The YouTube channel of My Genderation, an independent trans film project, was deleted without warning on the first day of Transgender Awareness Week (13 November).
“Someone stole the My Genderation YouTube channel and now it’s been deleted,” co-founder and filmmaker Fox Fisher tweeted on 14 November. “I’ve been running that channel for 10 years.”
They added: “I’m feeling so sick about it. It’s literally the most important work of my life, created to help raise awareness of trans issues and celebrate trans lives.”
Fox added that they “don’t know if it is a targeted attack on trans supportive channels”.
My Genderation, an award-winning, trans-led non-profit organisation, was founded 10 years ago, and has made hundreds of films about trans lives, including for Channel 4, the BBC, Stonewall and trans health clinic CliniQ. A documentary about trans healthcare in the 1970s, Inverness Or Bust, is currently in the works.
The organisation’s directors include the journalist Ugla Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir and film director Jamie Fletcher. It was founded after Fisher took part in the 2011 documentary My Transsexual Summer, which they left feeling frustrated that their experience hadn’t been portrayed authentically.
It remains unclear how the My Genderation YouTube account was deleted. Fisher posted a screenshot showing the message “your account has been permanently disabled”, which they get when they try to log in to My Genderation’s YouTube account.
A similar message, reading “this page isn’t available”, is displayed when members of the public try to see the channel.
A YouTube spokesperson told PinkNews in an emailed statement: “We take account security very seriously. We are in contact with the creator, and are working to understand what has happened, so that we can resolve this issue as quickly as possible.”
The My Genderation deletion comes after Novara Media, an independent left-wing media outlet, had its YouTube channel deleted “without warning or explanation” on 26 October.
The channel was reinstated after 24 hours, with YouTube admitting it made “the wrong call”.
The U.S. Department of Labor on Monday announced a proposal that would rescind a Trump administration rule that expanded a religious exemption from anti-discrimination laws for federal contractors.
The rule, which went into effect in the last days of the administration of President Donald Trump, broadened the exemption to include employers who “hold themselves out to the public as carrying out a religious purpose.” The exemption previously applied to a more narrowly defined set of religious groups.
By rescinding the rule, the department will return to policies consistent with those in place during the administrations of President Barack Obama and President George W. Bush, Jenny Yang, director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, said in an interview.
“We are proposing a rescission of the religious exemption rule to protect workers from discrimination and safeguard principles of religious freedom,” Yang said.
The Trump administration framed the rule as a necessary step to ensure the full participation of religious organizations in the federal contractor system. But critics of the rule, including LGBTQ groups, warned that it would open the door to discrimination.
In light of pre-existing protections for religious organizations, the OFFCP found the Trump rule to be “unnecessary and problematic,” Yang said. Rescinding the rule would help ensure the exemption is applied consistently, she added.
“The proposed rescission would also promote economy and efficiency in federal procurement by preventing the exclusion of qualified and talented employees on the basis of protected characteristics,” she said. “This ensures that taxpayer funds are not used to discriminate.”
The OFCCP enforces discrimination and wage-and-hour laws against federal contractors. In 2014, the agency banned contractors from discriminating against workers on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Just days after 2021 became the deadliest year on record for anti-trans violence, yet another trans woman, Jenny De Leon, has been slain in the US.
De Leon, a 25-year-old with a “bright soul”, was murdered in Tampa, Florida, on 2 November.
With her death comes a grim realisation for activists. That 2021 is the deadliest year for fatal violence against trans folk since national record-keeping began – and with six weeks of the year left, the figure will only continue to climb, they warn.
With De Leon’s death, the death tally has leaped to 46.
Tampa Police Department officers found De Leon dead at around 6am in the 8500 block of North 9th Street in the quiet residential neighbourhood of Sulphur Springs.
Jenny De Leon, trans woman with ‘enough energy to fill any room’, dies aged 25
She was a homeless woman, the city’s force said on Facebook last week, who sought help from Tampa PFLAG, which commemorated her passing on Facebook.
“PFLAG Tampa is devastated to hear of the recent murder of Jenny De Leon,” the organisation said.
“Jenny, like many of the youth we encounter, attended our chapter meetings seeking support in the beginning of her transition, ultimately finding placement in a home through two PFLAG Tampa members.
“Jenny was an enigmatic, bright soul with enough energy to fill any room.”
Equality Florida, the state’s largest queer rights group, said on Facebook that it is “heartbroken” by the news of De Leon’s murder.
Law enforcement and the press often deadname or misgender victims, if they report on the homicide at all, making it challenging to know for sure whether a victim was trans.
This paucity of data means that advocacy groups and grassroots activists must comb through local news reports themselves and talk to family.
But regardless of whether the data is incomplete, activists know one thing – that year on year, violence against trans people, Black trans women, in particular, is surging.
For Black trans women in the exact same age group, the rate rockets to one in 2,600, an investigation by Mic found. If in 2015 all Americans had the same risk of murder as Black trans women, there would have been 120,087 slain instead of 15,696.
Tyianna Alexandra, a 28-year-old Black trans woman, was shot and killed in Chicago in the early hours of 6 January, becoming the first known violent killing of a trans person in 2021.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender American Indian and Alaskan Native (AIAN) adults have higher levels of mental health issues, physical abuse and economic instability than their non-LGBTQ peers, according to a new report.
