Republican governor Kristi Noem has issued two executive orders to prohibit trans girls from playing on girls’ and women’s sports teams in South Dakota.
Noem partially vetoed HB 1217 – also known as the Fairness in Women’s Sports bill – which would ban trans women athletes from playing in sports teams that align with their gender identity. The move shocked her conservative supporters as Noem had been a staunch supporter of the bill.
During an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Noem explained that she rejected the bill in its current form over fear that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) would seek punitive action if it was passed. She argued that she declined the bill unless several stylistic changes are made.
However, the South Dakota state legislature voted Monday (29 March) to reject Noem’s “style and form” veto of the trans athlete bill, by a 67-2 vote. Republican congressmen Fred Deutsch wrote on Twitter: “Vote to pass the governor’s style and form veto on the Fairness for [Women’s] Sports bill fails 2-67.
“The bill now goes back to the governor for her to either sign or veto. House believes her style-and-form is unconstitutional.”
On the same day, Kristi Noem announced two executive orders would be put in place in South Dakota to ban trans athletes from participating in school sports as their correct gender. Noem said on Twitter: “Only girls should play girls’ sports.
“Given the legislature’s failure to accept my proposed revisions to HR 1217, I am immediately signing two executive orders to address this issue: one to protect fairness in K-12 athletics, and another to do so in college athletics.”
She added that she will be working with state lawmakers to “schedule a special legislative session in late May or early June” to address “this important issue” as well as “medical marijuana” and federal spending.
Under the new executive order, the department of education and the board of regents in South Dakota will need to ensure that publicly-funded K-12 school districts, colleges and universities restrict participation in girls’ and women’s sports to athletes who can prove their assigned sex at birth.
The ACLU of South Dakota vowed on Twitter that it will not “stop defending the right for everyone to live and thrive” in the state. It posted an image with text on it that read: “The fight isn’t over. If only for a moment, we were able to take a deep sigh of relief.”
Half of Generation Z thinks that traditional gender roles and labels related to the gender binary are outdated, according to a refreshing new study.
As issues of gender equality continue to challenge societal norms and influence public opinion, US-based ad agency Bigeye sought to understand consumers’ perception of gendered products and advertising.ADVERTISING
For the 2021 Gender Study the agency polled 2,000 adults from a range of ages, incomes, locations, and gender identities. Questions included the kinds of clothing they wear to their opinion on gender-neutral children’s toys and education.
They found that 50 per cent of Generation Z-ers are pushing back against the gender binary, and that sentiment is even higher among Millennials at 56 percent.
More than half (51 per cent) of all respondents agreed that, in a decade, we will associate gender with stereotypical personality traits, products, and occupations much less than we do today.
“While the majority of Americans are cisgender, a significant percentage of younger generations believe the notion of identity is fluid and decidedly non-traditional,” said Adrian Tennant, VP of Insights at Bigeye and the leader of the research team.
“This study provides a snapshot of the broad, generational spectrum of opinions and beliefs held toward gender identity and expression within the media we consume daily through TV, ads and online platforms.
“While the majority of older generations remain skeptical of advertising’s ability to change perceptions of traditional gender roles, Gen X and younger are leading the charge and challenging brands to portray more diverse audiences and expressions.”
It seems women are more likely to embrace gender-neutrality than men, as nearly three-quarters of cis female parents encourage gender-neutral play for their children (73 percent), a figure significantly higher than cis male parents (59 per cent).
And fifth of female respondents believe that none of the consumer product categories benefit at all from being gendered.
“Toiletries are constantly gendered and it is completely unnecessary. They should be labeled with the qualities of the product and the fragrance, if any. No mention of male or female is needed,” one Gen Y respondent wrote.
In another positive finding, LGBT+ participants were more likely to have faith in the next generation, with 82 per cent of queer millennials and 88 per cent of queer Boomers believing that Gen Z is better educated about non-binaryand transgender identities.
Julius’, a beloved New York City bar, has occupied the corner of Waverly Place and West 10th Street in the West Village for nearly 160 years. With little identifying it beyond its name in simple green cursive, the watering hole’s unassuming exterior belies its importance in gay rights history.
Like the Stonewall Inn just a few hundred feet away, Julius’ has been a lifeline to New York’s queer community for decades.
Now its owner is determined to make sure that legacy — and the bar itself— isn’t a casualty of the pandemic, which has devastated New York City nightlife.
Opened as a dry goods store in 1840, the building at 159 West 10th Street was already serving as a saloon by the 1860s. During Prohibition, Julius’ was a speakeasy, allegedly taking its name from the proprietor. Numerous unmarked doors and basement tunnels used for coal delivery allowed for quick escapes if the bar was raided, according to long-time bartenders Tracy O’Neill and Daniel Onzo.
Much of Julius’ remains unchanged from that era, including the long wooden bar with a century’s worth of “scratchitti” carved into it. Jacob Ruppert Brewery beer barrels serve as tables and stools.
Chandeliers dangling overhead are made from wagon wheels of horse-drawn carriages that once delivered ice.
Julius’ had started attracting a gay following at least by the 1950s and, according to local lore, was a popular hangout for midcentury queer luminaries like Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Rudolf Nureyev.
But New York State Liquor Authority regulations at that time prohibited serving drinks to “known or suspected homosexuals,” whose very presence was considered disorderly behavior.
“This law was used to prevent the existence of gay bars, so the ones that did exist were under the control of the criminal underworld,” Randy Wicker, a member of the New York chapter of the Mattachine Society, one of the first gay rights groups, said. Either the mob ran the establishment or bar owners would pay for protection to avoid being raided.
“It forced gay people into that underworld,” Wicker, 83, said. “It led to exploitation, blackmail, people being brutalized.”
Wicker said The Mattachine Society wanted to challenge the liquor laws. “We felt it was very similar to how Black people were being denied the right to sit at a lunch counter,” he said.
The idea for a protest, or a “sip-in” as it was eventually called, was inspired by the sit-ins of the civil rights movement: On April 21, 1966, four members of the New York Mattachine chapter walked into a bar, declared they were homosexuals and demanded to be served. Assuming they would be refused, the group planned to file a complaint with the New York City Commission on Human Rights.
Julius’ was actually the fourth place the group hit that day, with Wicker joining Mattachine president Dick Leitsch, vice president Craig Rodwell and member John Timmons. The first bar they visited, the Ukrainian-American Village Restaurant, had been tipped off and closed early.
At Howard Johnson’s, the group declared, “We’re homosexuals and we want to be served.”
