Marsha Botzer’s journey through gender, labor, and liberation

From a quiet beginning in postwar Seattle, Marsha Botzer is a trailblazer and lifelong fighter for justice

(June 30, 2025) — Marsha Botzer was born in Seattle in 1947. One of her earliest memories was the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, where she encountered people of many different cultures and ethnicities. Here, she caught a small glimpse of the world beyond the quiet confines of her calm, sheltered upbringing.

Her home life was shaped by parents who, after the devastation of World War II, longed for simplicity and peace. But even as a child, Marsha knew something was off. “Why doesn’t my body match my mind?” she wondered silently. Back then, there wasn’t a word for what she felt. Outside of the norm, gender identity was invisible, unspoken.

Socially isolated, without the language or support to explore her identity, Marsha retreated inward. She had few close friends and spent most of her youth quietly navigating a world that didn’t see her.

Discovering the Opportunity of a Union Job

After high school, Marsha briefly attended college and tried ROTC before dropping out and cycling through short-term jobs. In the mid-1960s, she was hired at the gas utility. It was hard labor—digging trenches, breaking concrete. But it was also her first experience with the power of a union.

With a union job came stability: wages that rose each year, rights on the job, and for the first time, a sense of dignity in her labor. That paycheck helped her buy a house in Seattle. “I quickly learned the power of what a union could do,” she said.

A Search for Identity

Though her union job brought stability, Marsha still lived with deep confusion and isolation. She had heard whispers of someone in Europe who had changed their gender. In 1968, she boarded a plane to Paris searching for answers.

Abroad, she found artists, antiwar activists, and trade unionists organizing in ways she hadn’t seen in the U.S. In Venice, a fleeting mention of someone who had changed their gender gave her hope: “I’m not alone,” she thought. “Maybe there’s a way.”

She returned home, still without answers, but saw hope in a rapidly changing world. Civil rights and antiwar movements were rising across the country, and the early stirrings of LGBTQ organizing had begun.

In 1969, the Seattle Counseling Service (SCS) was formed as a place for gay and lesbian people to discuss their feelings. Gender identity remained unspoken, but the seeds of change had been planted.

Marsha continued exploring her identity while working at the gas company and connecting with Seattle’s underground queer community. Still unable to find a space to talk openly about gender, she had a revelation: “What I was looking for didn’t exist—so we had to build it ourselves.”

In 1977, she founded the Ingersoll Gender Center, modeled partly on SCS. Ingersoll would become her most enduring legacy. In the early years, it operated largely in the shadows. She remembers discreetly placing business cards inside library books on gender and sexuality. To this day, Ingersoll brings together over 70 people weekly to navigate and discuss gender identity.

Becoming Herself—and Helping Others Do the Same

In the late 1970s, Marsha learned of Dr. Stanley Biber, a former Army M*A*S*H surgeon performing gender-affirming surgeries in the small mining town of Trinidad, Colorado. Dr. Biber was among the first to perform this type of work. “Going to Trinidad” later became a euphemism within the transgender community for undergoing gender-affirming surgery.

In 1981, she felt ready and traveled to Trinidad to undergo surgery. “Not everyone needs surgery to feel right, but it was extremely important to me,” she says. Over the following years, she helped guide more than 100 people to Dr. Biber. “There was so much pain out there,” she told The Seattle Times in a 1986 feature. “That’s why I’m open about this. People need to know they’re not alone.”

Around this time, she also began taking night classes, eventually earning a counseling degree and leaving her job at the gas utility after 17 years. At a time when gender identity was largely ignored by academics, she challenged University of Washington counseling students to confront the issue head-on in their work.

Bridging Activism, Labor, and Love

By the 1990s, Marsha was an established leader in both the growing Seattle LGBTQ rights movement and the labor community. The movement was also entering a new phase of advocacy and political battles.

She helped lead Hands Off Washington (HOW), fighting back against ballot measures that sought to strip LGBTQ civil rights. This organizing brought her across the state and allowed her to educate people about gender identity.

Later, she helped found HOW’s successor, Equal Rights Washington (ERW), and helped pass the landmark 2006 anti-discrimination law. In 2012, Washington became the 10th state to win marriage equality. Two and a half years later, it would become the law of the land.

Throughout this period of enormous progress, Marsha was more than just an activist—she was a strategist, a mentor, and, critically, a bridge-builder between the labor movement and the LGBTQ rights movement.

A New Front in the Long Battle for Acceptance

Marsha views her life’s journey as part of a broader, shared experience—one stretching across generations of people who have lived, often silently, at the margins. In her lifetime, she’s watched the movement for trans acceptance emerge from the shadows of the 1950s to where it stands today. Gender identity is more visible and affirmed than ever before—yet the backlash against trans people has become increasingly organized, politicized, and dangerous.

Marsha believes that the current backlash is a result of a well-funded and coordinated effort to undo decades of hard-won progress. At the same time, she’s candid about the LGBTQ movement’s loss of momentum after marriage equality. “After 2015, the funding of LGBTQ organizations dried up,” she recalls, “and so did a lot of the energy to organize.”

Progress that once felt inevitable began to unravel. Public opinion shifted. As the second Trump presidency loomed, attacks on trans people became more organized and politically weaponized.

Still, Marsha remains resolutely hopeful. Her guiding principle hasn’t changed: to move hearts and minds through humility and education. “People have fears and misconceptions,” she says. “We have to help them understand that trans people just want to live a happy, peaceful life.”

Lifelong Fighter for Justice

It’s impossible to list the countless accomplishments and leadership roles that Marsha Botzer has had a hand in over her nearly 60 years of community support and activism. She co-chaired the National LGBTQ Task Force, served as Grand Marshal at Seattle Pride several times, and served on the MLK Labor Executive Board for more than a decade.

Beyond titles, she’s touched millions through public speeches, interviews, and quiet one-to-one conversations—often during a time when gender identity was rarely discussed openly.

Through it all, the lessons she learned from her union—collective strength through solidarity—remain her blueprint for change. “Unions are one of the only institutions that know how to fight for their very survival against all odds,” she says. “For that reason, they must be at the forefront of the fight for justice in all forms.”

This story was originally published by MLK Labor, the central labor council for King County.