Mary Jo Klinker

Mary Jo Klinker (she/they) moved to Winona in 2013 for a job at Winona State University teaching gender and sexuality studies. They worked to bring the first drag story hour to Winona in 2021 and partnered with Frozen River Film Festival to bring CeCe McDonald in for a discussion on queer prison abolition movements.

They have written about their commitment to marriage abolition, about being a rural queer and about defying monogamy and monosexism (the belief that people can only be attracted to one gender).

They first came out as “bi” in 2005, but the term has never really sat well with them and they currently identify as queer. Queerness, they believe, is both lived embodiment and political practice, as in embracing the beauty of defying the status quo, as in fighting for a more just world. Mary Jo has used their drag persona, George (not so) Straight, to speak out against toxic masculinity and fight for Palestinian human rights. In spite of bigotry, queer-phobic verbal harassment, familial homophobia and even micro-aggressions from within gay and lesbian spaces (for example, the faulty assumption that bisexuals don’t really exist).

Mary Jo has been fortunate enough to find queer networks of survival and support for joy and family. They consider themselves fortunate to have countless queer elders and young queer mentors teaching them to be brave and out, always!

Mary Jo found healing recently when they were able to provide mentorship to a teen from the same rural Wisconsin town where they grew up. The teen wrote to them, saying that they had never met a bi adult. The teen was needing support at their school.

Mary Jo was able to provide safe space training to the teachers and staff at the school, providing the teen with the support that they so desperately needed.