“The waitress laughed and said, ‘No problem,’ and took the order,” Wicker said.
It was getting late and they were in danger of losing the reporters who had tagged along. Julius’, it turned out, was the perfect spot for their test case: It had a sizable homosexual following, Wicker said, but the management was determined not to let it become a “gay bar.”
“There had been an entrapment case recently — someone went home with an undercover policeman,” he said. “So they patrolled the bar very strictly. If there were too many men together inside, they’d stop letting men in unless you came with a woman.”
The group walked in and ordered, then Leitsch announced, “We are homosexuals. We are orderly, we intend to remain orderly, and we are asking for service.”
A New York Times photographer captured the moment the bartender put his hand over a glass and stopped making their drinks.
“I think it’s against the law,” he said, according to Wicker.
It was exactly the reaction Mattachine members had hoped for: Publicity from the “sip-in” led to the New York State Supreme Court ruling a year later that simply being gay — or even cruising or kissing — was not indecent behavior.
It didn’t just change liquor regulations, Wicker said. “It helped moved the gay community out of the grasp of the criminal world.”
Within a few years, there were legitimate, independent gay bars. They remained the nexus of gay life for decades, said LGBTQ historian Ken Lustbader, cofounder of the New York City LGBT Historic Sites Project.
“Because of LGBTQ discrimination by authorities, in policy and practice, there were really no other meeting places, no community centers,” he said. “Julius’ has been that space for so many people for so many years.”
And while New York’s gay bar scene has become a shadow of its former size — a victim of assimilation, gentrification and dating apps — Julius’ remained packed most weekends.
“I think there’s a pilgrimage aspect of it, especially for younger people,” Brian Sloan, a filmmaker who lived in the West Village for 20 years, said. “It has historical significance but it’s also a throwback to what gay bars used to be — lively, friendly, unpretentious. That’s harder to find now.”
Julius’ is still popular with celebrities — Lady Gaga, Sarah Jessica Parker, Zachary Quinto and Neil Patrick Harris have all stopped in, according to staff and regulars — and it has appeared in numerous films, including the Oscar-nominated Melissa McCarthy movie “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” and “The Boys in the Band,” both William Friedkin’s 1970 movie and the 2020 Netflix adaptation by Ryan Murphy.
Director John Cameron Mitchell, who first ventured into Julius’ in 1985, calls it his “local bar.”
“It’s dripping with queer history,” he said. “The photos on the wall, the Mattachine sip-in. It really led to the legalization of gay bars in New York.”
In 2008, Mitchell launched a monthly dance party at Julius’ called, appropriately enough, Mattachine.
“[We] wanted to preserve the feeling of our favorite alt-queer bars where you could hear rock, new wave, soul, funk and even slow jams,” he said. “Every month we honored a queer icon, and if they were still alive they would show up.”
Director John Cameron Mitchell celebrates his birthday at Julius’.Courtesy Julius’
Honorees have included the neurologist Oliver Sacks, the punk rock impresario Danny Fields, the Village People’s Randy Jones and Leitsch himself. “We even cursed queer villains like Roy Cohn in absentia,” Mitchell said of Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel. Cohn targeted government officials as communists and homosexuals, despite being gay himself.
There’s no denying Julius’ place in history but, by drawing hundreds of revelers late into the night, the Mattachine parties have helped keep the bar from turning into a museum piece.
In 2016, the 50th anniversary of the sip-in, Julius’ was placed on the National Register of Historic Places for its role in “an important early event in the modern gay rights movement.”
Lustbader, who helped get the designation, said it’s mostly honorific and doesn’t protect the business itself, which has been hobbled by coronavirus lockdowns.
Tennessee became Friday (26 March) the third US state to cruelly pass a bill banning trans girls from playing in middle and high school sports as their correct gender.
State governor Bill Lee announced on Twitter he had signed Senate Bill 228 to “preserve women’s athletics and ensure fair competition”.
Under the ban, student-athletes in Tennessee will be required to prove what sex they were assigned at birth to participate in school sports.
This is, in part, because there is no service or agency that tracks the number of trans athletes in the States.
While such a figure can be difficult to precisely pin down, a Gallup survey this year found 0.6 per cent of American adults are trans.
In fact, when two dozen state sponsors were asked by the Associated Pressto provide an example, any at all, of a trans teen causing the level of mayhem they make them out to cause, the news agency said most could not “cite a single instance in their own state or region where such participation has caused problems”.
Even Tennessee’s house speaker Cameron Sexton, the outlet reported, admitted that there likely aren’t even any openly trans youth taking part in middle or high school sports.
Around 73 per cent of Americans also support trans children participating in sports, according to a recent poll from the Human Rights Campaign, regardless of how much a hot-button issue it has been made out to be.
On April 25, 1965, three teenagers refused to leave Dewey’s Restaurant in Philadelphia after employees repeatedly denied service to “homosexuals and persons wearing nonconformist clothing,” according to Drum magazine, which was created by the Janus Society, an early gay rights group.
The teens were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, and Janus Society members protested outside of the restaurant for the next five days, according to Marc Stein, a history professor at San Francisco State University.
“Every single element of what we know of as Pride and gay rights and, especially, the pre-Stonewall homophile movement, was borrowed from the Black Freedom Movement.”
ERIC CERVINI, LGBTQ HISTORIAN
“Unlike so many other episodes, it kind of combined issues of homosexuality and trans issues,” Stein, author of “Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement,” told NBC News.
On May 2, three more people staged a second sit-in at Dewey’s. Though the restaurant called the police, the protesters weren’t arrested, and after a few hours they left voluntarily, according to a Janus Society newsletter. The Society wrote that the protests and sit-ins were successful in preventing future denials of service and arrests.
The sit-in at Dewey’s is among a long list of examples that show a “direct line” to the Black civil rights movement, according to Stein. Specifically, sit-ins organized by gay activists in the ‘60s appear to be directly inspired by protests held in 1960 by Black college students at Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, against racial segregation.
Black students wait in vain for food service at this F.W. Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina, on April 20, 1960.Greensboro News & Record, AP file
Early LGBTQ activists (though they didn’t use that acronym at the time) adopted many of the civil rights movement’s strategies, Stein said, and they relied on much of the foundation laid by Black civil rights activists.
But the two movements weren’t necessarily separate — they often overlapped — and so influence happened in a few ways, Stein said.
“Influence can be the influence of ideas, and specifically, ideologies, influence of strategies,” he said. “Influence can also come in the form of people who move between movements, or who are engaged in multiple movements, and we do have examples of that in the early LGBT movement.”
