6 Historic Queer People Everyone Should Learn About (#91)

If you’re a regular listener, you might remember our Pride Month series we did back in June. During that series we said we need to do more queer episodes throughout the rest of the year too, because Pride isn’t just for Pride Month!

So today, I’m going to tell about 6 great queer people from recent history that everyone should learn about. I want to cover as many people as I can so I won’t go into each person in a ton of detail, but as usual, I’ll include all the notes and references on the website so you can go there if you want to learn more about any of these people.

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs was a civil servant in Germany until he was forced to resign in 1854 on account of his homosexuality. He is regarded by some as the pioneer of the modern gay movement and the first person to publicly “come out.” In fact, Volkmar Sigusch, a leading German scholar in sexual science, described him as “the most decisive and influential pioneer of homosexual emancipation … in world history.”

Ulrichs was a judge in Germany but was forced to resign in 1854 after a colleague discovered he was gay. After he resigned, he became an activist for gay rights. He published 12 volumes of work about sexuality, including what’s believed to be the first theory about homosexuality where argued that it is an ‘inborn condition’ not a learned corruption, which was what was believed at the time.

In August 29, 1867, Ulrichs spoke in Munich at the Congress of Jurists to demand legal equal rights for all sexualities, which firmly established himself as the pioneer of the gay rights movement.

Bayard Rustin

Bayard Rustin was a close friend and advisor to Martin Luther King Jr. and was the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, at which Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his groundbreaking "I Have a Dream" speech.

However, because he was an openly gay man, he didn’t receive wide recognition for his integral role in the civil rights movement. Rustin’s sexuality was used against him and Dr. King by opposing parties, who threatened to spread lies about their relationship. This forced Rustin to work in the shadows to prevent bringing further controversy to both Dr. King and the March on Washington.

Despite efforts even within the civil rights movement itself to overshadow him because he refused to be closeted even in the LGBT-oppressive 1940s and '50s, history was never able to blot out the fact that Bayard Rustin was quite a big deal, and without him the famous speech might not have happened. Rustin still remained a political and gay activist, working to bring the AIDS crisis to the NAACP’s attention.

In 2013 President Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Rustin's longtime partner, Walter Naegle, accepted the medal on his behalf. The campaign to persuade the United States Postal Service to issue a postage stamp honoring Rustin for his work and his achievements continues to make progress.

Michael Dillon

Michael Dillon, or Laurence Michael Dillon, was the first trans man to undergo phalloplasty, (which is the surgical construction of a penis). He also is thought to be the first person to undergo testosterone therapy to begin his transition.

Prior to their transition, Dillon attended St Anne's College, Oxford, and became president of the Oxford University Women's Boat club. After graduating, they took a job at a research laboratory in rural Gloucestershire. It was at this time that Dillon admitted they felt more comfortable in men's clothing, and didn’t truly feel like a woman.

In 1939 Dillon started taking testosterone pills which enabled him to pass as a male. He later had surgery to remove his breasts, and was given a doctor's note enabling him to change his birth certificate. He received a full gender reassignment surgery and meanwhile enrolled under his new name in medical school at Trinity College Dublin, where he again became a distinguished rower, this time for the men's team.

Five years before, Christine Jorgensen had become the number one news story in America for her male-to-female transition. But few people—even top doctors—knew that the human body could go the other way, too. Dillon had been the first person ever to undergo a medical transformation from female to male. He was a worldwide tabloid story waiting to happen, which Dillon didn’t want. The press hounded him, throwing questions at him about his surgery and threatening to tear off his clothes in order to see the evidence of his sex change.

So in the summer of 1958, Dillon fled. He decided to go to a monastery in India. He guessed it would be the kind of place where you could become invisible. Hidden on a mountaintop in the Himalayan foothills, you could lose your identity and start a new life. Dillon found his home here, turned to Buddhism, and was ordained as a monk. There’s so much to his story so I might have to talk more about him separately another time.

Nancy Cárdenas

Playwright and director Nancy Cárdenas is thought to be one of the first Mexican people to openly come out on television. Much of her work revolved around her lesbian identity, writing collections of poetry and plays addressing gay and lesbian themes.

