Trans Revolutionary and Ex-Hofstra Dean, Rusty Mae Moore, Passes Away at 80

Rusty Mae Moore, former dean of the Hofstra Business School, inaugural professor of Hofstra’s first transgender studies class and a queer activist who lived and fought alongside giants of the queer liberation movement Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, died on Feb. 23, 2022 at her home in Pine Hill, New York. She was 80 years old.  

“She died in my arms,” said Chelsea Goodwin, Moore’s wife, in an interview with The Hofstra Clocktower.

PHOTO: Rusty in her wedding dress.

Moore is remembered as a trailblazer for the trans community at Hofstra and beyond. From 1982 to 1985, Moore served as the Associate Dean of the Hofstra School of Business, and then as the Director of the Hofstra University Business Research Institute from 1985 to 1991. She also was Professor Emeritus of international business and of queer studies. While working at Hofstra, at age 50, she came out and began her transition. She taught at Hofstra for 33 years until her retirement in 2011 at age 70. 

In this capacity, she served as the faculty advisor to LGBTQ student organizations and paved the path for transgender studies courses that exist today. She taught the first ever class on the topic at Hofstra. 

She met Goodwin in January of 1991. In an interview with the Trans Oral History Project, Moore described the experience as “love at first sight.” The pair rejoiced in each other’s presence, performing together at steampunk festivals and cosplaying together at conventions. After almost 30 years of partnership, they legally wed in 2018 at the Blackthorn Resort in East Durham, New York, officiated by a satanist priest and santerian priestess. 

PHOTO: Rusty, in green, on her wedding day with Chelsea Goodwin.

The couple’s most famed accomplishment was creating Transy House, a safe haven queer and trans youth. The Brooklyn brownstone is now designated a landmark by the LGBT Historic Sites Project in conjunction with the Fund for the City of New York.

The quaint two-story structure quickly grew from a gathering place for friends into a makeshift community center, organizing hub and communal living space for queer and trans youth. From 1995 to 2008, countless queer people in need would find a soft place to land on their doorstep  — including Sylvia Rivera, a veteran of the Stonewall Inn Uprising and one of the most consequential voices to arise from the movement. Rivera lived at Transy House until her death in 2002. 

At just 17 years old, Antonia Cambareri had been one of the first young people served by Transy House. “In 1993, I met Miss Rusty at the door,” Cambareri told The Clocktower. “She gave me a big hug and welcomed me in the house  — the start of a friendship of 30 years.”

Both Moore and Goodwin are also featured subjects of the critically-acclaimed Netflix documentary “The Life and Death of Marsha P. Johnson” (2017), which chronicles another high-profile Stonewall veteran. Moore was a prolific documentarian in her own right, who worked meticulously to record trans lives during a time in which few others cared to do so. She was pivotal in the creation of the film. 

“She paved the way, recording our culture, allowing us to survive,” Cambareri said. 

PHOTO: Rusty in a still shot from “The Life and Death of Marsha P. Johnson.”

Moore and Goodwin were also a staple of the ballroom scene  — a predominantly Black and brown drag subculture originating in New York City. Films like “The Queen” (1968), “Paris is Burning” (1990) and “Mirror, Mirror” (1996) launched ballroom culture into the national consciousness and, with it, ball icons like Dorian Corey, Jesse Torres and Venus and Angie Xtravaganza. All were friends to Moore, according to Goodwin. Moore was an honorary member  — if not actual member  — who walked with the House of Xtravaganza, a major group and queer chosen family within the ball scene.

In these circles, Moore had been affectionately dubbed “Lucinda Weatherby”  — a facetious homage to her time performing at landmark queer venues Sally’s Hideaway and Sally II. She would arrive at night to trans bars from her day job at Hofstra, still wearing her tweed skirt, glasses and professor’s blazer, to rub elbows with the city’s most iconic drag performers. 

Moore and Goodwin also organized with stalwart organizations advocating for transgender rights, including the Metropolitan Gender Network. They fought for transgender inclusion when many queer activist groups still intentionally left trans people out.  Moore advocated for the most excluded in the queer community  — queers who were sex workers, who were addicts, who were gender nonconforming, who were homeless and who were part of Black and brown communities routinely left in the margins by mainstream queer organizations. 

PHOTO: Rusty, holding the microphone, speaks alongside queer activist and Transy House resident Sylvia Rivera. Photo courtesy of Frameline.

After the closing of Transy House in 2008, Goodwin and Moore eventually retired to their home in the Catskills, where they operated an independent bookstore specializing in works of horror and science fiction. Pine Hill Books still operates today virtually.

Loved ones remember Moore as having a quiet and elegant grace; at the same time, she was powerful. She possessed a righteous voice, radical hope and a sharp, analytical mind. She had academic articles published in international business and marketing journals. Before retiring, Moore also taught at Boston University, New York University and the University of Texas at Austin, as well as abroad in the Netherlands and Brazil, where she was a Fulbright Fellow. 

Above all, Moore was known as someone who radiated a gentle, generous warmth. She was a woman of many names, one for each of the many facets of her vibrant life: Dr. Moore to students, Grandma to kids and grandkids, Miss Rusty to the ragtag youth of Transy House, Lucinda Weatherby to drag queens and dancers at Sally’s and Drucinda Styles to the steampunks and the cosplayers. Whatever the moniker, if someone in need cried out  — Rusty was there. 

“She was like a second mother to me,” said Jamie Hunter, another former Transy House resident, in an interview with The Clocktower. “She saved me. She saved a lot of people.”

Moore and Goodwin agreed to stay together in the afterlife, where the two of them will haunt their home in the Catskills with one another in perpetuity. 

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At the time of Moore’s passing, The Clocktower had been in the early stages of producing a longform exploration of Moore’s life, her activism and the contributions she made to the queer community on campus. Production of the project will continue and be released in the coming months.