The influence — or ‘plagiarism’ — of ideas
Queer activists were building a movement long before the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City, which is widely referred to as a turning point in the LGBTQ rights movement. Though Stonewall was a pivotal moment, activists like Frank Kameny were organizing for gay rights well before.
Kameny co-founded the Mattachine Society in Washington, D.C., one of the first homophile groups (“homophile” being the adjective of choice at the time), and he drew strategies directly from the Black civil rights movement, according to Eric Cervini, a historian and author of “The Deviant’s War,” which focuses on Kameny and the early gay rights movement.
“Every single element of what we know of as Pride and gay rights and, especially, the pre-Stonewall homophile movement, was borrowed from the Black Freedom Movement,” Cervini said. “Frank Kameny’s primary role, what made him so brilliant but also complex of a historical figure, was that he served primarily as a Xerox machine copying different elements of the Black Freedom Movement and applying that to a previously nonmilitant, nonprotesting movement.”
For example, Cervini said Kameny and a delegation of eight Mattachine Society of Washington members attended the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. The march was organized by Bayard Rustin, who had been arrested in 1953 for having sex with another man. In 1963, Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., a segregationist, called Rustin a “sexual pervert” on the Senate floor in an effort to discredit the march, according to Out History.
Kameny and the delegates saw that, even though Rustin had been exposed, 200,000 Americans still attended the march, and it became a historic moment, according to Cervini.
“So these white gay activists, who previously had been refusing to take to the streets, looked around and said, ‘Maybe it’s time, maybe not right now, but maybe in the near future,’” Cervini said. (In fact, in 1979, activists would organize a National March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights, which drew an estimated 200,000 protesters, according to the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce).
People hold signs as they participate in the National March on Washington for Lesbian & Gay Rights in Washington, DC, on Oct. 14, 1979.Bettmann Archive/Getty Images file
Within a year of the 1963 march, gay rights activist Randy Wicker began picketing the U.S. Army Induction Center in New York City, and a few months after that, Kameny began picketing the White House and Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. Cervini also noted that Kameny modeled his phrase “Gay Is Good,” which was used on protest signs and buttons, on the Black Power movement’s “Black Is Beautiful.”
A few years later, in 1966, Wicker and three activists with the Mattachine Society’s New York City chapter organized a “sip-in” at Julius’ Bar to challenge a New York State Liquor Authority rule that said bars couldn’t serve “disorderly” customers. In practice, bars would refuse to serve LGBTQ people out of fear that they’d lose their liquor license. The sip-in, like the sit-in at Dewey’s, used the same tactics as the college students at Woolworth’s lunch counter, according to Stein.
After pouring their drinks, a bartender in Julius’ Bar in New York City refuses to serve Mattachine Society members John Timmins, Dick Leitsch, Craig Rodwell and Randy Wicker on April 21, 1966.Fred W. McDarrah / Getty Images file
Stein said Black civil rights movement strategies also affected how early LGBTQ activists conducted peaceful demonstrations. A coalition of gay and lesbian organizations held a yearly peaceful protest at Independence Hall called the Annual Reminder from 1965 to 1969, which Stein said were influenced by the early civil rights demonstrations in which demonstrators were instructed to dress respectably, with women in dresses and men in suits.
Cervini said civil rights demonstrators dressed up as a “reclamation of morality that was so effective when you look at the images of Montgomery or Birmingham or Greensboro.” He said Time magazine even drew attention to the fact that young civil rights activists looked like they were going to church, and, as a result, “How can you possibly claim that those Southern whites are the ones protecting morality?” he said. “So the early gay activists tried to emulate that same tactic, by using respectability as a political tool.”
Barbara Gittings and other gay rights activists picket outside the White house in 1965.Kay Tobin Lahusen / NYPL
On the other hand, gay and trans activists were also affected by the Black Power movement and urban uprisings, according to Stein. He said LGBTQ rebellions like the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria riot in San Francisco and the Stonewall uprising a few years later were likely influenced by events like the 1965 Watts Rebellion in Los Angeles, where six days of riots erupted between police and the predominantly Black community.
“I would argue that the Black Power movement was just as influential as the civil rights movement,” Stein said. “Black Power ideologies and strategies came to influence the movement very much so in the second half of the ‘60s and then into the ‘70s, so there were both of those influences — peaceful, respectable demonstrations on the one hand, and a more aggressive militant action sometimes including riots on the other.”
Crowd attempts to impede police arrests outside the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1969.New York Daily News via Getty Images
Cervini said FBI reports explicitly connect the Black Freedom Movement and the early homophile movement.
“We can connect those two movements — Bayard Rustin, Frank Kameny and Randy Wicker — through FBI surveillance, and from informants within these organizations,” Cervini said. “They were the ones informing the FBI that the gays, the homosexuals were learning from and discussing copying the Black Freedom Movement.”
“This idea of a coalition between these two organizations — that the Black Freedom Movement might be inspiring this other group of American citizens who are also marginalized, and the fact that they may both be taking to the streets, perhaps in coordination — that is what scared them the most,” Cervini said of the FBI and Southern racist segregationists.
Frank Kameny and Mattachine Society of Washington members marching in New York, June 1970.Kay Tobin Lahusen / NYPL
However, the homophile movement, at least in New York and Washington, never made that coalition a reality, Cervini added.
He said he uses the word “plagiarism” to describe how Kameny used civil rights tactics without working with or crediting the activists whose tactics he used.
“You are using and borrowing tactics from another movement, but not giving proper credit and not making space for people at the intersection of those two movements,” Cervini said. “I think it raises the question of the moral acceptability of that.”
Influence by intersection
In some cities, there was more of a coalition and less borrowing. The idea of one movement having an “influence” over the other could give the false notion that the fight for Black civil rights was comprised entirely of Black activists and the fight for LGBTQ rights was solely made up of whites, cautioned Steven Fullwood, co-founder of the Nomadic Archivists Project, which documents and preserves Black history.
“There’s Black people in parts of both of those movements,” Fullwood said, noting that there were Black people involved in both the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian rights group.
Marsha P. Johnson.Netflix
Fullwood also mentioned Marsha P. Johnson, who is credited as being a central figure in the Stonewall uprising, and Cervini cited Ernestine Eckstein (also known as Ernestine Eppenger), who was active in the Black Freedom Movement and the Daughters of Bilitis in the ‘60s.
Stein also gave the example of Kiyoshi Kuromiya, a Japanese-American, anti-war activist who participated in the Annual Reminders at Independence Hall and had previously gone South and participated in civil rights marches. Kuromiya co-founded the Gay Liberation Front’s Philadelphia chapter and became a spokesperson for a homosexual workshop at the Black Panther’s Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention in September 1970, according to Stein.