The study, released last month by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law in advance of Native American Heritage Month in November, found 42 percent of AIAN LGBTQ adults have been diagnosed with depression, compared to less than a quarter of non-LGBTQ Native people and just 6.7 percent of the general U.S. population.
AIAN LGBTQ adults, particularly women, are also more likely to engage in high-risk health behaviors, including heavy drinking, according to the findings.
Three-quarters of respondents reported not having had enough money to make ends meet in the prior year, compared to less than half of non-LGBTQ AIAN people. And nearly half reported a major financial crisis in the prior year, compared to just 11 percent of heterosexual, cisgender Indigenous people.
“The complex picture of health and economic vulnerabilities of AIAN LGBT people is likely a product of factors shared with all Indigenous peoples, such as the impact of historical trauma, and those shared across LGBT people, such as anti-LGBT stigma,” said lead author Bianca D.M. Wilson, a senior scholar of public policy at the Williams Institute and the report’s lead author, told NBC News.
In the report, Wilson stated that, “It is critical that policies and service interventions consider the LGBT status and multiracial identities of AIAN adults.”
‘Pushed out to the fringes’
Somáh Haaland, who is queer and nonbinary and uses gender-neutral pronouns, is the media coordinator for the Pueblo Action Alliance. Haaland also lives with clinical depression.
“The unique intersection of being Native and queer can feel incredibly isolating, both in a displaced urban setting and in our own communities,” they told NBC News.
Haaland said queer Indigenous friends have spoken to them about feeling “like they have to chose one marginalized identity over the other because existing as both simultaneously feels like it is not physically safe or feasible for their mental health.”
“In white queer spaces they experience racism and disconnection, while at home or on their reservation they may feel like being out could exclude them from cultural activities or simply being in community with their people,” said Haaland, whose mother is Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.
“Being queer and being Indigenous are both beautiful identities to carry that are sacred when they intersect … But we often must fight twice as hard just to show that we are worthy of living and thriving.”
SOMÁH HAALAND, PUEBLO ACTION ALLIANCE
The Williams Institute study found that violence aimed at LGBTQ American Indians and Native Alaskans was prevalent: More than half of all respondents reported having been physically or sexually assaulted at some point, and 81 percent reported verbal abuse.
Pamela Jumper-Thurman is a retired research scientist in the ethnic studies department at Colorado State University and has researched HIV/AIDS education, substance abuse and mental health in American Indian communities for three decades. Jumper-Thurman said she’s not surprised by the findings.
“In the cities, they may have access to a sense of community, but on the reservations and the rural surrounding areas, they can be ostracized, made fun of and pushed out to the fringes,” she said of LGBTQ American Indians. “They have to be very careful about who they’re out to.”
Tribes are sovereign nations with their own laws and regulations, she added. “If LGBTQ people get assaulted or beaten up in a hate crime on tribal land, it’s often not prosecuted.”
Data on LGBTQ American Indians is extremely limited, but a 2010 survey conducted for the New York State Department of Healthfound nearly 1 in 3 (29.4 percent) reported experiencing hate violence — the highest rate of any LGBTQ demographic in the report.
State initiatives, like anti-discrimination and hate-crime laws and inclusive education programs, often don’t apply on reservations. Even same-sex marriage is not uniformly recognized.
A 2015 report from the National Congress of American Indians found 54 percent of gay and lesbian AIAN students reported being subject to physical violence because of their sexual orientation, and more than 1 in 3 said they missed class at least once in the last month for fear of being bullied or harassed.
“LGBTQ kids don’t have a place to go,” Jumper-Thurman said. “They don’t have family acceptance, and they may not even have a group of friends they feel comfortable with.”
Haaland shared a similar sentiment.
“Being queer and being Indigenous are both beautiful identities to carry that are sacred when they intersect,” they said. “But we often must fight twice as hard just to show that we are worthy of living and thriving.”
Working toward solutions
Jumper-Thurman recently worked with the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University on a series of posterstargeting American Indian families and communities to help support LGBTQ and two-spirit youth. (The phrase “two-spirit” started as an umbrella term in the 1990s for the understanding of gender beyond male and female that many tribes historically embraced before colonization but has come to encompass a diversity of sexual orientations and gender identities.)
Courtesy Family Acceptance Project
The posters show how negative reactions to a child’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression can have a detrimental impact on their well being.
“You’re part of a group already dealing with racism and historical trauma and, within that group — if you’re queer — you can be alienated from your community and even your family,” said Sharon Day, a member of the Ojibwe nation and executive director of the Indigenous Peoples Task Forcein Minneapolis. “For people living on reservations, these are small, rural communities that are slower to change.”
Day was one of two children to come out in her family. In 1987, she helped organize the Basket and the Bow, the first national gathering of gay and lesbian American Indians, held at the Minneapolis American Indian Center. (The annual event was later renamed the International Two-Spirit Gathering.)
Today, the Indigenous Peoples Task Force offers a variety of programs but works extensively in HIV education and testing, harm reduction and suicide prevention among Native youth.
Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Native youths ages 10 to 24, according to the National Indian Council on Aging. A study last year by The Trevor Project found LGBTQ AIAN young people were two-and-a-half times more likely to report a suicide attempt in the past year than their non-Native peers (33 percent to 14 percent).
