Gottschalk grew up poor on the working-class Lower East Side, living in low-income tenement housing, one of four children (Mary, Myla, and Vinnie). Her single mother was of Irish and Italian descent and operated a beauty parlour since the 1950s. Her father was a merchant marine who suffered from untreated mental illness and alcoholism and was not allowed in the home due to frequent physical abuse. In the 1960s, she studied illustration at the
High School of Art and Design. Through school, she met other lesbians who took her to iconic lesbian bars. She also became involved in the
Gay Liberation Front. Gottschalk designed the "
Lavender Menace" t-shirt worn by lesbian-feminist activists protesting the
National Organization for Women's
homophobia. Her sister Myla (born Alfie) first came out as a
gay man and then as a
trans woman; Gottschalk documented Myla's transition beginning in 1992 through a photographic series. Due to being HIV+, struggling with narcotics and alcohol addictions, and suffering from violent
transphobic attacks, Myla died in 2013. She moved to California to join
lesbian separatist communities. While in California, she worked as an artist's model, a topless bartender, and the driver of horse-drawn carriages. Gottschalk lives on a small farm in
Victory, Vermont. ==Career==