{"id":15,"date":"2025-09-15T12:29:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T16:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/bossladylawmom\/?p=15"},"modified":"2025-09-15T12:29:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T16:29:13","slug":"from-great-men-to-babeland-oral-history-at-the-margins-of-labor-and-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/bossladylawmom\/2025\/09\/15\/from-great-men-to-babeland-oral-history-at-the-margins-of-labor-and-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"From \u201cGreat Men\u201d to Babeland: Oral History at the Margins of Labor and Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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When Octavia Leona Kohner showed up to contract negotiations in little more than \u201ctwo flaps of fabric \u2026 attached by string,\u201d she wasn\u2019t just making a fashion choice. She was embodying the tension between workplace discipline and individual expression \u2014 and daring the management of Babeland, the famed New York City sex shop, to call her bluff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The oral history of Octavia Leona Kohner, preserved in the NYC Trans Oral History Project[1]<\/a> in partnership with the New York Public Library and the Digital Transgender Archive, offers a vivid case study of how oral history has evolved as a practice\u2014from documenting elites to centering the voices of those historically pushed to the margins. Kohner, a transwoman who grew up on Staten Island, recounts her coming-of-age, her struggles with depression and suicidality, and her experiences as a labor organizer at New York City\u2019s Babeland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interviewer Michelle Esther O\u2019Brien spends 9 of 30 transcribed pages establishing Kohner\u2019s life story, her traumas and relationships \u2014 which at first seemed unrelated to the unionization of Babeland\u2019s employees, but actually positioned Kohner as the narrator of her own history. This aligns with Portelli\u2019s (1991) argument that oral history is not just about facts but about meaning, memory, identity, and voice (in a pointed moment at the start of the interview, Kohner even \u201cplays\u201d with her voice, trying to determine if the mic would pick up her high-pitched, soft-spoken voice or if she should \u201cgo with\u201d the more \u201cbombastic\u201d (i.e. deeper-pitched) voice we hear throughout the recording).  Kohner\u2019s interview demonstrates the value of oral history not as a record of factual accuracy (Portelli, 1991), but as an illumination of how labor was lived and remembered by someone negotiating the intersections of gender, class, and work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kohner\u2019s account begins with her working-class childhood in Canarsie, where the cruelty of family and classmates foreshadows the resilience and tenacity she would later bring to her role as a labor organizer and self-described \u201cagitator.\u201d  Her organizing style is inseparable from her identity.  Kohner\u2019s own decision-making (e.g. which voice to use), her subjectivity, and reflexivity shape the retrospective narration (Portelli, 1991; Sommer & Quinland, 2024).  In one section, Kohner discusses the \u201cAEIOU\u201ds of labor organizing: agitate, educate, inoculate, organize, unionize.  She reflects that she overdid it on agitating and should have put more energy into inoculating.[2]<\/a>  Here, we see how oral history adds interpretive layers to labor history (Halpern, 1998).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Brien\u2019s style also reflects the \u201cart and science\u201d of the oral history interview. (Sommer & Quinland, 2024, p. 4).  O\u2019Brien gives Kohner space to narrate freely, asking open-ended questions that invite reflection rather than dictate it. The result is a narrative that feels collaborative rather than extractive, shaped by care and attentiveness. But, of course, oral history also reminds us that memory is produced in context\u2014framed by the questions asked, the setting of the interview (here, the NYU Department of Sociology), the knowledge that the account will be archived, and the institutional framing (here, by the Trans Oral History Project).[3]<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In almost all ways, Kohner\u2019s story stands as a direct rebuttal to the early vision of oral history articulated by Allan Nevins (1966) and Louis Starr (1977). For Nevins, oral history was born to preserve the recollections of \u201cgreat men,\u201d political leaders, and intellectual elites. Starr similarly associated the method with capturing authoritative accounts of public life. By contrast, Kohner\u2019s narrative illustrates the democratization of oral history; Kohner\u2019s is precisely an experience that Nevins\u2019 traditional archives would have overlooked. This shift mirrors the broader trajectory of oral history\u2019s role in recovering working-class perspectives (Halpern, 1998).   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another poignant experience highlights both Kohner\u2019s tactical acumen and Halpern\u2019s (1998) appreciation for how oral history renders organizers\u2019 creativity and their lived strategies: Babeland\u2019s employees very intentionally threatened not to show up to work over Valentine’s Day weekend, the busiest shopping \u201cseason\u201d in a sex shop. Kohner\u2019s take-away: \u201chit them in the pocketbook and they will fold.