Sharon Day. Courtesy Sharon Day
Both Day and Jumper-Thurman say acceptance of LGBTQ members varies greatly from tribe to tribe and often depends on religion.
“The communities that have been heavily Christianized are the ones where there’s a lot of inequality and discrimination,” Day said. “In the Ojibwe creation story, men and women came into the world simultaneously. We didn’t come from Adam’s rib. That came with the settlers.”
In the South, especially, Christianity is a big part of Native American life, according to Jumper-Thurman.
“There’s just a lot of religious overtones that have infiltrated and changed the culture so much that being LGBT is seen as a bad thing in their eyes,” she said.
The Williams Institute survey found more than 60 percent of AIAN LGBTQ adults reside in the Western and Southern United States.
“In the South, the Church of Christ and Southern Baptist Church are pretty pervasive,” Jumper-Thurman said. “These are not gay-friendly churches, and they’re the ones that have a lot of sway in those areas. In the area where I lived, there were more churches in town than anything else. They may preach in the native language, but they still preach the dogma of white, homophobic Christianity.”
Day founded the Indigenous Peoples Task Force after her brother, Michael, tested positive for HIV in 1987 and they discovered a near total lack of HIV education and prevention programs aimed at the American Indian community.
“We aim to be a safe space, and LGBT people are integrated into everything we do,” Day said.
‘We’ve always been here’
Using data culled from the Gallup Daily Tracking Survey from 2012 to 2017, the Williams Institute estimates that 285,000 AIAN adults identify as LGBTQ. That’s roughly 6 percent of the total Native population — and slightly higher than the 5.6 percent of the general population that identifies as LGBTQ, according to a Gallup poll in February.
AIAN people who identify as part of the LGBTQ community tend to be younger, according the report, with 33 percent between the ages of 18 and 24, compared to just 15 percent of non-LGBTQ AIAN people in that age group.
“Social media has given the youth greater acceptance and more power to express who they are,” Day said. “Because they can belong to a community online, where they may not be able to in the real world. They can reach out to other people.”
For many years, identifying as gay meant leaving the reservation, Day said, for much the same reasons white people who came out left small towns — isolation, alienation and discrimination.
“In the last couple of decades, there are more queer [Native] people who are staying in their home communities,” she said. “Some of that has to do with changing attitudes. I think more and more we see people returning to the cultural values system of our past, and those values are to be kind and loving, to be courageous and honest, to be respectful, to seek wisdom and to be generous.”
“When we’re following that original system,” Day added, “it’s really difficult to not be accepting of other people.”
LGBTQ Natives, she said, “are starting to look at our history and say, ‘We’ve always been here. We’re part of the circle.’”
Haaland called the gender binary “a colonial construct based on European values.”
“Pre-contact, the Native people that we now label as queer and trans were often revered and had sacred roles in their communities,” they said. “It was not until colonialism that the European perspective of gender and sexuality was forced upon our people as a part of the bigger effort to control us and assimilate us into whiteness.”
Day said she tries to remind other American Indian and Alaskan Native people that “these are the values that have been with us since the beginning of time.”
“These are the original instructions,” she said, “and if we follow them it’s really hard to hate anybody.”
Using gender-neutral pronouns makes people more positive towards women and LGBT+ people and less biased towards men, scientists say.
Three experiments were carried out to determine the effects of using gender-neutral pronouns on people’s perception’s of women and LGBT+ people.
The results show that “individual use of gender-neutral pronouns reduces the mental salience of males.”
“This shift is associated with people expressing less bias in favour of traditional gender roles and categories, as manifested in more positive attitudes toward women and LGBT individuals in public affairs,” the research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), says.
Efrén Pérez, one of the authors of the study who is a political sciences professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, told The Guardian, “Let’s assume there are societies that generally agree on being more inclusive of women and LGBT individuals, and there are more than a few.”
“Our findings suggest that the words we choose to use can matter in getting us a little bit closer toward reaching that ideal.”
More than 3,000 people took part in the research, which involved being shown a cartoon of an androgynous figure walking a dog and then asked what was happening in the picture – with one group told to use only neutral pronouns, one female pronouns and one male.
Participants then completed tasks, including writing a story about a person running for political office and answering questions about their views on women and LGBT+ people.
According to the report, using gender-neutral pronouns at the beginning of the task made it more likely that the volunteers would use non-male names in their short story and would have pro-women, pro-LGBT+ views.
Sabine Sczesny, a professor of social psychology at the University of Bern who was not involved in the research, told The Guardian that the research was further evidence that gender-inclusive language could reduce gender-biases and “contribute to the promotion of gender and LGBT equality and tolerance.”
Laura Russell, director of research, policy and campaigns at Stonewall, said, “The language we use is important, especially when it comes to describing or referencing someone’s identity.
“This study adds to the evidence showing that when we use language that actively includes women and LGBT people, it makes a real difference in reducing gender stereotyping. Using gender-neutral language is a positive step towards creating a world where everyone is accepted without exception.”
Navy veteran Rhett Chalk was rendered quadriplegic on Thanksgiving Day in 2003 after his knee — which he severely impaired while serving in Vietnam — gave out, causing him to suffer a life-changing spinal injury.
