wanted to be near her, you just had to accept it and hope you stayed upwind of the smoke.
Raven and his family have always made Cauldron Farm accessible to Pagans with disabilities. I use a body which is legally blind, and have attended many events at the farm and have enjoyed wonderful help on anything I have needed to be able to participate equally in the gatherings that I have attended there. Raven and his family work to make their grounds open to people of all abilities.
At this gathering, Raven's wife Bella used an electric golf cart to transport disabled Pagans around the farm. Platine and I got in the cart, and I will contrast how she and I treated the experience. As a proud science fiction geek, I took being on a powered vehicle in a forest as an opportunity to pretend I was Princess Leia on Endor, and having the time of my life. Platine, on the other hand, spoke with haughty condescension to Bella, acting like the Kalderas were not equals, but more like she would expect a valet to take her to her hotel. That attitude was there whenever I saw her near Raven and Bella, and Platine seemed to be skating the razor's edge of observing hospitality. That was apparent even in the tiny bit of getting taken via the cart to our respective campsites, and it was like that the whole weekend.
Considering what I have heard from many reliable people about how Platine has acted as a leader of the Maetreum, I find one moment very telling. During a workshop discussion around the fire, we were all asked what we considered the biggest problems facing the transgender community. Platine instantly chimed in with, and I quote verbatim, "self-appointed leaders." I feel this bears on my experience with her after this gathering, and what I've heard of how she herself has behaved in the role of community leader.
In addition to trying to always be center of attention, Platine was all about the name-dropping. She held forth about the activism she claimed to have done on behalf of the Lipscomb family. That family had been in the public eye because their transgender daughter had been taken from them. I know of the case from the media attention the story had received as many transgender activists and organizations had weighed in on the story. Platine made it sound like she pretty much was the advocacy and activism, even though I knew, even without knowing any of the people involved personally, that this could not be the truth.
When she heard that I was a friend of Stonewall Rebellion fighter Sylvia Rivera, Platine latched on to me. She claimed to have been close friends with Sylvia, and made sure to exchange contact information with me, and asked me to contact her at a later time.
Several months later I contacted Platine on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), reintroduced myself and asked her to tell me what she could say about Sylvia. I was shocked to hear a Gish gallop slam-talk attempt to tear my friend's character apart.
I knew Sylvia during the last two years of her life. Sylvia saved my life when I was suicidal because of how I was being mistreated for being a transgender woman. Sylvia was badass and didn't take any crap, and never minced words, and was also good and kind and caring. She took me on as an adopted niece and made me feel I had an older Auntie who nurtured me when I needed to be nurtured in coming into my sense of myself and my gender and my power.
The picture Platine tried painting was to try making Sylvia out to be the opposite of the friend I knew. Platine claimed Sylvia was deceitful and shady, claimed that she made up stories to impress people, and changed who she was to fit the moment and so she could one over on other transgender people. She practically made Sylvia out to be a con artist.
I know all this to be patently untrue. Sylvia was the opposite of deceptive. She got into trouble for being too honest, for being unwilling to tolerate lies and deceptions. She was the most blunt and plain-speaking person I have ever been lucky to know. She would tell you if your stuff stank, and she would tell you if you were doing the right thing. To hear blatant untruths told about my late friend and mentor disgusted me. I coldly thanked Platine for her time as I ended the conversation, and made up my mind to forget I ever even met this person who trashed Sylvia.
Since writing the first draft of this blog entry, Platine has been interviewed on Blogspot on The Heroines, and there she is suddenly saying glowing things about Sylvia and Sylvia's activism. I consider this sheer hypocrisy on Platine's part, as her behavior with me on AIM belies any praise she said to The Heroines. The interviewer calls Platine a colleague of Sylvia's, and Platine talks about her as if about a friend. No friend or colleague would talk about someone the way Platine spoke to me on AIM about Sylvia that night.
I have heard Platine's claims that Sylvia was going to move to the Catskills with Platine's help had Sylvia survived her battle with cancer. I knew Sylvia during the final years of her life and spoke to her at least once a week. Never, not once, did Sylvia ever speak of Platine. She never said a word to me about leaving the NYC area where her life and activism had been centered, nor of going to the Catskills. And the dates do not jibe properly. Platine did not have access to help anyone move to Palenville until the literal last days of Sylvia's life. Platine and the people she was working with did not buy the Central House of Palenville until January 2002. Sylvia Rivera died on February 19 of 2002. When it comes to this story of Platine's, the dates and math just simply do not work.
In that interview in The Heroines, Platine also says much about having been a founding and crucial member of NTAC, the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition. I was involved with NTAC for over three years between late 1999 until summertime 2003. I helped proofread, correct and sometimes even wrote press releases for NTAC. While I came into NTAC after they had clearly been active for some years, I can honestly say that never, not once in those three-plus years, did I ever hear the name Cathryn Platine said by anyone. I worked directly with Vanessa Edwards Foster and Ethan St. Pierre, and neither one ever mentioned Platine.
I had not thought of Cathryn Platine in several years. Imagine my surprise when I opened my Facebook messages to find a two-line poison-pen couplet in my back messages. I quote the message, which I still have, verbatim. She wrote, "I saw some fairly nasty comments about me by you several years ago. I haven't forgotten that." I listened to my screen reader repeat these words, and all I could think was, what the bleep? That AIM chat was in something like 2007, and this message's time-stamp puts it at August 10th, 2010. Not only had Platine made up a lie that I had said anything at all about her anywhere, let alone written any public comments attacking her, but she had waited three years to throw this into my private messages.
I have gotten to know Viktoria for several years, and she is good, kind, caring, and an amazing Priestess. I have had to see and hear and feel her anguish as Cathryn Platine has tried to destroy her reputation both as a person and as a Priestess. I have had to see Viktoria hurting because Platine has used her blog to tell blatant, absurd lies about my friend.
Now, Platine has used her blog, her BlueSky, and other places on the internet to try convincing transgender people to come to the Maetreum so they can flee right-wing attacks on trans rights in red states. I had to have a friend who speaks Doomsday-Prepper-speak to translate some of the blogspot postings to understand the framing of herself as the sole savior of trans people from Trump's second term. Consider what I have said here. Considering how she acted toward Raven Kaldera and his wife. Consider how she slam-talked a transgender icon I was fortunate enough to get to know. Consider how she attacks a woman who broke her butt to support the Maetreum. Other people have all told similar stories about Platine's behavior. As a transgender woman and as a Galla Priestess, I cannot in good conscience stay silent knowing that my fellow trans people might go to Platine. I cannot let my people go from a frying pan into a fire.
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