Famous & Historical Figures in the LGBTQ+ Community (Living Beyond a Label!)
This thread is a space where we will highlight and spotlight some of those who have gone before, those who have let themselves be seen and known, and their contributions to the community and progress for LGBTQ+ rights.
Let us know people you want to add, or better yet share a bit about them yourself?
[image consists of a book with rainbows and people flowing outward reading “LGBTQ+ History”]
Part of 30 Days of Pride - Living Beyond a Label!
Highlighted Figures:
Harvey Milk
Harvey Milk was an American politician who worked to fight for change from within the government. While not the first elected official, he was one of the first, and was a very prominent figure in the gay liberation movement.
Prior to his assassination, Harvey Milk helped to protect LGBTQ+ equality at a time when there were efforts to prevent gay people from being teachers in the California public school system. But his big personality and the circumstances of his death have afforded him a special place of recognition in the LGBTQ+ Community and beyond.
[image of Harvey Milk]
Gilbert Baker!
He created the first version of the flag in 1978 for the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade, at the request of Harvey Milk.
Alfred Kinsey
Alfred Kinsey was a bisexual American sexologist, biologist, and professor of entomology and zoology. Perhaps best known for his work creating the Kinsey Scale which introduced the idea of a fluid spectrum of sexuality rather than stricter categories of homosexual and heterosexual. In 1947 he even founded the institute for sex research at Indiana University.
[image of Alfred Kinsey]
Anne Lister
Anne Lister, often referred to as the “first modern lesbian”, was a wealthy English noblewoman in the early 1800’s who was open and unashamed of her lesbianism. She is known for having essentially lived as a man including in effect “marrying” another woman.
In the 1980’s her renown grew after a historian published her diaries. Though often in code or other languages, these included rather detailed accounts of her personal experiences. Overall it was likely in large part her wealth that enabled Anne Lister the freedom to be herself.
Anne Lister would likely fit in with the lesbian community even today. She found ways to balance being herself while maintaining enough doubts for secrecy. Even finding ways to test the waters to see who may be safe, for example she would often mention books which touched upon lesbianism or male homosexuality as a way to gauge the reaction of a potential interest. So while approximately 200 years have passed, her story may sound like one told today.
[image of a portrait of Anne Lister]
Sources:
https://www.bustle.com/life/queer-women-famous-lesbians-in-history
https://rictornorton.co.uk/lister.htm
Lucy Hicks Anderson
Born in 1886, Lucy Hicks Anderson, while having been assigned male at birth, identified as female from her earliest childhood, insisting on being referred to as “Lucy” rather than her given name. When her mother took her to a doctor out of concern for this, the doctor, perhaps surprisingly, suggested that her mother simply raise her as a girl, and while today we would simply call her transgender, the term was not in use during her life.
Lucy married her first husband, Clarence Hicks in 1920, they moved to California. A socialite and chef, she even owned a brothel and sold illegal liquor during Prohibition, what’s more when she was arrested for owning a brothel she was bailed out by one of the town’s leading bankers. In 1929, she divorced Hicks and did not remarry again until 1944 when she married Reuben Anderson.
For the first 59 years of her life no one questioned that Lucy was biologically female, but her secret came out in 1945 when she was arrested along with all the women in her brothel. This time she was prosecuted for perjury given she had signed she was a woman on her marriage license application, and when the jury found her guilty and her marriage declared invalid, the judge declined to send her to prison. During her trial she was quoted as saying “I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman. I have lived, dressed, acted just what I am, a woman.”
A year later in 1946 federal authorities charged her and Reuben Anderson with fraud as she had received allotment cheques as his wife. Both were sentenced to 10 years in men’s prison where she was forced to wear men’s clothes. Upon their release in 1950 she and Reuben Anderson moved to Los Angeles where she lived until her death in 1954.
[image of Lucy Hicks Anderson]
Sources: https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/anderson-lucy-hicks-1886-1954/
https://historycollection.com/16-remarkable-historical-figures-who-were-transgender/
this thread is sooooo good