At the time, Chalk had been with his partner, Lawrence Vilord, for roughly 26 years. However, Vilord was barred from riding alongside Chalk in the ambulance or from consulting with his doctors because he was not his legal spouse or family member.
But that day, Vilord became the one who would care for Chalk until the veteran died in June 2020.
“Practically every night when I gave him a shower, religiously every night, he would say to me, without a doubt, ‘Thank God I have you in my life’ because he says ‘I would never have been able to survive; you’ve been my Rock of Gibraltar,'” Vilord, 77, told NBC News.
So when he was denied the full amount of enhanced Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) benefits — which are granted to surviving spouses of disabled veterans — by the Department of Veterans Affairs last November, he said it frustrated him “to the point of no return.”
“It was just another nail in the coffin. It was another nail in my heart,” Vilord said. “It was just another thing to delegitimize who I was and who he was.”
He qualified for the VA’s standard Dependency and Indemnity Compensation benefits for surviving spouses, which amounts to $1,300 a month. Vilord and Chalk married in 2017 after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same-sex marriage nationally in 2015.
However, because the pair were not married for at least eight years, Vilord was denied last October the VA’s enhanced benefits for survivors of certain veterans who are declared totally disabled at the time of death, for which Chalk qualified. The benefits would grant Vilord another $280 per month.
Vilord appealed his denial before the VA and in federal court last week, arguing that the rule effectively disqualifies all same-sex couples in nearly every state, including in his home state of Florida.
“Our argument though is that the mechanical application of that requirement does injustices in cases such as Mr. Vilord’s where he could not possibly have met the requirement,” said Tyler Patrick, one of the student members of the Veterans Legal Clinic at Harvard Law School, which is representing him. “It’s unconstitutional, not to mention nearly unjust, to deny him these benefits, these benefits that he is deserved after serving as his partner’s caretaker for 18 years, on the basis that Florida prevented him from marrying until 2015.”
“We argue that because the VA in making this determination looks to Florida state law, a state law which was unconstitutional and unconstitutionally as ruled in Obergefell prevented Mr. Vilord and Mr. Chalk from marrying, VA can’t then use that unconstitutional state law as the basis for its denial of his enhanced DIC benefits,” Patrick continued.
The VA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Patrick also points to previous cases where LGBTQ widowers have successfully petitioned for Social Security survivors benefits, after arguing that they were prevented from marrying, and therefore qualifying, because of bans on same-sex marriage.
Last year, federal district courts in Arizona and Washington ruled that excluding same-sex partners from Social Security benefits was unconstitutional. Shortly after, the benefits were put in legal limbo after the Department of Justice under the then-Trump administration appealed the two rulings. However, the department and the Social Security Administration under the Biden administration dismissed the appeals earlier this month.
Patrick said Harvard Law School determined that Vilord is the first person to challenge the requirement, making it a precedent-setting case for LGBTQ widowers of disabled veterans.
Vilord says he hopes his case will help others earn the benefits that they deserve.
“I just feel that there’s got to be somebody else out there that this will make a difference for,” he said. “I may not need it, OK? It’s not going to make a huge difference in my life. It’s not a great deal of money. It’s just the principle behind it.”
The Australian Human Rights Commission issued a report today analyzing the persistent practice of medically unnecessary non-consensual surgeries on children born with variations in their sex characteristics. The commission urged authorities to protect children’s rights to informed consent, and to legally regulate the operations.
Around the world since the 1950s, people born with variations in their sex characteristics, sometimes called “intersex,” have been subjected to harmful medically unnecessary “normalizing” surgeries. Surgeons popularized these cosmetic surgeries on infants to remove gonads, reduce the size of the clitoris, or increase the size of the vagina.
But these procedures are not designed to treat a medical problem, and there is no evidence they help children “fit in,” which some surgeons say is their aim. The operations carry high risks of scarring, loss of sexual sensation, incontinence, and psychological trauma. Some surgeries can sterilize the person, which an Australian Senate Committee condemned in 2013.
Its new report calls on the government to develop rights-based standards of care for children born with variation in their sex characteristics. It urges legislation to regulate the surgeries, limiting them only to when the patient has consented or where they are “required urgently to avoid serious harm” and “the risk of harm cannot be mitigated in another less intrusive way, and intervention cannot be further delayed.”
Momentum for change in Australia is afoot. Federal and local governments should urgently consider the commission’s recommendations and ensure that children born perfectly healthy – just a little different – are free to make decisions about their own bodies.
The Dutch monarchy made international news last week after announcing that royals can marry a same-sex partner without giving up their right to the throne. But while the Netherlands, which in 2001 became the first country to legalize gay marriage, has paved the wave for a queer royal to officially wear the crown, LGBTQ people have long been doing so unofficially.
While it’s difficult to assign modern labels to figures from the past, there were notable leaders from centuries — even millennia — ago, who crossed sexual and gender boundaries. Some were celebrated by their subjects, others vilified.
In light of the Dutch monarchy’s recent announcement and in honor of LGBTQ History Month, which is celebrated in October, here are 13 queer royals you didn’t learn about in school.
Emperor Ai of Han (27 – 1 B.C.)