He gave a presentation “to the huge audience of the convention to applause,” Stein said of Kuromiya, citing this as one of many examples showing that the movements weren’t fragmented or divided at the time in some cities.
“They were uniting against police violence, state repression, capitalist exploitation and, after all, the Stonewall rebellion was at least in part about a business exploiting its gay, trans customers,” Stein said. “So it kind of illustrates the way those issues came together at those particular episodes.”
“Any movement that does not take into account the intersectional approach is never going to achieve true liberation.”
STEVEN FULLWOOD, NOMADIC ARCHIVISTS PROJECT
Some of the major LGBTQ demonstrations, including the 1965 sit-in at Dewey’s Restaurant, took place in racially diverse communities, according to Susan Stryker, a scholar of queer and trans history.
She said the sit-in is an example of tactics developed in the Black civil rights struggle “becoming useful in situations that are not organized specifically around race, but are organized around questions of sexuality and gender expression and gender presentation.”
“So, is that a borrowing of civil rights tactics?” Stryker asked. “Or is it people who are perhaps familiar with this in different contexts of their own lives saying … ‘We need to do the same thing on this issue’?”
Stryker said there was also a huge overlap between people who were organizing for racial and economic justice and queer and trans rights in the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria riot, which she described as “one of the first instances that we know about of militant trans resistance to police-based oppression.”
The legal blueprint
Many major legal gains for LGBTQ people are also in part due to arguments developed by civil rights lawyers.
“The legal strategy challenging racial segregation, which was pioneered by the NAACP in the 1940s, was really the wellspring from which the LGBTQ equality movement grew,” said Alphonso David, a civil rights lawyer and the first Black president of the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ rights group.
Thurgood Marshall, attorney for the NAACP, arrives at the Supreme Court in Washington, August 22, 1958. The Associated Press
In the 1940s and ‘50s, Thurgood Marshall, who led the NAACP, spent a decade challenging segregation on public transportation, in restaurants and in public schools, David said. Marshall argued a number of cases related to segregation, and then in the mid-’50s he argued Brown v. Board of Education in front of the Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws segregating schools were unconstitutional.
“It took more than a decade of litigation and argument testing combined with really a lot of sweat equity and strategic partnerships with grassroots organizers to successfully challenge racial segregation in the U.S. Supreme Court,” David said.
Marshall’s legal strategy, which involved using the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment, served as a model that the LGBTQ movement used to challenge the criminalization of homosexuality and the denial of marriage rights.
“We are indebted to the civil rights leaders of the past, because they were really instrumental in outlining the essential objective, which was the guarantee of equal protection and how that should apply to all of us,” David said.
Plaintiff Jim Obergefell, bottom center, speaks to the media outside the Supreme Court after the Obergefell vs. Hodges gay marriage ruling on Friday, June 26, 2015. Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Gay rights lawyers also built on major Black civil rights decisions to achieve same-sex marriage, according to David. In 1967, the Supreme Court held in Loving v. Virginia that laws banning interracial marriage violate the due process and equal protection clauses. “In that case, the Supreme Court held that, yes, there is a fundamental right to marry,” he said.
This same argument was successfully used nearly half a century later in Obergefell v. Hodges, David said, where it was argued that “denying same-sex couples the right to marry violates both the due process and the equal protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution — and we won.”
“So that is one perfect example where you see the arguments that were advanced during the civil rights struggle to at least recognize equality for racial minorities being used and applied in the context of LGBTQ people,” he added.
‘The same goal’
There has been significant overlap between the civil rights and LGBTQ equality movements, Fullwood said, and that’s a key takeaway.
“What we have to appreciate is that the arguments that were used in the civil rights movement in the 1960s involved LGBTQ people,” Fullwood added, citing a speech given by Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton in 1970.
Outlining the group’s position on the two emerging movements, Newton wrote: “Whatever your personal opinions and your insecurities about homosexuality and the various liberation movements among homosexuals and women (and I speak of the homosexuals and women as oppressed groups), we should try to unite with them in a revolutionary fashion.”
The sister of Layleen Polanco, a trans woman who died in Rikers Island Jail in 2019, speaks to a crowd gathered outside the Brooklyn Museum for a rally and march for Black transgender lives on June 14, 2020.Sekiya Dorsett
Today’s activists, Fullwood said, have to think about the LGBTQ equality movement as involving Black people and the racial justice movement as involving LGBTQ people.
“Any movement that does not take into account the intersectional approach is never going to achieve true liberation,” he said. “The Black and the LGBTQ movements have the same goal.”
Fullwood said he’s pleased with the kinds of activists who are engaging multi-issue platforms that “call for different, insightful ways to resist oppression,” but that he’s occasionally run into the phrase, “This isn’t your grandmother’s movement.”
“If that’s the sentiment, I say this: You better hope it’s your grandmother’s movement, because she and thousands like her made it possible for you to have the language, perspective and insights that you enjoy today,” he said. “This is not new. Read. Research. Build. You exist in a river of resistance. Know and embrace that history. It’s waiting.”
Ro Redfern-Taube, 20, was finishing up their sophomore year at the University of Chicago last March when the school decided to shut down its campus and send students home because of the spread of the coronavirus. Redfern-Taube, now a junior, returned to their parents’ home in New York City, where they said they’re not comfortable openly talking about their gender identity.
However, as a leader of GenderQ, their university’s only organization for transgender and nonbinary students, Redfern-Taube said they have felt compelled to be present and to create a safe space for a group of students that is starved of community. Over the past 11 months, that has included organizing Zoom hangouts, creating private chat servers and including LGBTQ first-years who might not have even seen campus.
“It’s definitely not the same as forming those organic connections between you and other people who might share your identities,” they said. “I miss parties.”
With many colleges and universities across the U.S. operating remotely, LGBTQ student groups are trying to find new — and virtual — ways to engage with students, some of whom are socially distancing with unaccepting relatives and in need of queer-affirming outlets.
“A lot of the burden, even before Covid, fell on the backs of students who provide their own services and support,” Shane Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride, said of LGBTQ-affirming events at universities across the U.S. “You have students who are trying to figure out their online courses and how to stay in school and dealing with their academics. Plus, now, if they’re a leader in a student group, ‘How do we create engagement with our members?'”
Windmeyer said LGBTQ student leaders are using a variety of social and digital platforms to stream live events for their peers, celebrate special occasions like National Coming Out Day, organize social and educational events and even plan “lavender graduations” for graduating seniors.
