Tiffany Thompson is the program director at Philadelphia FIGHT’s Youth Health Empowerment Project. She has more than 15 years of experience working with youth, adults, parents and LGBT populations around comprehensive sexual-health education in Philadelphia. Prior to coming to Y-HEP, Thompson managed the community-education department at CHOICE and served as the interim executive director of GALAEI.
A busy bee, Thompson has also served as a board member of Equality Forum, vice president of GALAEI’s board and treasurer of CHOICE’s board. I met up with her at the end of a long day.
PGN: What did you do today?
TT: It’s Sunday so every Sunday I watch my favorite TV show, “CBS Sunday Morning.” I’ve watched it for as far back as I can remember.
PGN: That’s my go-to show! I DVR it every week. I’m always trying to get people into it but you’re the only one I know who watches it regularly.
TT: It’s like the best show ever. I tell everyone about it too, and if they’re over on a Sunday they have to watch it with me and always get sucked in. My mom watches it too. It’s so great. So, I watched that and then I had a Dyke March committee meeting. We went over the Mr. Philly Drag King show that I co-chaired with Lascivious Jane and after the meeting I ran a lot of errands. After that, my girlfriend and I went out to dinner and then I came home and called you!
PGN: What would you rather have been doing today?
TT: [Laughs] Sitting on my couch all day with my partner watching really bad TV. My job requires me to run around a lot and this weekend had me all over the place. So it would have been nice to just numb out for a day watching dumb reality shows.
PGN: You’ve been doing activist/social-type work for some time, and obviously have always been concerned about others; to what do you attribute that?
TT: It’s probably the way I was raised. My parents are the kind of people that … well, there was always someone around. Someone who needed a place to stay or needed some help and they were the type of people that, if they had it, they would give it. Even if we didn’t have it, they would share what little we did. And it wasn’t like we were told, “This is how you should be/act” — and by “we,” I mean me, my brother and my sister — but just by witnessing their kindness and generosity, it became part of us. I actually studied international business as an undergrad and the whole time I was at school I kept thinking, What am I doing? This is not the work I’m supposed to be doing. Then when I found social-justice work, I realized, yes, this is what I should be doing.
PGN: What did the folks do?
TT: My mom was a special-ed teacher and my dad was a mortician. It was my grandfather’s business. So we lived above the funeral home, like in the movie “My Girl.” My dad was a mortician for a long, long time until he decided to switch careers and became a welder and made ships. We were a little shocked, even though I was in college by that time, but he loved it.
PGN: Huh, that was an odd change of professions. I grew up next to a funeral parlor and was best friends with the kids who lived there. Their father had a big storage area where they kept the caskets and we’d play hide and seek inside.
TT: Yes, my friends used to love coming to my house because it was so big. We had the funeral parlor and a morgue in the basement and an elevator and so many cool rooms so we could play and run around without being outside. Their parents felt good about that and my parents liked having us all there, so yeah, it was the best. And my sister’s birthday is the day before Halloween so we’d have great birthday parties. It was awesome.
PGN: Ever have any paranormal experiences?
TT: I never saw a ghost or anything but there was some weird stuff that happened. A lot of little things would go missing. I remember one time I came home and put my keys on the table and went to do something and I came back and the keys were gone. I was the only one there and they just disappeared. We never found them. Weird little things like that. There was definitely an odd energy in the house but it never felt scary or unsafe. My father would always tell us when there was a funeral to always be respectful because the spirit was still there. So I never saw anything directly but I definitely believe there’s something out there. [Laughs] But one side effect is that I don’t watch any horror films; if there’s a film or show with dead people coming back to life, no thanks, I’m good.
PGN: You have two siblings. Where do you fall in the order?
TT: I have an older sister and a younger brother. I’m the peacemaker.
PGN: Something fun that you did with a sibling?
TT: My sister and I are only a year apart so we did pretty much everything together, though we’re very, very different. My sister’s a makeup artist and she looks perfect and glamorous every day and I’m, you know, a butch lesbian! But my sister is very silly and we’d have a lot of fun together. When we were kids, we were obsessed with Rosie O’Donnell’s HBO standup special, I don’t know why. But we had it on a VHS tape and we watched it all the time. We could quote the entire hour-and-a-half of dialogue and we’d always make references to it. She’d say something like, “Did you see your chart? No movie tomorrow!” and we’d crack up. It was like this language that no one else understood but us.
PGN: I was reading about the 30 under 30 summit that you attended. Tell me a little about that.
TT: Uh, nope. Not me. [Laughs] It may have been another Tiffany Thompson. There are three of us in the area and what’s kind of interesting is that we all do sexual-health and youth work. It’s weird, I get calls or emails all the time and it’s like, “Sorry, I think you want one of the other Tiffany Thompsons.”
PGN: [Laughs] OK, I’ll try to stick to things that you’ve actually done. Were you the TiffThom who worked with teen pregnancy issues?
TT: Yes, before coming to Y-HEP I worked for CHOICE and I was the sexual-reproductive health-education coordinator. My job was to go to schools and do workshops about sexual health, pregnancy options, STD prevention and all that. Which is how I met one of the other Tiffany Thompsons! I loved doing that work. I love being able to work with young people and being able to talk about sex in an open and positive way and watch them make healthy choices.
PGN: What are some of the odd questions you received from the kids or school staff?
TT: There was always the call from an administrator saying, “We’re having a pregnancy outbreak. Can you come talk to the kids about birth control?” I would reply, “Well, I think it’s a little too late but I’ll come and talk.” It was like, “Why are you waiting until now to call me? You should have had me in at the beginning of the school year.” Another question always asked, especially among middle-school girls just starting to hit puberty, was how big were their breasts going to get. They were very concerned with that. And they were very concerned with their periods; they didn’t understand where the blood came from. So we’d go over the anatomy of the reproductive system. At Y-HEP the questions are usually about sexual health; people have a lot of bad information. Like, you can only get chlamydia if you’ve had sex seven times. Uh, no kids, that’s not true.