Made emperor of the Han Dynasty at age 20, Ai was initially well received by his subjects but eventually became associated with corruption and incompetence. He was also widely known to have been romantically involved with one of his ministers, Dong Xian, though both men were married to women.
In the “Hanshu,” or “Book of Han,” Dong and Ai’s relationship is referred to as “the passion of the cut sleeve.” As the story went, the pair had fallen asleep together on a mat and, upon waking, the emperor cut the sleeve off his robe rather than disturb his lover. (The term “cut sleeve” remained a Chinese euphemism for male homosexuality for centuries.)
Dong was granted many honors, eventually being made commander of the military, and he and his family lived inside the imperial compound.
According to historian Brent Hinsch, many Han emperors reportedly had “male favorites” who were listed in both the “Book of Han” and the “Shiji,” or “Records of the Grand Historian.”
“It is not women alone who can use their looks to attract the eyes of the ruler,” the “Shiji” reads, according to Ban Gu’s “History of Early China.” “Courtiers and eunuchs can play that game as well. Many were the men of ancient times who gained favor this way.”
Emperor Hadrian of Rome (76 – 138 A.D.)
Another leader who showered his male lover with attention, Hadrian was in a politically arranged marriage to the great-niece of his predecessor — a loveless union that bore no children. It wasn’t unusual for high-powered Romans to have male partners in addition to their wives, but Hadrian was almost slavishly devoted to his young consort, Antinous.
The Roman emperor Hadrian.ullstein bild via Getty Images
When Antinous mysteriously drowned in the Nile in 130 A.D., Hadrian was so grief-stricken he had the young man deified and put up monuments to him everywhere.
“Hadrian was clearly bereaved and he had lots of images put up,” Thorsten Opper, who curated an exhibit on the emperor at the British Museum, told The Independent in 2008. “When a city [in Egypt] was founded close to the spot where Antinous drowned, he named it Antinopolis. It was a sort of hero cult-worship of Antinous.”
Al-Hakam II of Córdoba (915 – 976)
A 10th century caliph in Córdoba, Spain, Al-Hakam was known for his largely peaceful reign and his love of learning: His library contained more than 400,000 books, and he provided sanctuary to many writers and philosophers.
The caliph’s sexuality has been the source of some debate: According to the French medievalist Évariste Lévi-Provençal, the phrase “hubb al-walad,” found in 16th-century historian Ahmed Mohammed al-Maqqari’s compendium “Nafh at-Tib” in reference to Al-Hakam II, translates as a “preference for boys,” though other scholars maintain it refers to paternal love.
The Medieval Europe scholar Francisco Prado-Vilar wrote that knowledge of Al-Hakam’s homosexuality in the court of Córdoba “encouraged the ambitions of the factions gathered around his much younger brother, Prince al-Mughira.”
“In his youth his loves seem to have been entirely homosexual,” queer studies scholar Louis Crompton wrote in “Male Love and Islamic Law in Arab Spain.” “This exclusivity was a problem when he succeeded to the throne, since it was incumbent upon the new caliph to produce a male heir.”
Despite rumors of having a male harem, Al-Hakam did marry a Basque concubine named Subh, but reportedly gave her the masculine nickname Jafar. Subh is said to have worn the short hair and trousers of a ghulam, or young man,to garner her husband’s attention.
King Edward II of England (1284 – 1327)
King Edward II of England’s intense relationship with Piers Gaveston drew the ire of many nobles at court and forced Edward to send his favorite away more than once.
“When the king’s son gazed upon him, he straightaway felt so much love for him that he entered into a covenant of brotherhood with him and chose and firmly resolved to bind himself to him, before all mortals, in an unbreakable bond of love,” wrote one chronicler at the time.
The sexual nature of their relationship has been alluded to in Christopher Marlowe’s 1592 play, “Edward II,” and addressed more directly in queer filmmaker Derek Jarman’s 1991 film of the same name.
But even contemporaries were claiming the two men were unusually close, with some nicknaming Gaveston a “second king.”
According to English Heritage, which manages historic British monuments, “It is impossible to know the exact nature of their relationship, but there is strong evidence to suggest it was a romantic one.”
Eventually, their relationship estranged Edward from his wife, Isabella of France, and her allies at court. After he returned from exile a third time in 1311, Gaveston was hunted down and decapitated by a group of noblemen, including Edward’s cousin Thomas, the Earl of Lancaster.
In 1326, Isabella and her possible lover, Roger Mortimer, seized power and had Edward deposed and imprisoned. He died at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire a year later.
Rumors that Edward II had been gruesomely executed by having a red-hot poker inserted into his backside spread quickly, likely started by his political enemies.
Queen Ana Nzinga of Ndongo (1583 – 1663)
The gender-nonconforming ruler of Ndongo and Matamba in modern-day Angola, Nzinga fought off Portuguese colonialists, alternately through diplomacy, trade and guerrilla warfare.
She welcomed runaway slaves and European-trained African soldiers, and adopted kilombo, a military strategy in which male youths were taken from their families and raised communally in militias.
In a 1670 book, her Dutch bodyguard, Captain Fuller, described 60-year-old Nzinga as wearing “men’s apparel” during ritual sacrifice, “hanging about her the skins of beasts … with a sword about her neck, an axe at her girdle, and a bow and arrows in her hand.”