‘Togetherness in a virtual space’
Redfern-Taube founded GenderQ with fellow University of Chicago junior Will Harling after the two met in the first week of their freshman year. The pair said they quickly decided to dedicate their free time to forming connections with other trans, nonbinary and questioning students at the school. The on-campus experience, they said, was crucial to their personal growth.
“First year was particularly important to me as a nonbinary person and a queer person in general,” Redfern-Taube said. “Those were parts of my identity that I hadn’t really explored until the very end of high school and definitely wasn’t open about until I came to UChicago.”
Redfern-Taube described their campus as a “pretty queer-inclusive space” and said meeting people face to face and socializing at parties played important roles in their fully embracing their gender identity. Before the pandemic, GenderQ’s in-person events included weekly meetings, parties and casual hangouts on campus.
Harling lamented that current first-year students won’t have that experience.
“Community is such an important part of identity, especially marginalized identities,” they said. “Covid has taken community away from everybody.”
But Harling and Redfern-Taube are trying to make the best of a bad situation — and their efforts have paid off. Since the start of the pandemic, GenderQ has grown from around seven members to over 35, with more trans and nonbinary students turning to its video meetings, private chatrooms, virtual panels and remote speaker events.
It has been “a lot of trial and error,” Harling said, adding that they and Redfern-Taube have been using several social platforms to reach students, particularly first-years who might not have ever had an on-campus experience.
Leslie Lim, a freshman at Vassar College in New York’s Hudson Valley region, started her undergraduate career remotely in a pandemic. Lim, a California native, said she decided to attend Vassar, which has a reputation as an LGBTQ-friendly institution, in the hope that a strong on-campus queer community would be a part of her college experience.
“I think what’s so integral about being a young person in the LGBTQ community is being in physical spaces and in community with one another,” said Lim, 18. “It’s so difficult to replicate the same feeling of togetherness in a virtual space.”
While Vassar is mostly remote, students are still able to live in the residence halls if they choose, and some courses permit in-person attendance for those on campus. Lim is among the students living at the school, and she took an in-person job at the university’s Women’s Center, which is in one of the few open buildings. Part of her job is to organize virtual programming to help LGBTQ students feel welcome and part of a community.
Last semester, she gave out clay to students in a no-contact pickup, and they all made clay figures together over Zoom. She also helped plan a “speed dating”-style Zoom event at which LGBTQ students on campus could meet and talk one on one.
“It really helps me,” Lim said of interacting with other students. “And I hope it helps my peers feel connected.”
‘A daunting task’
It’s not just undergraduate LGBTQ student groups that are trying to foster a virtual sense of community for their members — and with good reason.
While the process is different for everyone, it isn’t uncommon for LGBTQ people to come out during or even after their undergraduate college years. A 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center found that the median age at which an LGBTQ person first comes out to a family member or a close friend is 20, with about a third of LGBTQ Americans reporting that they have never disclosed their sexual orientations or gender identities to parents. With millennials across the country moving home more than ever during the pandemic, even those beyond their undergrad years may seek support from LGBTQ-affirming student groups.
That’s why the LGBTQ student group at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences has been creating virtual events for members since the school started operating remotely in March.
“It is a rather daunting task,” said James Evans, the group’s vice president, adding that he and the group’s other student leaders are creating programming without the help of the university.
Evans, 30, said the group has hosted 25 hours of Zoom events, including trivia nights, costume balls and panels, to engage students who need the support and community. They have also launched a “buddy” program to make sure new students are integrated and feel welcome.
Evans and the group’s other leaders, however, recognize that they alone can’t provide all the support their members need.
Malinda McPherson, one of the group’s co-presidents, said: “It’s particularly difficult to be student volunteers working to create support structures for LGBTQ+ graduate students when we ourselves are LGBTQ+ students who need support. Mental health for queer students is more at risk compared to our peers, and the pandemic has probably exacerbated that existing divide.”
An LGBTQ-affirming community is about more than socializing, and its absence can be dangerous, Windmeyer said. He said some students have lost access to the LGBTQ-affirming health care services they had on campus, while others are forced to stay in unaccepting environments.
“What we find is that LGBTQ students before Covid were some of the most vulnerable, especially our trans, nonbinary [and] our youth of color,” he said. “That didn’t change with Covid. It actually got worse.”
He said the suffocation of being in an LGBTQ-unfriendly environment is, in some cases, compounded by not being able to talk openly in video support groups and other queer-affirming online events.
“We had one individual who volunteered for us because they wanted something to do that was kind of queer,” Windmeyer said. “They couldn’t talk about ‘LGBTQ.’ We basically had to use another word.”
Even Redfern-Taube, who leads their campus group, said they would leave their parents’ home and take walks when running virtual meetings for GenderQ through the Zoom app on their cellphone. And for GenderQ members who don’t feel comfortable talking out loud in their homes, Redfern-Taube and Harling created a messaging space where students can type written messages to one another.
While virtual spaces aren’t perfect substitutes for in-person connections, the ability to foster community with their members and provide a safe space has been their goal since they started the group.
“I think they’re genuinely grateful that it exists,” Redfern-Taube said of GenderQ’s growing membership.
Once viewed as unwelcoming to the LGBTQ community, popular online matchmaker eHarmony has gone through a queer-friendly rebranding of late.
The site, which boasts more than 2 million messages a week, began offering same-sex matches in 2019. This winter, it launched its first queer-inclusive commercial, featuring a lesbian couple.https://www.youtube.com/embed/2Vfnym5MlZE
The ad, “I Scream,” is part of eHarmony’s current “Real Love” campaign and opens on a female couple in their kitchen. In between kisses, one woman tastes her partner’s cooking and makes it clear she’s not a fan. The pair wind up on the couch enjoying a pint of ice cream and going in for another peck.
“Being honest with each other,” a voiceover announces. “Saying yes to great ideas. eHarmony — here for real love.”
Gareth Mandel, chief operating officer at eHarmony, told NBC News it was important that “our ad campaigns, our platform, and everything else we do accurately reflect what real love, real dating and real relationships look like both today and always.”
“We’ve spent substantial time recently bringing our entire team together to formalize a company mission and values statement that reflects who we are today,” he said, “Explicitly reflecting a brand and a workplace that strives to be safe, inclusive and welcoming to each and every member of our community.”
The ad, and the “Real Love” campaign in general, are part of a sitewide revamp to move the company away from its conservative origins — but not everyone is on board with the company’s inclusive turn.
