BONUS 0.15. Malinda Lo and Queer YA Historical Fiction

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Another interview episode for you all in the feed today, this time Leigh sat down with author Malinda Lo about her writing, her interest and research into queer history, and the trajectory of queer literature since her first published book in 2009.

Her award-winning novel Last Night at the Telegraph Club is a queer historical fiction coming-of-age story set in 1954 San Francisco, following Chinese-American teenager Lily Hu as she discovers her queer identity, falls in love with classmate Kath Miller, and sneaks out to the Telegraph Club, a lesbian bar humming with life and new experiences.

We dive into the research and real-life queer San Francisco scene Lo explored to create the world of Last Night at the Telegraph Club, as well as her newest book, A Scatter of Light, a companion novel set against backdrop of the first major Supreme Court decisions legalizing gay marriage.

"That book. It was about two women, and they fell in love with each other." And then Lily asked the question that had taken root in her, that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun: "Have you ever heard of such a thing?" 

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. 

America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father - despite his hard-won citizenship - Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day. 

Last Night at the Telegraph Club author Malinda Lo returns to the Bay Area with another masterful queer coming-of-age story, this time set against the backdrop of the first major Supreme Court decisions legalizing gay marriage.

Aria Tang West was looking forward to a summer on Martha’s Vineyard with her best friends—one last round of sand and sun before college. But after a graduation party goes wrong, Aria’s parents exile her to California to stay with her grandmother, artist Joan West. Aria expects boredom, but what she finds is Steph Nichols, her grandmother’s gardener. Soon, Aria is second-guessing who she is and what she wants to be, and a summer that once seemed lost becomes unforgettable—for Aria, her family, and the working-class queer community Steph introduces her to. It’s the kind of summer that changes a life forever.

And almost sixty years after the end of Last Night at the Telegraph Club, A Scatter of Light also offers a glimpse into Lily and Kath’s lives since 1955.

 

Photo credit: Sharona Jacobs

Malinda Lo is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels, including most recently A Scatter of Light. Her novel Last Night at the Telegraph Club won the National Book Award, the Stonewall Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, a Michael L. Printz Honor, and was an LA Times Book Prize finalist. Her books have received 15 starred reviews and have been finalists for multiple awards, including the Andre Norton Award and the Lambda Literary Award. She has been honored by the Carnegie Corporation as a Great Immigrant. Malinda’s short fiction and nonfiction has been published by The New York Times, NPR, Autostraddle, The Horn Book, and multiple anthologies. She lives in Massachusetts with her wife and their dog.

Notes from the Telegraph Club

Malinda also has some other queer history and current events articles on her blog, one of which we’ve even used as a source in a previous episode. We recommend you check these out:

Where To Find Malinda Lo Online:

Until next time, stay queer and stay curious!

BONUS 0.14. A Pod Meets BROS Love Story: Making Queer (Romcom) History!

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While Leigh is working on putting together the next regular History is Gay episode for you, we've got a special treat in the form of a minisode, all about the new film BROS, making history as the first romantic comedy from a major film studio about two gay men and featuring an all LGBTQ+ principal cast! It's uproariously funny, filled with queer history tidbits, and we worked on it!

History is Gay did some research consulting for the film back in 2021 as they were building out their set design of The LGBTQIA+ Museum, which serves as backdrop for some of the film, and Leigh got a chance to sit down with three of the cast members who play board members of the museum— Dot-Marie Jones, Academy Award winner Jim Rash, and Eve Lindley— to talk about their roles, their own queer history knowledge, and what it meant to them to be part of this project!

BROS is out in theaters now as of September 30, 2022 -- go support the film, and keep your eyes peeled for a fun History is Gay easter egg in the film! Tweet us your thoughts!




From left: Ts Madison, Billy Eichner, Miss Lawrence, Eve Lindley, Jim Rash and Dot-Marie Jones as board members of the LGBTQIA+ museum in "Bros." Museum scenes were filmed at the Newark Museum of Art. Nicole Rivelli | Universal Pictures

 

Dot-Marie Jones has received three consecutive Emmy® Award nominations (2011, 2012, 2013) for her role as football coach Shannon Beiste on FOX’s megahit television show Glee (Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series, Season 3). With an expansive list of diverse film and television credits, Jones is known for her poignant roles in both drama and comedy. In 2017, Dot performed in her first theatre production of Our Town (Deaf West Company, The Pasadena Playhouse). She portrays LGBTQIA+ Museum board member Cherry in BROS.

Jim Rash is an actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He is widely known for his role as Dean Craig Pelton on the NBC sitcom Community (2009–2015), for which he was nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2012. In that same year, he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and received a Golden Globe nomination as one of the writers of The Descendants. He portrays LGBTQIA+ Museum board member Robert in BROS.

