a brief, queer history

[Text ID: THE WORLD WILL ALWAYS NEED MORE TRANSSEXUALS. THERE IS ROOM ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE. THAT INCLUDES YOU! /End ID]

This is Doris Pollas, the cofounder of the organisation now known as lgbt+ Denmark which by being founded in 1948 is one of the oldest if not the oldest queer organisation in the world.

Doris lived in a farm in Jutland as a child. She was always butch and figured out she was a lesbian in her teens. When she heard about a club in copenhagen where boys kissed boys and girls kissed girls she went just some months after and it was through that club she started a paper connecting queer people all up to seventies and co founded lgbt+ Denmark.

She is now 97 year and wishes for every queer person to have an as loving and accepting family as she did.

Stormé DeLarverie (December 24, 1920 – May 24, 2014) was an American woman known as the butch lesbian whose scuffle with police was, according to Stormé and many eyewitnesses, the spark that ignited the Stonewall riots, spurring the crowd to action. She was born in New Orleans, to an African American mother and a white father. She is remembered as a gay civil rights icon and entertainer, who performed and hosted at the Apollo Theater and Radio City Music Hall. She worked for much of her life as an MC, singer, bouncer, bodyguard and volunteer street patrol worker, the "guardian of lesbians in the Village." She is known as "the Rosa Parks of the gay community."

Today the 15th May 2021 is the 50 year anniversary of the first ever Gay Power demonstration in Europe.

It took place on the 15th of May 1971 in a place you probably won’t expect and likely have never heard of, a mid-sized city in Sweden called Örebro. It wasn’t the first lgbtq demonstration of any kind but it was the first march dedicated completely to gay rights and gay liberation. It was a small demonstration of twelve to fifteen people from a local organization called Gay Power Club that had been founded a year earlier with the goal of increasing understanding and acceptance of sexual minorities in society. Inspired by the Gay Power movement in the US they marched for the rights of homosexual and bisexual people with signs that translate to “sexual equality”, “knowledge destroys prejudice”, “homosex is human”, “bisex [is] natural”, “objective sexual education”, “everyone has equal worth”, “250 000 swedes are homosexual” and “8 million swedes are bisexual” (the last one being a tongue in cheek reference to swedens population at the time being roughly 8 million), as well as ones that simply say “gay power” and “love”.

This march was part of a larger movement to get Swedens LGBTQ+ movement to go in a more radical direction based on the idea of gay liberation and in the coming months several more and larger demonstrations with the same slogans happened in other cities across Sweden and they also spread to some neighboring countries. Their demands included better sexual education that included sexual minorities, the repealing all legislation that treated homo and bisexual people differently to heterosexuals and that two people of the same gender should be allowed to get married.

This small demonstration eventually lead to Swedens main LGBTQ+ organization adopting a more radical, political and activist stance in support of gay liberation and the beginning of more public demonstrations for gay rights in Sweden and 1971 has by some been called “the year of the gay revolution” in Sweden.

This is an important day in Queer History!

Sources:

https://www.rfsl.se/en/about-us/history/ (swedish and english versions)

https://www.qx.se/samhalle/211009/50-ar-sedan-den-homosexuella-revolutionen-sverige-var-forst-i-europa-med-prideprotester/ (in swedish)

From the article:

“We launched the digital archive Black and Gay, Back in the Day on Instagram at the start of LGBTQ History Month on 1 February. We wanted to document the lives of Black queer people in Britain – not just those seen as icons or famous figures but the everyday people who contributed to the building of Black culture and frequented Black spaces. The response was overwhelming – and our collection of images, based on public submissions, is growing every week.

Our priority is the history that has been buried – the old clothes, creased photographs, leaflets and posters – hidden in people’s homes. This gives our archive the feel of a family photo album, with images that evoke memories, connect old lovers and educate younger Black queers about the spaces that have existed in the past.”

“She was super talented, kind, and laugh out loud funny. She was a true transgender pioneer, way ahead of her time (in the Deep South, no less).“

- Paul Hipp, The Lady Chablis’ co-star in Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil

Happy birthday to trans actress, performer and author, The Lady Chablis! The Lady was born on the 11th of March 1957 and would be 64 today.

Here’s two black lesbians to celebrate North America’s Black History Month!

On the left is Stormé DeLarverie. Known as the mother of New York’s queer community  Stormé worked as a bouncer at lesbian bars around New York into her 80s, as well as using her talent as a singer to raise money for people living with HIV/AIDS, and women and children suffering domestic violence. [Image: Stormé DeLarverie, a butch woman in her 70s stands outside lesbian bar The Cubby Hole. She is wearing a pistol on her belt.]

On the right is Ruth Ellis, who came out as a lesbian in the first decade of the 1900s, and lived into the 2000s. She lived for 30 years in Detroit with her partner Babe Franklin, with their home in Detroit forming a centre for queer African-American life, and a refuge for queer African-American people in the years before the civil rights movement and Stonewall. [Image: Ruth as an older woman, wearing a t-shirt which reads ‘DYKE MARCH’]

-Introduced by Lord Alfred Douglas, 1892.

Oscar Wilde:

‘The Love that dare not speak its name’ in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare.

It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are.

It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as the "Love that dare not speak its name", and on account of it I am placed where I am now.

It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it.

It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him.

That it should be so the world does not understand.

The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.’

The friend (as they preferred over he/she/they) was an agender preacher in the late 1700s. The friend claimed to have died in 1776 and been reanimated from the dead without a gender. The friend was never disrespected or autopsied against the friend’s dying wish (Cough cough James Berry). The friend was instead highly respected and looked up to, even founding the friend’s own sect of Evangelism (despite being short lived). Wow this actually makes me want to cry, do you know how rare it is for non binary people of any kind to be respected??? Even now???? And with that name and story???? Like wow, I’m not even non binary but I think I have a new personal hero.

Happy trans awareness week! Celebrate by learning about Roberta Cowell: Roberta was a WWII fighter pilot, a racing-car driver, and the first trans woman we know of in Britain to undergo gender confirmation surgery.

Learn more with our podcast.

Roberta Cowell

Born on the 8th of April, 1918, Roberta Elizabeth Marshall Cowell went on to become a British racing driver and Second World War fighter pilot. She was the first known British trans woman to undergo sex reassignment surgery.

Cowell had started taking large doses of estrogen by 1950, as well as becoming acquainted with Michael Dillon, a trans British physician, after reading his 1946 volume Self: A Study in Endocrinology and Ethics. It proposed that individuals should have the right to change to change their body to match their gender identity.

Roberta was than able to obtain a document from a gynaecologist, stating that she was intersex. This allowed her to have a new birth certificate issued, with her recorded sex changed to female. The operation was then carried out on May 15, 1951.

In her later life, 1990s, she moved into a sheltered accommodation in Hampton, London. She continued to own and drive large, powerful cars.