Fuller also described a cadre of young men whom Nzinga kept dressed in women’s clothing.
“The thing about Nzinga is her title was Ngola, and Ngola means king,” the Nigerian American photographer Mikael Owunna told NPR in 2017. “Nzinga ruled dressed in full male clothing as a king, and she had a harem of young men dressed as women who were her wives. So in the 1600s, you basically had a butch queen with a bunch of drag queens for wives leading a fight against European colonization.”
King James I of England (1566 – 1625)
The son of Mary, Queen of Scots, this British monarch, known as both King James VI of Scotland and King James I of England, has been described by the historian Michael B. Young as “the most prominent homosexual figure in the early modern period.”
Married to Anne of Denmark, James is thought to have had relationships with several male courtiers — most notably, George Villiers, whom he made the Earl and later the Duke of Buckingham. (In the early 2000s, restoration work on Apethorpe Palace revealed a secret passageway connecting James’ and Villiers’ bedchambers.)
“To the shock of many courtiers, the pair were demonstratively affectionate to each other in public, despite James’ various proclamations against homosexuality,” Daniel Smith wrote in “Love Letters of Kings and Queens.”
A popular epigram at the time compared the Jacobean monarch to his Tudor predecessor, Elizabeth I, declaring, “Elizabeth was King, now James is Queen.”
Contemporary poet Théophile de Viau put it more bluntly: “It is well known that the king of England f—- the Duke of Buckingham.”
Fending off claims of favoritism, James proclaimed, “You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anyone else.”
“I wish … to not to have it thought to be a defect,” he added, “for Jesus Christ did the same, and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had John, and I have George.”
Queen Christina of Sweden (1626 – 1689)
It’s hard to separate fact from fiction with this 17th-century Swedish royal: Her predilection for wearing men’s clothes and enjoying literature, hunting, alchemy and other male-dominated activities spurred rumors Christina was a sexual deviant or intersex.
“There is nothing feminine about her except her sex,” a Jesuit priest wrote in 1653. “Her voice, her manner of speaking, her walk, her style, her ways are all quite masculine.”
Oliver Cromwell’s secretary of state John Thurloe commented on Christina’s “Amazonian behavior” and said that “nature was mistaken in her,” while salacious French pamphlets claimed she was “one of the most ribald tribades ever heard of,” using the contemporary term for a lesbian.
But how many of those barbs were simply attempts at character assassination isn’t clear.
“The monarch has been described at best as ‘unconventional’ and at worst as an impulsive, over-emotional murderer,” historian Amy Saunders wrote in The Royal Studies Journal. “Christina’s sexuality and gender have been constantly reconstructed, re-examined, and re-interpreted.”
Since childhood, the queen’s closest companion was Countess Ebba Sparre, whom she introduced as “my bed-fellow.”
“How happy I should be if only I could see you, Beautiful One,” Christina wrote to Sparre in 1656. “But I am condemned by destiny to love and cherish you always without seeing you. I cannot be completely happy when I am separated from you.”
“It’s difficult to imagine just how Christina understood her own feelings for Ebba, and for those of other women, like the Comtesse de Suze, on whom she is said to have been keen,” Sarah Waters, author of “Tipping the Velvet,” wrote in the Feminist Review in 1994. “There was certainly gossip about Christina’s relations with women in her own day, identifying her as the aristocratic ‘tribade.’”
Christina, who abdicated rather than marry, wrote in her memoir that she felt “an insurmountable distaste for marriage” and “for all the things that females talked about and did.”
Though the 1933 film “Queen Christina” inserts a fictional heterosexual romance, the movie cemented screen goddess Greta Garbo’s status as a queer icon.
Queen Anne of England (1665 – 1714)
Anne, who suffered from frail health throughout her life, met Sarah Churchill when the two were girls. They quickly became close confidants, embarking on a relationship that lasted well into adulthood.
“If I could tell how to hinder myself from writing to you every day I would,” Anne wrote to her friend. “But really I cannot … when I am from you I cannot be at ease without enquiring after you.”
Queen Anne of England.Print Collector / /Getty Images
When Anne became queen in 1707, she made Sarah and her husband the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough and appointed Sarah the Keeper of the Privy Purse. Anne was married to Prince George of Denmark, but rumors circulated that the two women were having a secret romance.
Eventually Sarah became a bit too accustomed to her access and influence and Anne became more drawn to Sarah’s cousin, Abigail Masham.
In 1708, political pamphlets likely circulated by a jealous Sarah pointed to “dark deeds at night”between Abigail and the queen. After a final falling out at Kensington Palace in 1710, Sarah and Anne never spoke again.
“The Favourite,” a somewhat fictionalized 2018 account of Anne’s relationships with Sarah and Abigail — complete with lesbian liaisons — earned Olivia Colman a best actress Oscar as the conflicted queen.
Frederick the Great of Prussia (1712 – 1786)
Even in his lifetime, this Prussian royal was widely rumored to be a homosexual, though that term wouldn’t be coined till nearly 90 years after his death.
Two years after the king’s death, his physician Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann published a book in which he desperately tried to dispel gossip Frederick had a “Grecian taste in love.”