Eve Lindley is an actress and model, best known for her roles in the television series Dispatches from Elsewhere and the film All We Had. In 2016, she was named in Out magazine's OUT100. As a model she has worked with Barneys New York. She portrays LGBTQIA+ Museum board member Tamara in BROS.

 

Learn more about BROS and our guests for this episode:

Until next time, stay queer and stay curious!

BONUS 0.13. Before We Were Trans

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For this bonus episode, Leigh sat down with Dr. Kit Heyam about their new book, Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender. We talked about gender diversity throughout the world, the importance of getting into “messy” or not easily-categorized gender variance in queer history, and more!


”Today’s narratives about trans people tend to feature individuals with stable gender identities that fit neatly into the categories of male or female. Those stories, while important, fail to account for the complex realities of many trans people’s lives.

Before We Were Trans illuminates the stories of people across the globe, from antiquity to the present, whose experiences of gender have defied binary categories. Blending historical analysis with sharp cultural criticism, trans historian and activist Kit Heyam offers a new, radically inclusive trans history, chronicling expressions of trans experience that are often overlooked, like gender-nonconforming fashion and wartime stage performance. Before We Were Trans transports us from Renaissance Venice to seventeenth-century Angola, from Edo Japan to early America, and looks to the past to uncover new horizons for possible trans futures.”


The book is out in North America TODAY, September 13, 2022, so go check it out!


Dr Kit Heyam (they/them or he/him) is a university lecturer, a queer history activist, and a trans awareness trainer who has worked with organizations across the United Kingdom. They have written for academic publications as well as articles for NOTCHES and The Public Medievalist. They live in Leeds, UK, with their partner Alex.

Where To Find Kit Online:

Until next time, stay queer and stay curious!

43. Rainbow Rising: Homo-Feels about Homophiles, Part 2

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For this episode, Leigh is joined again by guest host Tyler Albertario, as we continue our discussion of the history of the Homophile movement. In the second and final part of this discussion, Leigh and Tyler cover the rise of East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO), its restructuring as the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO), and the ultimate downfall of NACHO and most of its member organizations in the wake of the Stonewall Rebellion.

Tyler Albertario is an amateur LGBTQ+ historian specializing in the history of organizations integral to the struggle for queer liberation and equality. Since 2019, he has worked as a consultant on projects for a wide range of LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations, educational nonprofits, and content creators.

Locate Tyler upon the internet:

ECHO

On January 26, 1963, representatives of the Daughters of Bilitis, the Mattachine Society of Washington, the Mattachine Society of New York, and Philadelphia’s Janus Society met in Philadelphia to discuss reorganizing the growing Homophile movement into a broader organization to promote better communication and coordination between various Homophile groups. The organization that was established as a result of this meeting was the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO), which held its first official conference at the Drake Hotel in Philadelphia over Labor Day weekend.

A brochure for ECHO’s inaugural conference, held at the Drake Hotel in Philadelphia from August 31-September 1, 1963

Although not much came of this first conference, the second conference, held in Washington, D.C. in October of 1964 proved much more dramatic, and the participating organizations set an aggressive agenda of direct action going forward, which manifested in the form of picketing and public protest.

A brochure for ECHO’s 2nd annual conference, held in Washington, D.C. from October 10-11, 1964

In addition to a series of pickets at the White House and other federal buildings throughout 1965, ECHO also sponsored the “Annual Reminder” picket, a demonstration held every July 4th outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia. 

Picketers at the 1966 Annual Reminder demonstration in Philadelphia.

By the end of 1965, with ECHO’s expansion and the emergence of other major Homophile organizations in the Midwest and on the West Coast, it became apparent that the structure of the movement needed to move beyond its base in the Northeast.

Delegates posing for a picture at ECHO’s 3rd annual conference, held in New York City from September 24-26, 1965

NACHO

Following ECHO’s 1965 conference, the decision was made to restructure the group into a national organization, in order to include newer and emerging Homophile groups in the Midwest and West Coast. At a planning conference held in Kansas City in February 1966, the decision was made to restructure ECHO into the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations, or NACHO.

Kansas City newspaper headline covering the February 1966 conference to restructure ECHO

NACHO continued many of ECHO’s activities and operations, while providing a substantive voice for Homophile organizations outside of the Northeast and providing a platform to coordinate national actions, such as the Armed Forces Day picket of May 21, 1966, the first multi-city gay rights picket.

