23 Stories to End 2023

Dean Strauss

2023 has been an incredibly difficult year, but as we've written before, there are bright spots that are worth recognizing. As we push for safety, recognition, and support for our community in 2024, we can use this year's victories to guide us. We'd love to hear your highlights for the year too!

Eva Gore-Booth

Harper-Hugo Darling

Coining the term “Sex is an accident”, Eva Gore-Booth was faced with an uphill climb in her lifetime in the early 20th century. A poet, suffragist, and lifelong activist, her story is sometimes forgotten in the shadow of her more famous sister Countess Markievicz who had many of the same aims of gender and class equality. Eva found her path through her partnership with Esther Roper, her lover and lifelong companion.

Sumaya Dalmar

Marc Zinaman

Far too frequently and far too easily, we read or hear about the life of an LGBTQ person cut short, often occurring simply because that individual chose to exist as publicly queer. This is particularly true for trans and gender diverse people of color, whose rates of mortality either by suicide or murder continue to be alarmingly high on a global scale. Many of these individuals are just beginning to forge a path for themselves in life or figure out how they want to make an impression in the world, but are barely allowed to even get their foot off the ground. Such is the case with Sumaya Dalmar, who was one of the first people from Somalia to publicly come out as transgender, and one of the earliest individuals from her home country to publicly identify as LGBTQ at all.

Xuân Diệu

Marc Zinaman

In Vietnam, Xuân Diệu is considered a highly celebrated poet, whose innovative writing style and collective body of work left an indelible mark on the country’s literary landscape. In particular, Xuân Diệu’s influence in Vietnam reigns over the realm of romantic poetry, to the extent that he is still dubbed there “the King of Love Poetry”. Though he spent decades composing countless works about intimacy, passion and longing, Xuân Diệu kept much of his writing gender-neutral and lived a highly secretive personal life, concealing his sexuality and relationships with men for the entirety of his career.

Amelio Robles Ávila

Harper-Hugo Darling

Amelio Robles Ávila was an interesting man, but not one that would usually find himself written so largely into the history books. He joined the Mexican Revolution in either 1911 or 1912 and had a successful career as a colonel in the army throughout the revolution. He would be decorated for his service after it was complete, and then settled with his wife in a small town and lived in relative quiet. What draws so many eyes to his story, in particular, is one facet: he was assigned female at birth.

Alla Nazimova

Marc Zinaman

At one point billed as “The World’s Greatest Actress”, Alla Nazimova, who was also for a time the highest paid actress in the film industry, is somehow a name that is still relatively unknown to most. Despite the pioneering work she did in both movies and onstage, including being the first woman to start her own film production company in the 1910s, the majority of Nazimova’s career has been lost to history, as almost all of her films were never preserved. Additionally, having bedded some of the most famous queer women in the entertainment industry and coining the term “Sewing Circle” to refer to the community of lesbian and bisexual actresses and artists who concealed their true sexuality from the public, Nazimova was also an extremely pivotal but oft forgotten LGBTQ pioneer who has been dubbed the “Founding Mother of Sapphic Hollywood.”

Isa Shahmarli

Reem Itani
Guest Author

Although LGBTQ+ rights in Eastern Europe and Western Asia have gotten more coverage recently, many do not know how dire the situation is in Azerbaijan. As a result, many overlooked the contributions that Azerbaijani activist Isa Shahmarli made to the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, resulting in a lack of scholarship on his activism. Some of his contributions include actions he took as the founder and Chairman of Azad LGBT, bolstering queer representation, and providing a safe space for queer Azerbaijanis. Sadly, he committed suicide on January 22, 2014, when he was only 20 years old. Despite this devastating event, Shahmarli has given LGBTQ+ individuals in Azerbaijan and other Muslim-majority countries hope for a future more inclusive of the rainbow. 

Dorce Gamalama

Marc Zinaman

Dubbed by many “The Oprah of Indonesia”, Dorce Gamalama rose from the ashes of a difficult childhood to become one of the most notable and beloved transgender icons in her home country. Despite the challenges of living in a nation with limited LGBTQ rights, Dorce met any resistance and curiosity to her transition with humor and wit, and persevered to live as her true self while also promoting a life of kindness and generosity. Dorce’s integral role in the Indonesian television industry helped shed light on trans visibility in an otherwise predominantly religious and conservative country and shifted many Indonesian people’s perceptions towards transgender people on the whole.