Launched in 2000 by Neil Clark Warren and his son-in-law, Greg Forgatch, eHarmony was different from most dating sites: Rather than allow members to pore through hundreds of profiles, it paired them based on a lengthy compatibility quiz.
And, initially, the site only offered heterosexual matches.
Publicly, Warren — a clinical psychologist, seminary professor and devout Christian — claimed that was because he had no expertise when it came to gay dating. But in 2005, before same-sex marriage was recognized in most states, he told USA Today, “We don’t really want to participate in something that’s illegal.”
In an interview with the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family in 2004, Warren said he had to be diplomatic about how he discussed the site’s lack of same-sex options.
“Cities like San Francisco, Chicago or New York — they could shut us down so fast. We don’t want to make enemies out of them,” Warren said. “But at the same time, I take a real strong stand against same-sex marriage anywhere that I can comment on it.”
In eHarmony’s early years, Warren frequently plugged the site on the radio program of evangelical author James Dobson, who co-founded Focus on the Family. The anti-LGBTQ organization also published several of Warren’s self-help books.
As eHarmony continued to grow, though, Warren distanced himself from the group. In 2005, he ended his appearances on Dobson’s show and bought the publishing rights to his books.
After settling a discrimination lawsuit in New Jersey in 2008, eHarmony agreed to launch Compatible Partners, a separate dating site that enabled users to make same-sex matches. It was an imperfect solution the Los Angeles Times referred to as a “shotgun wedding.” There was no link to Compatible Partners on the main eHarmony site, and those interested in both men and women had to buy two subscriptions, according to Mashable. It took another discrimination suit, this one in California, for the two sites to be reciprocal.
Warren retired from running eHarmony in 2007 but returned as chief executive in 2012. In a 2013 interview with CNBC, he lamented that his company was forced to “put up a same-sex site” and said gay marriage “has really damaged our company.”
“We literally had to hire guards to protect our lives, because the people were so hurt and angry with us,” he said at the time, because “Christian people” felt the company’s gay dating site was “a violation to scripture.”
Warren also suggested to CNBC that eHarmony invest $10 million to “figure out” homosexuality, which he called “at the very best … a painful way for a lot of people to have to live.”
Warren stepped down as CEO again in 2016 and is no longer involved with the company, according to Mandel. Since 2019, eHarmony has been led by a three-person team — Mandel, Chief Customer Care Officer Carlos Robles and Chief Financial Officer Stefan Schulze.
CompatiblePartners.com started redirecting to the main eHarmony site in November 2019. Mandel said the response has been largely positive, and LGBTQ usership has grown 109 percent year-over-year.
“Over the last couple of years, we’ve taken several actions to become more of the company that we want to be,” he said. “One of our main objectives is to ensure we’re always striving to create a culture that’s diverse, inclusive and welcoming to all of our members and our employees. Our commitment to make sure our platform reflects that is a priority for us as a company.”
eHarmony’s benefits package for 2021 offers coverage for gender-affirming surgery, as well as equal parental leave, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, and including adoptive and foster parents.
“While we’re proud of the changes we’ve made to our platform, we recognize that we have work left to do, and are committed to finding ways to be more inclusive to people of all gender identities and sexual orientations across all facets of what we do,” Mandel said.
While many have applauded eHarmony’s “LGBTQ epiphany,” the company’s “Real Love” campaign has put it in the crosshairs of the right-wing Christian group One Million Moms. The group, which is part of the conservative American Family Association, launched a petition Jan. 29 criticizing the “I Scream” commercial as an “attempt to normalize and glorify the LGBTQ lifestyle,” which it calls “unnatural and immoral.”
“This eHarmony ad brainwashes children and adults by desensitizing them and convincing them that homosexuality is natural,” a statement on the One Million Moms website reads, “when in reality it is an unnatural love that is forbidden by Scripture just like love rooted in adultery is forbidden.”
The petition, which calls on eHarmony to pull the spot, received more than 15,300 signatures as of Tuesday afternoon.
“I am extremely disappointed that eHarmony is refusing to remain neutral in the cultural war by pushing the LGBTQ agenda on families,” it reads in part.
The organization often opposes LGBTQ-inclusive programming and advertising. In October, it protested an Uber Eats commercialfeaturing Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and nonbinary “Queer Eye” star Jonathan Van Ness. In 2019, it targeted Disney/Pixar’s “Toy Story 4” for including a scene of two moms dropping their child off at school, and it called on Hallmark Channel to remove an ad for the wedding planning website Zola featuring a same-sex wedding.
The impact of OMM’s campaigns, though, is questionable at best: ”Toy Story 4” earned more than $1 billion worldwide at the box office without removing the offending scene; Uber Eats is still running the Jonathan Van Ness commercial; and after briefly pulling the Zola ad, Hallmark reinstated it and apologized for the “hurt and disappointment it has unintentionally caused.”
With the inauguration of President Joe Biden, I hope we may now see the kind of leadership on LGBTQ issues we need. As a gay African-American man living with HIV, I have lived through two pandemics. Under both HIV/AIDS and COVID-19, LGBTQ people have had to shoulder the burden of discrimination while fighting to survive. I hope that 2021 is the year that changes.
I was diagnosed with HIV in 1984, in the early years of the epidemic. I lost many friends in the years that followed. So many of us in that time never expected to live a full life ourselves. After watching our friends die, it became hard to imagine that we’d ever make it to our 40th birthday — let alone retirement. The discrimination we experienced and the looming threat of the virus made it difficult to build careers and save for the golden years we never thought we’d see. I’ve lost jobs due to discrimination myself, and the stress of it nearly killed me. That’s why today, I help advocate for LGBTQ elders and folks on social security.
I have seen every stage of the HIV/AIDS crisis, from the pandemic, to its aftermath, to the present day. I know how much work it takes to survive and thrive in the face of this virus. As the administrator of a group home for folks recovering from HIV-related hospital stays, a member of the local HIV Planning Council, and a care outreach specialist for a community clinic, I’ve seen the kind of discrimination people still face. I once worked with a pregnant woman who was turned away from a local hospital for being HIV-positive. Because our clinic existed, she got the care she needed and her baby was born healthy.
In recent years, advances in prevention and access to testing and treatment have led to encouraging declines in new diagnoses. But stigma and anti-LGBTQ bias continue to have consequential effects on testing decisions. Time and again, I have spoken with clients who choose to hide their condition or status to avoid ostracization and discrimination. According to a recent research report by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, 44 percent of Black LGBTQ adults have either never been tested, tested when they felt at risk, or once every two years or less. It’s an alarming statistic that falls far too short from CDC recommendation for testing frequency for HIV, which is at least once a year or more frequently.