Armed Forces Day picketers in San Francisco (May 21, 1966)

Despite this, NACHO’s cumbersome process for certifying and credentialing new organizations was a constant source of agitation, sometimes taking upwards of six months. Additionally, much of the decision-making influence within NACHO was soon concentrated into the hands of the regional sub-body of Northeast NACHO member organizations—the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations, or ERCHO—much to the anger of groups from the Midwest and West Coast.

Moreover, with the rise of the student movement against the Vietnam War, more radical politics began to infiltrate the ranks of NACHO, in particular with the rise of the Student Homophile League (SHL), lead by Columbia University student Stephen Donaldson.

Stephen Donaldson (1947-1996)

At the 1968 NACHO conference in Chicago—mere days before the police riot outside the Democratic National Convention there—a contingent lead by Donaldson and other SHL members pushed through a declaration of a “Homosexual Bill of Rights,” as well as a resolution approving of the slogan “Gay is Good,” a play on the radical Black Liberation slogan “Black is Beautiful.”

Change was clearly afoot.

The Downfall of the Homophile Movement

Even before the Stonewall Rebellion, NACHO’s organizing structure had already started to come under internal pressures from more radical youth-led organizations, who wanted to adopt more confrontational protest tactics, as well as escalating East-West tensions, the latter of which lead to the August 1969 NACHO conference being “practically boycotted” by West Coast organizations.

With the firestorm of action around the Stonewall Rebellion, NACHO leaders’ reluctance to let go of tactics that had served them to this point and give way to the new energy that was encapsulating the movement, caused the core tenets of the homophile movement and its organizing structure to somewhat crumble— homophile organizations were missing from the first Stonewall anniversary march, which had been proposed as a replacement for the Annual Reminder picket, and would evolve into New York Pride.

Regardless of how the homophile movement ended, we still need and want to express gratitude and awe at how instrumental and integral this work was in opening the door to what would become the gay liberation era of the 1970s.

If you want to learn more, check out our full list of sources and further reading below!

Online Articles & Resources:

Books and Print Articles:

  • Joan Fleischmann Collection; John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives at the William Way LGBT Community Center, Philadelphia

  • "Convention Plans Axed by NACHO." The Advocate Sep 15 1971: 11. ProQuest. Web. 5 Aug. 2022

  • Cole, Rob. "Old, New Ideas Tangle at NACHO Convention." The Advocate Sep 30 1970: 1,2, 6-7, 12, 23. ProQuest. Web. 5 Aug. 2022 .

  • The Deviant’s War by Eric Cervini

  • City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves by Marc Stein

  • Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present by Neil Miller

  • Queer America: A People’s GLBT History of the United States by Vicki L. Eaklor

  • Gay American History: Lesbians & Gay Men in the U.S.A. by Jonathan Ned Katz

Until next time, stay queer and stay curious!

42. Rainbow Rising: Homo-Feels about Homophiles, Part 1

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We return with another episode in your podfeeds today, this time from our long-since visited mini-series, Rainbow Rising! Leigh is joined by guest host Tyler Albertario to talk about pre-Stonewall gay rights and the rise, heydey, and subsequent fall of the Homophile movement and how the fight for gay civil rights evolved into the struggle for queer liberation. In this first episode of a two-parter, Leigh and Tyler discuss the birth of the homophile movement and some of the main players – gay civil rights organizations in 1950s-1960s America who dared to gather together amid communism moral panic, FBI raids, and spurious homomedicalist points of view about queer identity. Scandalous tales found within, including secret identities and anonymous cells, the gaslighting J. Edgar Hoover himself, fake “ancient Greek” lesbian poetry, and more!

Next time, we’ll come back in Part 2 to discuss how all these groups came together at regional and national conferences to organize, including all the juicy drama and disagreements, and the decline of homophile-style organizing post-Stonewall.

Tyler Albertario is an amateur LGBTQ+ historian specializing in the history of organizations integral to the struggle for queer liberation and equality. Since 2019, he has worked as a consultant on projects for a wide range of LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations, educational nonprofits, and content creators.

Locate Tyler upon the internet:

Newspaper headline and article showcasing the atmosphere of panic and fear around the Lavender Scare, connecting queer people to communism and declaring them a national security risk.

Mattachine

Founded initially as the Mattachine Foundation by Harry Hay in 1950, Mattachine was instrumental in kicking off the homophile movement and offering up opportunities for gay men to meet, socialize, and organize.

The Mattachine founders at a 1951 Christmas party (left to right): Paul Bernard, Chuck Rowland, Stan Witt, Rudi Gernreich, Harry Hay, and Dale Jennings

Mattachine took its name from Renaissance French masque groups called sociétés mattachines, who would wear masks and perform public rituals and dances during the Feast of Fools mocking the rulers.