\u201d That threat to Babeland’s bottom dollar was ultimately what got the union recognized.  Lived human anecdotes and commentary like this complicate the official narratives of labor movements (Halpern, 1998).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And \u201ccomplicated\u201d is certainly one way to describe Octavia Kohner.  Toward the end of the interview, I found myself questioning her credibility somewhat.  She claims that she’s been retaliated against since the union contract went into effect, and this is something she\u2019s arbitrating (through her union lawyer) with management. She relays that she\u2019s been placed on probation after a poor customer service review on Yelp.  Her account left me wondering whether retaliation and legitimate critique can always be so neatly separated \u2014 especially for someone who embraces the mantle of \u201cloudmouth agitator.\u201d  But here, we see what makes oral history different: oral sources share their <\/em>meaning with us, they don\u2019t impart neutral fact (Portelli, 1991). So, maybe the \u201ctruth\u201d isn\u2019t whether Kohner deserved the Yelp review, but how she interprets and narrates [what she considers to be] retaliation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Kohner\u2019s confidence in booty shorts is enviable for sure, the larger takeaway is that oral history expands labor history beyond contracts and strikes. It reveals the messy, embodied, sometimes unreliable, but deeply human side of organizing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works Referenced<\/strong>
Halpern, R. (1998). Oral history and labor history: A historiographic assessment after twenty-five years.\u00a0The Journal of American History<\/em>,\u00a085<\/em>(2), 596-610.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevins, A. (1966). Oral history: How and why it was born. In D. Dunaway & W. Baum (Eds.), Oral history: An interdisciplinary anthology <\/em>(2nd Edition, pp. 29-38). Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Portelli, A. (1991) What makes oral history different.In The death of Luigi Trastulli and other stories: Form and meaning in oral history <\/em>(pp. 45-58). State University of New York Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sommer, B. W., & Quinlan, M. K. (2024). Introduction to oral history.  In The oral history manual<\/em> (pp. 1-10). Rowman & Littlefield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starr, L. (1977). Oral history.  In D. Dunaway & W. Baum (Eds.), Oral history: An interdisciplinary anthology <\/em>(2nd Edition, pp. 39-61). Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[1]<\/a> https:\/\/nyctransoralhistory.org\/interview\/octavia-kohner\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> \u201cKohner: So I was really good at agitating, because I\u2019m a very agitated person who is good at making other people feel agitated. I was good at educating, because I learned things the way that you are able to teach your co-workers, which is not through textbooks but by talking. And kind of sometimes I would skip the inoculate part, which wasn\u2019t very good, which is essentially like, being like oh, they\u2019re going to say this but really it\u2019s this\u2026.And so I missed that part sometimes\u2026.And I would bring people to O a little bit too early.  I wouldn\u2019t have felt them out enough where I didn\u2019t agitate them enough or — I wasn\u2019t very good at that part. I\u2019ll admit it, I\u2019m much better now\u2026.I was good at getting people agitated, who then other people could be like hi, you\u2019re really agitated, do you want to meet [with leadership at the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union]?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> Another notable example of interview framing comes in the WPA Slave Narratives (1936) Federal Writers’ Project: Slave Narrative Project, Administrative Files.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Octavia Leona Kohner showed up to contract negotiations in little more than \u201ctwo flaps of fabric \u2026 attached by string,\u201d she wasn\u2019t just making a fashion choice. She was embodying the tension between workplace discipline and individual expression \u2014 and daring the management of Babeland, the famed New York City sex shop, to call … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “From \u201cGreat Men\u201d to Babeland: Oral History at the Margins of Labor and Identity”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36867,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/bossladylawmom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/bossladylawmom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/bossladylawmom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/bossladylawmom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36867"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/bossladylawmom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/bossladylawmom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/bossladylawmom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions\/18"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/bossladylawmom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/bossladylawmom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/bossladylawmom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}