In “Frederick the Great: King of Prussia,” T.C.W. Blanning writes that Zimmermann claimed the king had a minor deformity on his penis that rendered him impotent. And rather than let that secret out, Frederick pretended to be gay, “so that he would continue to appear virile and capable of sexual intercourse, albeit with men.”
But Frederick’s proclivities were apparent at a young age: As a 16-year-old crown prince, he was caught having an affair with a 17-year-old page.
“We were unaware of my brother’s artifices,” his older sister Wihelmine wrote. “Though I had noticed that he was on more familiar terms with this page than was proper in his position I did not know how intimate the friendship was.”
Their father, King Frederick William, detested what he saw as his son’s effeminacy and was increasingly despotic toward him. Frederick tried to run away with another rumored lover, Hans Hermann von Katte, but the pair were caught.
Von Katte was executed in front of Frederick, shouting, “I die for you with joy in my heart!” before being beheaded.
Frederick became king of Prussia in 1740 and was considered a savvy military leader, politician and patron of the arts committed to the Enlightenment. But he did little to obscure his sexuality: Sanssouci, his palace in Potsdam, was filled with homoerotic art and, across Europe, “les Potsdamists” became slang for homosexuals.
The king allegedly pursued the Venetian philosopher Francesco Algarotti and even famed French philosopher Voltaire, who lived with him at Sanssouci, though it’s not certain if either relationship was sexual.
After Voltaire’s death in 1778, a manuscript of his memoir detailing Frederick’s homosexual tendencies in detail was stolen and published in the Netherlands.
Because of his military acumen, Frederick was glorified by the Nazis as a great German leader, though his sexuality was heavily obscured.
Princess Isabella of Parma (1741 – 1763)
Wed to Archduke Joseph of Austria, Isabella was rumored to truly be in love with Joseph’s sister, Archduchess Maria Christina, known affectionately as Mimi.
She spent all her time at court in Vienna with the archduchess, rather than her husband, and the two exchanged hundreds of letters. Maria Christina’s were destroyed after her death, but Isabella’s make her ardor apparent: “I am told that the day begins with God,” she wrote in one. “I, however, begin the day by thinking of the object of my love, for I think of her incessantly.”
The relationship was also a great source of conflict for Isabella, because it meant betraying her duties as the wife of a prince. More significantly, though, Isabella realized this was the great love of her life, but she knew that for Mimi, it was more of a youthful dalliance.
The princess died giving birth in 1763 at age 21.
Archduke Ludwig Viktor of Austria (1842 – 1919)
Being the younger brother of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I didn’t save Ludwig Viktor from ruin when he made an unwelcome pass at a man at Vienna’s Centralbad bathhouse.
“It appears there was a row, and the Archduke was knocked down by one of the bathers, an athletic young man of the middle classes,” The Chicago Tribune reported in 1906. “According to witnesses, the young man’s actions were justified.”
Ludwig was banished from Vienna for the remainder of the emperor’s life. “He has also been forced to resign his patronages, and most of his staff have been moved to other positions,” the Tribune reported, adding that the archduke has been “virtually ostracized” from society.
“The Viennese are very tolerant of scandals in imperial and aristocratic circles,” the paper wrote, “but Ludwig Viktor’s affairs proved to be too much even for them.”
The archduke spent the rest of his life in seclusion at Klessheim Palace near Salzburg, where he died at the age of 76 in 1919, three years after his brother’s death and one year after the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved after the end of World War I.
Mwanga II of Buganda (1868 – 1903)
Discussion of Uganda’s treatment of homosexuality usually settles on President Yoweri Museveni’s “Kill the Gays” bill, but this 19th century kabaka, or king, of Buganda allegedly had sexual relationships with men along with his 16 wives.
In 1886, Mwanga II ordered the brutal torture and deaths of dozens of courtiers and pages, with many burned alive. While some sources claimed the incident stemmed from the victims’ attempt to save a British missionary, The New York Times reported the massacre was sparked by “the refusal of a Christian lad acting as the king’s page to commit an abominable crime.”
Whatever the cause, the mass slaughter earned international condemnation and further destabilized Mwanga’s rule, leading to his eventual exile and British annexation of Uganda in the 1890s.
The victims were beatified as martyrs in 1920, and then canonized in 1964. There is a shrine dedicated to them in Namugongo and Martyr’s Day is still celebrated in Uganda every June.
Over time, they became national heroes and the “founding narrative of Christianity in Africa,” political scientist Rahul Rao told The Atlantic.
More than a century later, right-wing religious and political leaders like Museveni still use the martyrs to justify attacks on the LGBTQ community in Uganda.
“I hear there was homosexuality in Mwanga’s palace,” Museveni told a crowd of thousands on Martyr Day in 2010, the Atlantic reported. “This was not part of our culture. I hear he learnt it from the Arabs. But the martyrs refused these falsehoods and went for the truth, which is why we are honoring them today.”
King Umberto II of Italy (1904 – 1983)
After Mussolini’s fall, Umberto’s father, King Victor Emmanuel III, was viewed as a Fascist sympathizer. Under pressure from Allied forces, he abdicated in favor of his wastrel son, Umberto, in 1943.