“Feast of Fools” engraving by Pieter Van der Heyden from 1559

May 1959 issue of Mattachine Review

Dr. Evelyn Hooker’s “The adjustment of the male overt homosexual” study was instrumental in starting to dismantle the homo-medicalist theories that gayness was a psychological sickness. At a time when homosexuality was in the DSM as a “sexual deviation” under the umbrella of “sociopathic personality disturbance” disorders, her pioneering study of 30 gay men who were not incarcerated, institutionalized, or under any sort of treatment, was groundbreaking in dispelling myths about the pathology of queer people.


ONE, Inc.

Evolving from the communist-leader purge of the Mattachine Foundation, ONE, Inc. was founded in 1952 in Los Angeles, and the founders featured some of the Fifth Order members of the original Mattachine Foundation, including Harry Hay, Chuck Rowland, and Ken Jennings, but also other pre-homophile activists like W. Dorr Legg and Merton Bird of the Knights of the Clock organization, Tony Reyes, Martin Block, Don Slater, and Jim Kepner.

October 1954 issue of ONE Magazine that was held by the post-office, leading to ONE v Olsen

Jim Kepner and W. Dorr Legg standing outside the ONE, Inc. office, the first public, physical location for a gay organization in the U.S.

Daughters of Bilitis

Early homophile organizing wasn’t just for gay men, though! The Daughters of Bilitis was founded as the first lesbian organization in the U.S., founded by four lesbian couples: Rose Bamberger & Rosemarie Sliepen, Noni Frey and Marcia Foster, a Chicana woman named Mary, and Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin.

Members of the Daughters of Bilitis around 1956, Del Martin on the far left, Phyllis Lyon on the far right

Drawing on the same strategy as Mattachine of using an obscure reference for the title of their organization to avoid scrutiny by authorities, DOB was named so after this 1894 book of poems by Pierre Louÿs, in which he claimed he had translated several Sapphic-style poem fragments written by a contemporary of Sappho, found in a tomb in Cyprus. It’s all BS, but it’s hilarious and wonderful.

Cover image of Pierre Louy’s Songs of Bilitis in the original french

Daughters of Bilitis membership card

Statement of purpose and guiding principles of Daughters of Bilitis, printed inside The Ladder.

First issue of Daughters of Bilitis’ publication, The Ladder, in 1956 — the first nationally-distributed lesbian magazine in the U.S.

October 1957 issue of The Ladder, alluding to the “masked” imagery commonly used among homophile organizations.

Barbara Gittings, president of the New York chapter of Daughters of Bilitis, and editor of The Ladder. She would team up with Frank Kameny of the Mattachine Society of Washington and begin picketing for gay rights — which we’ll discuss in the next episode.

If you want to learn more, check out our full list of sources and further reading below!

Online Articles & Resources:

Books and Print Articles:

  • Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis by Marcia Gallo

  • The Deviant’s War by Eric Cervini

  • Domenico Rizzo, “Public Spheres and Gay Politics since the Second World War” in Gay Life and Culture: A World History, ed. Robert Aldrich

  • Queer America: A People’s GLBT History of the United States by Vicki L. Eaklor

  • Amanda H. Littauer, "Sexual Minorities at the Apex of Heteronormativity (1940s-1965) in The Routledge History of Queer America, ed. Don Romesburg

  • Gay American History: Lesbians & Gay Men in the U.S.A. by Jonathan Ned Katz

  • “Behind the Mask of Respectability: Reconsidering the Mattachine Society and Male Homophile Practice, 1950s and 1960s” by Martin Meeker; Journal of the History of Sexuality, Jan. 2001, Vol. 10, No 1.

Until next time, stay queer and stay curious!

BONUS 0.12. Florine Stettheimer's Gay Salon (An Interview with Barbara Bloemink)

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For this bonus episode, we're bringing you an interview with esteemed art historian, art director, and curator Barbara Bloemink about her recently published comprehensive biography of turn-of-the-century Modernist painter Florine Stettheimer.


Stettheimer, a cousin of Natalie Clifford Barney's, painted the vibrant world of New York between the two world wars and welcomed gay, lesbian, and bisexual friends and family into her Manhattan salon at a time when it was dangerous and illegal to be out in New York. Listen on to hear Bloemink talk about Stettheimer's painting style, her relationships with the queer art elite of New York, and the ways the contemporary art world has shunned away from diving deeply into subversive and feminist painters.