PGN: What are the concerns of youth with HIV/AIDS that are different from when HIV/AIDS first hit the scene?
TT: It’s interesting. We have a generation of young people who have never lived in a world without HIV or AIDS. They haven’t experienced the epidemic in the same way as people in the ’80s so it’s almost lumped with all the other STDs. Because of the history, it’s still assumed that you have to be having a certain type of sex to get it so there’s still a stigma attached to it, even though it’s not a death sentence like it once was. Whenever I have a young person who’s tested positive, they always say that they didn’t think it would be them. They always assume it would be someone else and they immediately think that their life is over. They really believe, “I’m going to die.” So we spend a lot of time trying to assure them that if they stay on their medications they can be OK and live a long, healthy life. The difference between now and then is that there are so many options now, especially at the Lax Center. It’s just hard to get past that stigma; there’s still a lot of shaming around HIV/AIDS. The kids don’t want to talk about it and they do things like hide their meds so no one will know.
PGN: Speaking of young people, what were you like as a kid?
TT: I’m from North Philly in the area that is now called Northern Liberties, but it wasn’t so nice then. I was really shy, really nerdy. I studied a lot. Part of it was because my sister was so outgoing and lively that I took the opposite route. But when I was a junior in high school, I studied for a year in Japan. I remember thinking, No one knows me there, it’s a chance to reinvent myself and be whoever I wanted to be. In Philly, I went to school with the same friends since we were in kindergarten, so they knew me as the shy one, but this was a chance to start fresh. In Japan I got a chance to be funny and outgoing and it changed the way I walked through the world from that moment on. After that, a lot of my life was focused on going back, hence studying international business — thinking I’d work for some Japanese company — and doing another study-abroad when I was in college. After college I spent three years there working for a school. I’m actually going back in August so I’m super excited.
PGN: Coming out?
TT: It was a long, torturous process. It probably wasn’t until college that I realized that the obsession I had with some girls was actually a crush, but I really didn’t do anything about it — until one day when I was sitting outside and this girl walked past me. I thought she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I was in love. I couldn’t stop thinking or talking about her. I finally realized that this was something I couldn’t control. The next time I was in Japan I met a girl from Canada and we started dating and I came out for real. And there I was.
PGN: Were you part of the gay scene in Japan?
TT: Yeah, in fact they have this thing called the Dyke Weekend that’s been going on forever. All these lesbians from all over the country go to this one place outside of Tokyo for a weekend of partying and hanging out. I went there and met all of these other queer women and they became like family as well as my support when I was coming out.
PGN: Tell me a little about the Dyke March here in Philly and your role.
TT: It’s happening on Saturday, June 13. We start out at Khan Park, 11th and Pine, and it’s a great event. I head up the Dykes on Bikes motorcycle contingent. This year we’re going to be honoring Gloria [Casarez] and we’re having T-shirts made to remember the role she played here. Last year we had record crowds and this year should be even bigger. We have some great performers lined up so I hope everyone comes out.
PGN: What’s your partner’s name?
TT: Oh, she’s going to be embarrassed that I talked about her. Her name is Hannah Zelman and she’s the director of the Institute for Community Justice, which is a part of Philadelphia FIGHT. They focus on people who are or have been incarcerated. We’ve been together for almost seven years and she’s a great partner. She’s from Vermont so she has more of a rural touch; our backyard has a great garden and that’s all her. We have three cats and I love them and her. She also has a great blonde faux hawk.
PGN: So what’s your most treasured possession?
TT: I love my iPhone, let’s be honest about that. I’m a big tech geek. I just got an Apple watch, which everyone thinks is ridiculous and not necessary, and I’m like, that’s the point. I love my motorcycle. It was the first thing that I purchased on my own, that was in my name, which was a big deal for me at the time. And I have some pictures of me with my siblings and a little trinket from my mom that I cherish.
PGN: Favorite holiday?
TT: It was Halloween but Hannah is Jewish and now, hands down, my favorite holiday is Passover. A holiday that requires you to drink, makes it part of the ceremony? I’m down with that. [Laughs] And it’s also about social justice so you can’t lose.
PGN: What historical figure do you most identify with?
TT: Audre Lorde. I read her biography and there were so many things I could relate to. More than just social-justice work, it was also who she was that I connected with. She’s black, she was queer, she had a lot of interracial relationships and she traveled the world and learned foreign languages, and I speak Japanese and am in an interracial relationship, so I felt very connected to her. In fact, whenever she came to Philly, she’d stay at the YMCA on Arch Street. It’s now a SWEAT Gym that I go to, so whenever I’m there, I think, I’m right here where Audre Lorde once stood.”
PGN: A word that you or the kids overuse?
TT: I use “dude” too much and the kids say “drawn” all the time. Like, “You’re drawing.” You’re being ridiculous.
PGN: Drawn or drawing?
TT: I think it’s drawing, but we’re probably both wrong. Either way, they use it too much!
PGN: What’s your motto?
TT: I like to say that misery is optional. Not that people don’t have problems, but I try to use it to remind me that if I’m in an unhappy situation, I have the power to get out of it or turn it around. If I’m in a meeting and start thinking, I want out, I realize that I can be miserable and stare at the clock or I can make myself get involved and engaged and maybe learn something or get something out of it. It’s all up to you.
For more information on Philly Dyke March, visit phillydykemarch.com.
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