Italian King Umberto II greets the crowd gathered on Piazza del Quirinale in Rome in 1946.Mondadori Portfolio / Mondadori Portfolio / Getty Images
Umberto was married to Queen Marie-José of Belgium and the couple had four children. But the Orva, Mussolini’s secret police, had kept dossiers on Umberto’s male lovers, who reportedly included famed filmmaker Luchino Visconti, boxer Primo Carnero, and French actor Jean Marais.
One former fling said when he was a young lieutenant in Turin, the prince courted him incessantly, giving him a silver cigarette lighter with the inscription “Dimmi di sì!” (“Say yes to me!”).
Critics decried Umberto as dim-witted, shallow and a poor leader.
The same year he was made regent, Umberto was outed by the Fascist press in an attempt to discredit him. It worked: After just 34 days the public voted to abolish the monarchy.
Separating from his wife in 1946, Umberto lived out the rest of his life in exile. He died in Geneva at age 78.
One in four LGBT+ youth use pronouns other than he/him and she/her, according to research by a leading charity.
The study indicates that LGBT+ young people are increasingly finding different ways to express their gender identities and that many are opting for a mix of pronouns.
The survey, conducted by The Trevor Project, found that 75 per cent of LGBT+ young people exclusively use either he/him or she/her pronouns.
Meanwhile, 25 per cent use gender neutral pronouns such as they/them, either exclusively or as a combination with other pronouns.
The research found that almost two thirds of LGBT+ youth who use pronouns outside the binary use a combination of he/him, she/her and they/them.
The Trevor Project surveyed 40,000 LGBT+ young people between the ages of 13-24 in the United States, asking them: “Which pronouns do you currently use? Please select all that apply.”
Five per cent of respondents said they exclusively use pronouns other than he/him or she/her, with the majority of that group opting for they/them pronouns.
Four per cent of those surveyed reported using pronouns such as ze/zir, xe/xim or fae/faer, or said they use these pronouns in conjunction with others.
The singular ‘they’ has been used in the English language for centuries.
Many people use pronouns such as they/them, xe/xim or fae/faer to better represent their identities.
British singer Sam Smith made headlines across the world last year when they came out as non-binary and said they would be using they/them pronouns going forward.
Transphobes from various quarters have railed against the use of singular they/them pronouns, but the Oxford English Dictionary actually traces the first written use of the singular “they” to 1375 – proving that it is not a new phenomenon linguistically.
Last December, the Merriam-Webster dictionary announced that it had selected the singular “they” pronoun as its word of the year.
Internet searches for the word “they” increased by 313 per cent last year when compared to 2018, proving that more and more people are educating themselves on the importance of respecting people’s pronouns.
Six boys and one non-binary student are suing a Texas school district after they were reportedly handed suspensions for having long hair.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas filed a lawsuit last week against the Magnolia Independent School District on behalf of the students, aged between seven and 17.
According to the ACLU, the district has been “engaging in explicit gender discrimination” by enforcing sex-specific dress and grooming rules for students, and “harshly punishing” them if they do not comply.
The Magnolia ISD handbook states that hair must “be no longer than the bottom of a dress shirt collar, bottom of the ear, and out of the eyes for male students”, and must “not be pinned up in any fashion nor be worn in a ponytail or bun for male students”.
No such rules exist for female students.
The lawsuit claims that multiple students have been placed in “in-school suspension” or a “disciplinary alternative education program” over the length of their hair.
According to the school district handbook, the “disciplinary alternative education program” is used for offences like making a false report of a terrorist threat or bullying another student to the point that they take their own life.
Brian Klosterboer, ACLU of Texas staff attorney, said in a statement: “At a time when students have already been through so much due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is outrageous that Magnolia ISD administrators are pushing students out of school because of their gender and hair.
“We have warned the district repeatedly that its gender-based hair policy violates the Constitution, but the district continues to derail students’ lives and deny their right to a public education free from discrimination.
“Magnolia ISD is failing to live up to its motto ‘to be the best district in the state of Texas,’ and the district needs to stop hurting its students.”
The 11-year-old non-binary plaintiff was ‘ostracised’ by the school district over their long hair
According to the lawsuit, the 11-year-old non-binary plaintiff, identified as TM, was sent to in-school suspension for nine days over their long hair.
“Sometimes TM expresses their gender identity more like a boy, but other times TM expresses their gender identity more like a girl,” the lawsuit reads.
“TM has worn long hair for the last couple years as a critical component of expressing their gender identity.
“If TM is forced to wear short hair based on gender stereotypes associated with their gender assigned at birth, TM will lose a vital part of who they are and sacrifice an essential element of their gender expression.”
It added that TM had been “ostracised and separated from their friends” by the in-school suspension, and it was only ended after their mother went to the press.
TM was granted a 60-day “pause” on the sex-based dress code being enforced, which will soon come to an end, putting them at “imminent risk of being sent back to [in-school suspension] and/or [disciplinary alternative education program]”.
According to Out, Magnolia ISD said in a statement that it “looks forward to the opportunity to respond” to the suit in court.
It continued: “This system of differentiated dress and grooming standards have been affirmed by courts and does not inhibit equal access to educational opportunities under Title IX.
“The rules are included in the student handbook each year and are similar to the codes of approximately half of the public school districts in Texas.”
On Tuesday (26 October), a judge temporarily blocked the school district’s enforcement of the sex-based grooming policy while legal proceedings are ongoing.