Alongside her paintings of vibrant, chaotic scenes of New York life and her provocative nude self-portraits, she also painted intimate portraits of her gay and lesbian friends that frequented her salon and were given the space to be open about their sexuality. Here are a few that are featured in the book and that we mention in the conversation:

Carl Van Vechten, 1922 (Oil on Canvas), by Florine Stettheimer. Carl Van Vechten was a gay writer in the Harlem Renaissance— note the purple socks and red tie, as coded notes to queerness.

Portrait of Virgil Thomson, 1930 (Oil, and possibly ink, on canvas), by Florine Stettheimer. Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic, who composed several ballets, operas, and film scores.

Henry McBride, Art Critic, 1922 (Oil on Canvas), by Florine Stettheimer. Henry McBride (July 25, 1867 – March 31, 1962) was a gay American art critic who wrote for the New York Sun in the 1920s

Barbara Bloemink is an expert on Florine Stettheimer’s work. She has written extensively on Stettheimer and co-curated the artist’s 1995 Whitney Museum Retrospective. Formerly the director and chief curator of five art museums, including the Smithsonian’s National Design Museum and the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum, Bloemink has curated over seventy exhibitions, published extensively, and lectured and taught internationally on art and design.



Where To Find Barbara online:

  • Follow her on Facebook, where she posts about her acting and writings about the art world!

Until next time, stay queer and stay curious!

41. Send in the Clowns: Anita Bryant, John Briggs, & the Anti-Gay Christian Right

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For this episode, Leigh is joined once again by guest host Aubree Calvin, for a crossover episode with Southern Queeries talking about the rise of the anti-gay Christian right movement and homophobic legislation that swept the United States in the 1970s with Anita Bryant, Save Our Children, and the Briggs Initiative, whose proponents used “parental rights” language to justify their homophobia, in an eerily similar manner as we are seeing today with anti-LGBTQ and specifically anti-trans legislation and arguments. Listen to this episode to hear the history behind all this, as well as some bits of levity we made sure to put in (listen to Anita Bryant get hit with a pie and learn about the glorious protest tactic of glitterbombing), and hear how the LGBTQ community of yesteryear rose up to fight these counter-movements, and what we can learn from them in today’s fight. 


Then, when you’re finished with this episode, head over to Southern Queeries for the second part of our conversation, talking in depth about the current rash of anti-LGBTQ legislation in the country, our reactions and feelings, and how it’s the same conversation and language as back in 1977 and 1978.

Aubree, or Bree to her friends and enemies alike, is a black, queer trans woman on the edge of turning 40. A southerner for most of her life, Aubree has family roots across the south. She loves studying politics, history, and learning about all aspects of queer culture. Aubree started her podcast, Southern Queeries, because she’s tired of society ignoring the south's diverse communities. Professionally, Aubree is a community college government professor and part time writer. When not talking, teaching, or writing, Aubree’s spending her free time with her wonderful wife and daughter.

Dade County, FL, Anita Bryant, and Save Our Children

In 1977, Dade County, Florida, passed a human-rights ordinance that expanded non-discrimination coverage to sexual orientation, something that was being done throughout the country in several other municipalities as the gay rights movement has begun to make some progress post-Stonewall.

However, the backlash was severe, and was led primarily by Anita Bryant, singer, former Miss America runner-up and brand ambassador for the Florida Citrus Commission, turned anti-gay activist.

Together with her husband, Anita Bryant started the anti-gay organization Save Our Children (From Homosexuality), Inc., and ran a 6 month crusade to repeal the ordinance, ultimately forcing it back onto the ballot once they had collected several thousand signatures, and the ordinance was repealed in the referendum election later that year.

Amid this campaign, lies about queer people recruiting,, being child molesters, and more, were at the center of their campaign tactics.

Following the results in Dade County, several other states rolled back their own protections for queer people, and Anita Bryant traveled the country supporting these campaigns, culminating in Proposition 6, a statewide attempt to repeal a human-rights ordinance in California, spearheaded with Orange County senator John Briggs who had campaigned with Anita Bryant.

LGBTQ Response

The LGBTQ community in Dade County and all across the U.S. fought hard, though, and mobilized throughout the country and galvanized a queer rights movement that had somewhat grown complacent in the years since Stonewall— with Anita Bryant, there was a huge enemy, and one that could be utilized to their advantage.

The tactics of LGBTQ rights organizing drastically changed with the rise of these counter-movements, and a lot of it was focused on education, as well as direct responses and attacks on Anita Bryant and Save Our Children.

And in the case of CA, the grassroots organizing of teachers’ unions, intersectional labor and civil-rights coalitions, Harvey Milk and Sally Gearhart, and more, was enough to defeat Prop 6, the first in this string of legislation that was overturned— marking a turning point and changes in organizing tactics for the queer community and bringing LGBTQ rights to a national level of attention.