Despite these challenges, it’s possible to live a full and healthy life with HIV/AIDS. As Americans, we should be able to participate in all aspects of daily life with dignity and respect, and without fear of discrimination. If we wholeheartedly want to end the HIV epidemic in the United States, we must seize the moral high ground and ensure LGBTQ Americans are provided with equal rights, better access to care, and increased secure housing. Federal nondiscrimination legislation will help us get there.
Although it’s important to celebrate how far we’ve come, right now, 50 percent of LGBTQ people live in the 29 states that lack comprehensive statewide laws explicitly prohibiting discrimination against LGBTQ people, including here in my home state of Georgia. And in the midst of a pandemic and the accompanying economic crisis, it’s inhumane that millions of us can still be denied housing or medical care just because of who we are or who we love. Situations like these enable the spread of HIV.
Our nation is going through a profound change, but our values of treating others as we would want to be treated remains the same. The Equality Act would ensure that all LGBTQ Americans can live, work, and access public spaces and medical care free from discrimination, no matter what state we call home. It’s the right thing to do — which is why this type of legislation has broad and deep support across lines of political party, demographics, and geography. Public support is at an all-time high, with 83 percent of Americans saying they favor LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections, including 68 percent of Republicans and a majority in every state in the country.
After all, equality is not a Democratic or Republican value, it’s an American value. It’s also the smart thing to do as we work to end the HIV epidemic in America.
Nathan Townsend is a 66-year-old Black gay man living and thriving with HIV for 36 years. He devotes his time and efforts helping to promote health equity and equal access to care for his community.
Taking care of our sexual needs in conventional times has often been a challenge, but with the outbreak of COVID and the ensuing lockdowns, it has become difficult on an entirely different scale. We’ve got to navigate risk, determine our comfort zones and find other who share those same boundaries. The funny thing is, we know how to do this. This is not our first pandemic and gay men have already had to navigate disease, persecution, and violence when pursuing sex. In the face of all of these challenges, we remain resilient and that is perhaps our greatest superpower.
The pandemic and the lockdown policies left many gay men vulnerable economically, physically, and mentally. In a recent survey of LGBT individuals, 30 percent of respondents reported feeling physically and emotionally unsafe in their homes. Over 70 percent report experiencing anxiety since the pandemic began. Very few government policies are in place to meet the unique needs of LGBTQ+ people during COVID, and in places where gay sex is criminalized the fear of arrest or persecution creates an almost insurmountable barrier to much needed health or economic resources.ADVERTISING
Additionally, a majority of gay men reported a very high level of sexual dissatisfaction, particularly those adhering to physical distancing. Such dissatisfaction is not sustainable and eventually gay men are going to take action to have their sexual needs met. It’s natural. Sex is valuable and provides a much-needed social connection. An increase in sexual activity is inevitable but the question becomes what we have learned from this pandemic and how can we apply it to our lives going forward.
Fortunately, over a year of COVID has provided us with many opportunities to learn from this global crisis. Here are some key lessons we can glean from our newest pandemic and its impact on our lives.
Explore all the ways to be sexually satisfied. Being stuck at home and unable to meet up in person with others brought many of our sex lives to a screeching halt. Fortunately, we were able to adapt with creativity, technology, and, in some cases, a return to the classics. OnlyFans, Zoom sex parties, masturbation clubs, and phone sex were but a few of the tools that helped us get through and get off. PrEPster created a brilliant guide, Navigating COVID When Horny; it was the perfect tool to walk us through all the ways we could still pursue sexual pleasure in the midst of this global pandemic.
Improved sexual communication skills. In the midst of a pandemic, communication is key. Each of us have different risks we are willing to accept. It gets even more complicated because our comfort level around risk can change daily. This shifting comfort level is something we are familiar with from decades of HIV. The best way forward when navigating risk is clear and honest communication. Tell your partner, or partners, what your boundaries are and ask them about theirs before sex. Our sex is infinitely better if we can let go of the anxiety created by assuming or hoping they know what you want and how far you are willing to go.
It’s okay to prioritize pleasure. Pandemics suck. We’ve already lived through 40 years of a pandemic that devastated our community and now this new one comes along to pile on top of our existing fatigue. But our existence and our community are testament to the fact that you don’t give up sex just because of a pandemic. In fact, the pandemic can help bring into stark focus just how important sex and pleasure are. We have an opportunity to prioritize sex in our lives and in our movement. The pursuit of sexual fulfillment is intricately linked to our ability to determine what we do with our bodies and that is a fundamental tenant in social justice.
Gay sex spaces matter. For centuries, gay sex spaces have been a source of community and connection. Not only did they allow us to link up for sexual pleasure, but they allowed us to find those with whom we shared a common experience. It was how we found our people and built a community and social movements. Many of those gay sex spaces are now in danger of closing, if they haven’t already. What plan do we create to keep them alive? As the trajectory of this pandemic changes, there is a great deal of rebuilding that needs to be done. We can’t count on government to maintain the health of gay sex spaces around the globe. It falls to us to find creative ways to keep these spaces open and help them flourish.
Gay sex always finds a way. That should come as a great comfort to us all. Through the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic, we fostered our sexualities. In countries where gay sex is a crime, we defiantly pursue pleasure and intimacy. And we can navigate the calamity of COVID and maintain our sex lives. Our resiliency is our greatest asset and it’s one of the most profound things we can teach others. We don’t survive for sex. We survive because of it.
Alex Garner is Deputy Director, Gay Sexuality and Social Policy Initiative (GSSPI) at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.
The LGBT+ community is made up of a diverse group of people from all over the world, and their stories are often overlooked in history books.
PinkNews spoke to ambassadors and workers from LGBT+ youth charity Just Like Us about the historical figures they wished they had learned about in school, from the past to the present.
Anne Lister was a prolific diarist in the 19th century. (Public Domain)
Anne Lister, English landowner and diarist
Rita Leci, 21, said she learned about Anne Lister by watching the historical BBC drama Gentleman Jack. Lister is often heralded as the “first modern lesbian” as she took charge of her family’s estate and lived openly as a lesbian with her partner.
“I’ve always found her story really inspirational as she chose to go against society’s expectations by becoming a businesswoman and by choosing to be happy with someone she loves in a time when this was seriously frowned upon,” Levis said.
She explained Lister’s story “makes me realise that we are really lucky in a lot of ways, as women nowadays in the UK, to be able to pursue whatever career we like and to love and live with whomever we choose”.