Mary Renault

A.E. Kerry
Guest Author

History has the power to inform and present broader perspectives on the human experience. For many queer people in the mid 20th century, the history of Classical Greece provided a space where their existence was not just precedented but celebrated. Mary Eileen Challans, known by the pseudonym Mary Renault, was profoundly impacted by ancient Greek literature, which explored same-sex relationships in a way that was unthinkable in contemporary Britain. At times torn between her calling as a writer and her duty as a nurse, Mary authored contemporary and historical novels for over 40 years. They were unusual at the time for their open and empathetic portrayal of queer lives. Her books explored contemporary issues, including both World Wars, the escalating persecution of homosexuals, and apartheid. Throughout all this she was anchored by her partner of 48 years, Julie Mullard.

Victor Hugo (Rojas)

Marc Zinaman

In the 2019 documentary film Halston, filmmaker Frédéric Tcheng questions Halston’s former illustrator and confidant Joe Eula about the nature of the fashion designer’s relationship with his lover, Victor Hugo. Tcheng asks, “Why did Halston put up with Victor?” to which Eula replies, “Because he was in love with him.” Tcheng then presses further, asking: “When did it fall apart?” and Eula, without skipping a beat, retorts, “The day they met.”   Victor Hugo was born Victor Rojas in Caracas, Venezuela during a coup d'état that took place on November 24th, 1948, when Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, Marcos Pérez Jiménez and Luis Felipe Llovera Páez overthrew the elected president, Rómulo Gallegos. Not much else is documented surrounding Rojas’ early life in Venezuela, but sometime in the early 1970s, he and his mother emigrated to the United States, landing in New York City.  

Ferdinand I of Bulgaria

Marc Zinaman

Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria made his mark in history as a boldly effeminate bisexual ruler with a petulant personality to boot, who, at numerous times during his reign, proved to be an actually effective world leader. The self-declared “Emperor of the New Byzantium”, though bewitched by frippery and flashiness throughout his life, showcased his strength as a politician when he successfully led his country to prosperity during times of peace. Ferdinand, who was prone to dressing in flashy, feminine clothing, sashayed into a position of power amidst a sea of naysayers who spewed homophobic derisions and doubted his leadership capabilities, only to initially prove them all wrong. It was solely through a series of missteps in two consecutive wars married with Ferdinand’s unwavering vision to expand his country’s territory and help usher in a Bulgarian Renaissance, that the Tsar’s glorious reign would ultimately come crashing down and render Ferdinand an exiled failure.

Dana de Milo

Harper-Hugo Darling

In the telling of history, certain names are linked together. This is the case for Carmen Rupe and Dana de Milo, two transgender women from New Zealand. In the later years of her life, Dana was often interviewed and quoted in discussing Rupe and their friendship, which has led to the story of Rupe eclipsing that of de Milo. But Dana, as a woman who ran away at 13 and lived openly as a transgender woman, is an interesting person in her own right and deserves more attention in the discussions of New Zealand’s queer history.

22 Stories to End 2022

Dean Strauss

2022 has been a contentious year for many of us, but amidst our shared struggles are also well-fought victories. As we wrap up 2022 and hope for a better 2023, let’s look at 22 of our community’s victories.

Karl M. Baer

Harper-Hugo Darling

As the first man to undergo modern gender affirmation surgery, Karl M. Baer’s name is a familiar one in the story of queer history. Tangled together with the legacy of Magnus Hirschfeld, a fellow queer Jewish man living through the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, Baer’s is an interesting and worthwhile story to tell. Growing up as an intersex child who was assigned female at birth, he would go on to become a fierce feminist who identified as a man years before he got the medical support he would stumble upon. Like many transgender people, he was able to carve out a way to authentically exist as himself before he received any level of validation and would go on to live through one of the darkest moments of human history and find life after it.

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