Gay bars around florida and the whole country started a boycott of florida orange juice, and refused to serve cocktails made with such, including screwdrivers. they instead began to offer “anita bryant” cocktails, made with vodka and apple juice.

Pins, shirts, and more were made that said “anita bryant sucks”, “fuck anita bryant, etc.

A Dartboard emblazoned with the face of anita bryant. Art and Artifacts Collection, Courtesy of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society

Spectators at the 1977 San Francisco Gay Day Parade, wearing shirts with matching slogan "Stop V.D., FUCK ORANGES”, in reference to anita bryant’s connection with the florida citrus commission. Marie Ueda Collection, COurtesy of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society

Women marching behind a banner saying "Lesbian School Workers," while others carry signs including many which say "NO! on the Briggs Initiative.", Crawford Wayne Barton collection (1993-11), Courtesy of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society

1977 San Francisco Gay Day Parade; a contingent holding signs with pictures of (left to right) Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Anita Bryant, burning crosses, and Idi Amin Dada. Marie Ueda Collection, COurtesy of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society

Anita Bryant’s Pie to the Face

October 14, 1977 – Bryant & her husband were in Des Moines, Iowa for a televised press conference, when gay activist Thom Higgins walked up mid-speech and threw a pie straight in her face. It’s the best thing we’ve ever seen.

We’ll leave you with mention from our Pop-Culture Tie Ins segment anti-Anita Bryant sketch from the Carol Burnett Show:


And also this news segment from 1990, reflecting on the legacy of Anita Bryant, Save Our Children, and the progress of the LGBTQ rights movement:




If you want to learn more, check out our full list of sources and further reading below!

Online Articles & Resources:

Books and Print Articles:

  • “Working Anita Bryant: The Impact of Christian Anti-Gay Activism on Lesbian and Gay Movement Claims” by Tina Fetner, Social Problems, Vol. 48, No 3 (August 2001)

  • "The Civil Rights of Parents": Race and Conservative Politics in Anita Bryant's Campaign against Gay Rights in 1970s Florida”, Gillian Frank, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 22, No. 1 (January 2013)

  • Out For Good, by Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney

Primary Source News Articles

  • “Gay Rights Dispute Stops Bryant’s Show”, Jay Clarke, Washington Post, February 25, 1977

  • “Anita Bryant Visit Here Sparks Demonstration”, Phil McCombs and John Feinstein, Washington Post, January 23, 1978

  • “Bryant: Still ‘Effective?’, Washington Post, June 20, 1977

  • “Dade Approves Ordinance Banning Bias against Gays”, Miami Herald, 19 January 1977

  • “Miami Gay Bill Passes as Celebrities Lead Foes”, Gay Community News, 29 January 1977

  • “Gay Law Foes to Plan Vote Drive”, Miami Herald, 26 January 1977

  • “Miami’s Gays Gear Up for Referendum Battle”, Gay Community News, 12 February 1977

  • “Fight Gay Rights,” Miami News, 29 April 1977

  • “Singer Anita Bryant Coming”, Baptist Beacon 25, no. 4 (1977)

  • “The Gay Issue: Whose Rights Prevail?”, Miami Herald, 4 April 1977

  • “Grim Moms March against Gay Law”, Miami Herald, 19 February 1977

  • “Gay-Law Foes Claim 59,918 Back Views”, Miami Herald, 2 March 1977

  • “Dade Man Is Linked to Scout Sex Inquiry”, Miami Herald, 18 May 1977

  • “Taking a Stand on Gay Rights No Easy Task”, Miami Herald, 29 March 1977

  • DCCHR, “Release to All Gay Media Publications”, 3 June 1977

  • Advertisements of Anita Bryant gag gifts– Advocate, 10 August 1977

  • “June, Polls Show Human Rights Election a Virtual Tie – Gay Turnout Crucial,” Alive, 12 June 1977

  • “Dade County, Fla., Repeals Rights Ordinance by 7-to-3 Margin,” Washington Star, 8 June 1977

  • “Dade Gay-Rights Loses, Anita Dances, Calls Result Win ‘for God,’” Miami Herald, 8 June 1977

  • “Florida’s Vote: Hopeful Symptom,” Reno Evening Gazette, 15 June 1977

  • “Wichita Could be Next,” Gay Community News, 31 December 1977

  • “Miami Post Mortem–Lessons from Losing, Four Perspectives of Dade County,” Advocate, 24 August 1977

  • “Gays Lose Battle – Set Out to Win the War,” Alive!, July 1977

Until next time, stay queer and stay curious!