American Pop artist Andy Warhol (1928 – 1987) sits in front of several paintings in his ‘Endangered Species’ at his studio, the Factory, in Union Square, New York, New York, 12 April 1983. (Photo by Brownie Harris/Corbis via Getty Images)
Andy Warhol, American artist, film director and producer
Ramses, 25, said it took “me lots of additional reading” to discover Andy Warhol’s sexuality, despite the artist being mentioned during his modern art studies. Warhol was one of the first American artists to be gay, and his “Factory” – his studio – was a safe space for LGBT+ people, including transwomen.
“Learning about him in school would have shown me you could be LGBT+ and still be successful and famous, even in a period when discrimination was common and violent,” Ramses said. “His early drawings, movies, photographs and the community he created are a testament to the gay rights movement and an incredible contribution to LGBT+ history worldwide.”
As a trans gay man, Ramses shared that the way Warhol shaped the LGBT+ community “inspired me to get in touch with my own, creating a safe space for young LGBT+ people”.SPONSORED CONTENT
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Alan Turing was a gay man, a scientist and a war hero. (Getty)
Alan Turing, English mathematician, computer scientist and logician
Both Roan Maclean, 23, and Daniel Mayor, 22, wished they had learned more about mathematician and World War II historical figure Alan Turing. Turing was a key member of the Allied forces cracking the Enigma Code, and he has been credited as being the father of modern computing.
“To be taught about LGBT+ history, especially ones that are at the top of their field and doing groundbreaking at the time work would have been amazing,” Mclean said. “It would have shown younger me that anything is possible.”
Mayor said he had learned about Turing’s contributions to modern computing, but nothing was said about him being gay or the way he was persecuted because of his sexuality. Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts, and he died by suicide in 1954.
Mayor said it would have been “very powerful” if he knew that an LGBT+ person like Turing had such an “amazing impact on the world”.
Jack Bee Garland, author, journalist and nurse
Like many people, Emma Fay, director of education at Just Like Us, admitted to having not realised that “trans people had existed throughout history”. Fay said it was a “real awakening” to “discover the people out there who are bringing trans history to light and busting the often-repeated myth that we don’t know anything about it”.
“In particular, I wish I’d known about Jack Bee Garland, who I learned about for the first time recently while reading CN Lester’s book Trans Like Me,” Fay said. “That book has had a huge influence on how I understand gender and introduced me to loads of interesting trans people throughout time.”
Jack Bee Garland was born in San Francisco in 1869 and lived as a male in the city’s Tenderloin District. Garland adopted the male identity of Beebe Beam and accompanied the US Army to the Philippines in 1899 to participate in the Philippine War. When Garland became sick and was “found out”, his fellow soldiers were incredible allies, chipping in money to help him, helping him escape and even breaking him out of prison.
“It’s such an amazing piece of history that I wish I’d learned about at school,” Fay said.
Marsha P Johnson (pictured) and Sylvia Rivera’s STAR House inspired the name of a new LGBT+ refuge centre. (Netflix)
Marsha P Johnson, American queer liberation activist
Jemima Churchhouse, 23, said she would have liked to have learned about Marsha P Johnson at school. Johnson was an outspoken, revolutionary Black trans woman who co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), an organisation that provided housing to homeless LGBT+ youth and sex workers in New York in the 1970s.
Johnson was a popular figure in New York City’s gay art scene, even modelling for Andy Warhol, and she was one of the prominent figures in the Stonewall uprising of 1969. As trans rights are hotly debated in the UK and worldwide, Churchhouse said it was essential “that we remember that trans people such as Marsha have always fought alongside LGB+ people for our rights”.
“I wish I’d been taught that trans women, and especially trans women of colour, have always been at the forefront of the Gay Liberation movement,” Churchhouse said. “I’m so grateful to all of the LGBT+ people who came before me and have helped allow me to live freely and authentically.”
DJ Ritu, radio presenter and activist
Taz Rasul, director of volunteering at Just Like Us, said she would have liked to have learned about DJ Rita as a teenager. She explained: “15-year-old me was fine with my sexuality, but embarrassed about being Asian. Asians weren’t cool or relevant.”
Rasul said learning about a broadcaster and activist like DJ Ritu “might have forced open my view of who Asians are a little earlier in my life”. Ritu is a British Asian lesbian who helped run the UK’s first South Asian lesbian and gay group in the 1980s. Rasul said: “If my school had made LGBT+ people of every colour visible to me, I might have embraced every part of myself with pride.”
Ben Barres (YouTube)
Dr Ben Barres, American neurobiologist
Dr Ben Barres was a neurobiologist at Standford University, and he became the first openly transgender scientist in the National Academy of Scientists in 2013. As a trans man, Krystof, 22, said he found “comfort and confidence” in Dr Barres story, “knowing that he has not only survived and thrived”.
Dr Barres transitioned in 1997, in the middle of his career, and he was appointed the chair of neurobiology at Stanford’s school of medicine. Krystof said Dr Barre’s story and career made the “idea of coming out” less scary because “I knew there was someone like me before”.
“It is important to see representation and for schools to teach about LGBT+ figures in all fields,” Krystof said.
Audre Lorde, writer feminist, poet and civil-rights activist, during her 1983 residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. (Robert Alexander/Getty)
Audre Lorde, American writer, feminist and civil rights activist
Dominic Arnall, chief executive of Just Like Us, said he had first read Audre Lorde‘s collection of essays Sister Outsider while he was working on a project on supporting LGBT+ rights activists in Russia. He said he became “completely enamoured by her writing style”.
“She wrote both with a profound wisdom and an innate understanding of the human condition and the systems that we operate in,” Arnall said. “Lorde had an ability to see a particular situation from many angles at the same time, drawing you to question what you already knew, including the systems by which you knew it.”
The self-described “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior poet” is best known for writings reflecting her hatred of racial and sexual prejudice. Lorde dedicated her life and creative works to confronting and addressing social injustices including racism, homophobia, sexism, classism and capitalism.
Arnall said he’s sent copies of Sister Outsiders to colleagues, friends and even his mother. He added: “It was a permanent fixture in my bag, in one instance finishing it only to start back at the beginning again, needing to ensure some detail had not escaped my memory.”
School Diversity Week is the annual celebration of LGBT+ inclusion in education run by charity Just Like Us. Schools and colleges in the UK can sign up now to take part ahead of 21 – 25 June – last year schools representing 1.9 million young people took part. Just Like Us also runs school talks and provides free home learning resources for parents.