40. Real-Life Xenas: Warrior Women Across the World

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Happy 2022 and welcome to another episode of History is Gay! This time, we’re picking up where we left off with Meghan Rose and S.C. Lucier in our discussion of Amazons and real-life warrior women in history! It’s not just the Greco-Roman world that marveled at fierce, strong female fighters, but all over the world! This episode, we’re visiting Benin, Africa to learn about the real-life dora milaje of Black Panther fame, the gender-bending Dahomey Amazons; badass female samurai defending their homesteads in Japan, and Viking shieldmaidens and mythical Valkyries– who may have been a third gender? Strap-in for a whirlwind worldwide tour of gender transgression and badass real-life Xenas we want to see all the movies about!


But first, let me introduce to your fantabulous guest hosts for this episode, Lucier&Rose!

 

S.C. Lucier

S.C. “Luci” Lucier is an SDC director, writer and librettist. A former member of SCDF Observership Class emerging directors, Lucier is a graduate of Marymount Manhattan College’s Theatre Directing program and recently completed a master’s in Theatre/Museology History at The Graduate Center (NYC). Director: HELD: A Musical Fantasy (Fringe 2016, NYMF 2018). Associate Director: Kerrigan-Lowdermilk’s The Bad Years, the new immersive house party musical. Director: multiple Shakespeare at Hip to Hip Theatre Company, Midsummer 2019. Regular collaborator at Jennifer Jancuska’s (Hamilton) The Bringabout, designed at Joyce Theater for Richard Move’s The Show (Achilles Heels) in which Debbie Harry performed, designed at Lincoln Center’s Clark Studio Theatre, toured on the production team of Martha Graham Dance Company, stage-managed Cape Dance Festival (MA), performed at Baryshnikov Arts Center on roller skates, among others. Lucier captains the championship Gotham Roller Derby team, archives Sally Silver’s choreographic work for NYPL, and is the first staff member of American LGBTQ+ Museum (NYC).

Meghan Rose

Meghan Rose is a composer and musician. She is classically trained in piano, taught herself guitar at 16, joined a ska band in college at University of Wisconsin-Madison and has hopped from band to band and genre to genre ever since. Currently she plays bass in NYC bands Monte and LoveHoney, and in various shows around the city, sometimes even impersonating Courtney Love, Janis Joplin, and Lindsey Buckingham. She has acted as a vocal instructor, bass teacher, and band coach for both the Madison and NYC chapters of Girls Rock Camp. Rose was a music director for the Bartell Theater (Madison) for 6 years, and won awards for best music direction for Xanadu and Bare: A Pop Opera. Written scores include Z-Town: The Zombie Musical (Fringe 2012), an original rock musical called Alice based on Alice in Wonderland (Bartell), Held: A Musical Fantasy (Fringe 2016, NYMF 2018).

You can learn more about S.C. Lucier, Meghan Rose, and Xena: Warrior Musical - The Lost Scroll:

You can purchase and download the entire concept album for Xena: Warrior Musical on Bandcamp!


Amazon-Like Women in Africa: the mino/agojie, also known as the Dahomey Amazons!

This fierce military regiment of women warriors of the Kingdom of Dahomey (present-day Benin), originating in the early 19th century, were truly formidable opponents and carry their own impressive stories and legends passed down to current-day Beninese locals!

Illustration of mino women by Chris Hellier

Group of veteran Amazons at a summit meeting held in Abomey, the capital of Dahomey, in 1908

Seh-Dong-Hong-Beh, a mino leader holding the decapitated head of an enemy, illustrated by one of the missionary visitors who wrote 18th and 19th century accounts, Frederick Forbes, in 1851.

Magazine cover depicting the last king of independent Dahomey, Behanzin, flanked by mino attendants and bodyguards.

The Dahomey Amazons around 1890.

A group of Amazons on their trip to Paris, assumed in the late 1800s.

Unknown mino warrior, photographed near the end of the kingdom.

King Gezo, who expanded the female corps from around 600 women to as many as 6,000

Illustration from one of the missionary accounts, depicting a parade of mino after battle displays, severed heads of their enemies displayed on the tops of the walls.

As mentioned in our Pop-Culture Tie-In, Lupita Nyong’o visited Benin in 2019 for a BBC documentary called Warrior Women, in which she went into the entire history of the Dahomey Amazons! It is available online on BBC4’s website, and if you don’t live there, you can use a VPN to check out the full documentary, it’s absolutely worth it! But we have a wonderful clip here for you:

And here’s another video on the Dahomey Amazons that has some great information:

 

Let’s hop over to Japan and take a look at female samurai warriors, the onna-bugeisha and onna-musha!

The image of the samurai that has been taken hold in history and pop-culture is an extremely masculine one, but there were several female warriors in the bushi throughout Japan’s history that were just as significant as the men, with the specific role as defensive fighters (or if you were an onna-musha, going off to fight and joining the samurai)!

An onna-musha named Ishi-jo wielding a naginata, a curved pole-arm sword made specifically for women which allowed them to fight nimbly and take advantage of distance combat. Illustrated by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 1848.

The first onna-bugeisha, the legendary Empress Jingū, depicted when she set forth in Silla (modern-day Korea. Painted by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, 1880. Credit: Waseda University Theatre Museum

Empress Jingū is also the first woman in Japanese history (legend or otherwise) to be featured on a banknote!

Tomoe Gozen, one of the most well-known and respected onna-musha, and considered Japan’s first general. She decapitated an enemy by wrenching his head against the pommel of her saddle! Painted by Kangetsu Shitomi. Collection of Tokyo National Museum

Another onna-musha and contemporary of Tomoe Gozen, Hangaku Gozen. Painted by Yoshitoshi. Credit: US Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Tomoe Gozen at the Battle of Awazu

And then here we have some pictures of Nakano Takeko, and we couldn’t resist showcasing this quote from one report during the siege of Aizu:

With her tied-back hair, trousers, and steely eyes, [she] radiated an intense 'male spirit' and engaged the enemy troops, killing five or six with her naginata.”

A recreated photo of Nakano Takeko, onna-musha of the Aizu Domain, who fought and died in the Boshin War in 1868. She led a group of female warriors called the joshitai, or Girls’ Army, during a renaissance and essentially last-stand of the onna-bugeisha!

Another image of Nakano Takeko.

A photograph of an unknown onna-musha, often misidentified or attributed to Nakano Takeko. This woman is likely an actress, but she still looks SUPER cool!

Statue of Nakano Takeko at Hōkai-ji shrine in Aizubange, Fukushima. Today, many naginata schools are even named for her.

And finally, were there real life Lagerthas out there in the Norselands? We’ve got some Viking women warrior graves and historical artifacts that say so!

Strong female warriors have shown up for centuries in Norse and Scandinavian Viking sagas, depicting fierce shield maidens and mythical Valkyries who fly on horses and escort fallen men to the halls of Valhalla. And recent discoveries of warrior graves throughout Sweden and other northern European territories are showing that they may have been less myth than originally thought!

An image stone from Sweden shows a female figure bearing drinking horns to a rider on an eight-legged horse (what up, Loki), very well depicting a mythical Valkyrie.

Another picture stone from Stenkyrka Parish (Lillbjärs III), depicting a valkyrie guiding a fallen warrior to Valhalla.

Mythical valkyries Hildr, Þrúðr and Hlökk bearing ale in Valhalla (1895) by Lorenz Frølich

The Norse Sagas and histories, like the Saxo Grammaticus and Gesto Danorum, tell the story of several shieldmaidens like Hervor, depicted here as she retrieves Tyrfing, the magical sword of her dead father, on the island of Angantyr. Painted by Christian Gottliebe Kratzenstein

Silver figure of a woman with a drinking horn, found in Birka, Sweden

Various Viking-age jewelry depicting valkyries!

Figurine found in the village of Hårby, on the island of Funen in Denmark. Thought to be dated around 800 BCE and the Viking age, and this one is unique in that it’s one of the few found that are 3 dimensional! She is thought to depict, obviously, a valkyrie, but other possibilities are a shield maiden or the Norse goddess Freya.

Illustration of the infamous Birka, Sweden viking warrior grave, labeled BJ 581 by Hjalmar Stolpe in 1889. In it, you can see this warrior was buried with not one, but two horses, multiple weapons, and even a gamjng set, indicating that she was an officer! Originally thought to be a male grave, osteological and DNA evidence from 2014 and 2017, respectively, confirmed the skeleton was female!

Weapons found in the BJ 581 Birka, Sweden gravesite.

If you want to learn more about all the various warrior women from this episode, check out our full list of sources and further reading below!

Books and Print Articles:

  • “The Valkyrie’s Gender: Old Norse Shield-Maidens and Valkyries as a Third Gender” by Kathleen M. Self, Feminist Formations, Spring 2014, Vol. 26, No. 1

  • “Ladies with Axes and Spears” by Santa Jansone, Medieval Warfare, 2014, Vol. 4, No. 2, Theme - Queens and Valkyries - Women as warriors (2014, pp. 9-12

  • “The ‘Amazons’ of Dahomey” by Robin Law, Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde, 1993, Bd. 39 (1993), pp. 245-260

Online Articles/Resources:

Until next time, stay queer and stay curious!