Born in 1934, she grew up in a small town surrounded by fairly progressive views that would inform much of her later life. Though she was expected by many to become a housewife, lawyer, or doctor due to her extensive education, she quickly found her path as a playwright, later also working in acting. She earned a Ph.D. in dramatic arts in Mexico City, studied film and theatre at Yale, and moved to Poland where she studied Polish language and literature. 

She wasn’t only a writer—she was also an activist. Speaking at rallies and handing out flyers she soon became known for her activism as well as her writing.

It was in 1973 when she went on live television at age 39 and came out as a lesbian during a discussion of queer rights. While many were aware of Nancy and her sexuality, her public coming out was a historic moment. Being the most visibly and openly queer person in the country at the time, she was in the perfect position to make her next move: in 1974 she founded the first gay liberation organisation in Mexico.

Over the course of her career, she helped start the struggle against gay prejudice in Mexico and fought for equal rights for everyone, no matter their sexuality. She continued writing and working in activism for the rest of her life until 1994 when she died of breast cancer. Nancy Cárdenas may not one of the most remembered members of the queer community, but she really should be! With every tool and skill she had, she worked for equality not only for herself but for anyone she saw as being discriminated against.

Simon Nkoli

Simon Nkoli was a South African anti-apartheid, gay rights and HIV/AIDS activist. He is recognized as the founder of South Africa’s black gay movement. At 18, he came out to his mother. She sent him to a priest to be “argued” out of it, but after this and further attempts by psychologists and doctors proved unsuccessful, his mother allowed him to move in with his boyfriend.

As an activist in the 1970s, he was arrested in the student uprisings against apartheid. In 1979, he joined the Congress of South African Students and the United Democratic Front (UDF).

In 1983, Nkoli—frustrated that most gay venues were in districts reserved for whites—joined the Gay Association of South Africa, a predominantly white gay organization. After realizing that they would not relocate their social activities outside of whites-only facilities, Nkoli founded the Saturday Group, South Africa’s first regional gay black organization.

For opposing apartheid, Nkoli and other UDF members were charged with treason. While awaiting sentencing, he came out to other UDF leaders, prompting them to recognise homophobia as oppression. In 1988, he and his co-defendants were acquitted. After his release, he cofounded the Gay and Lesbian Organisation of Witwatersrand, the first national black LGBT organization in South Africa.

In the 1990s, he worked with Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) to end apartheid. His visibility in the anti-apartheid movement and his association with Mandela helped the gay movement gain support from the ANC. In 1996, South Africa became the first nation to include sexual orientation protection in its constitution.

Together with another GLOW member Beverly Ditsie, Nkoli organised the country’s first ever Gay Pride march in Johannesburg. That same year, Nkoli helped found the Township Aids Project, which sought to educate gay people about AIDS and counteract the epidemic that began in the 80s. It became a resource for people to learn about the disease and grant them access to treatment.

Unfortunately, Nkoli contracted HIV himself and was one of the first South Africans to publicly disclose his HIV status. In 1998, he died from AIDS-related complications. A Pride flag was draped over his coffin, and South Africa’s 1999 Gay Pride March was dedicated to his accomplishments.

Deborah Sampson

Finally, we have Deborah Sampson. I thought I’d end with someone that fits perfectly on the LLA podcast, and you’ll see why as I explain what she did. (I already want to do a whole episode about her and let me give you a hint: she’d fit in well alongside Julie d’Aubigny.)

Deborah Sampson's name, just like the other people talked about in this episode, may not be world-famous, but her story deserves to be known. Sampson became a hero of the American Revolution when she disguised herself as a man and joined the Patriot forces. She was the only woman to earn a full military pension for participation in the Revolutionary army.

Sampson's life was full of examples of her courage and her compulsion to risk her own safety and well-being so that others might live and flourish. In fact, again posing as a man, she once married a colonial woman who had been captured by a Native American tribe in order to save her from being killed.

So this is where the queer part comes in. Mainstream historians have been unwilling to say Deborah Sampson was anything but heterosexual, Keith Stern, author of Queers in History, begs to differ. She wrote: "My interpretation of the early biographical material is that Deborah Sampson was a very masculine young girl, who enjoyed taking on the male role throughout her early life. She was so unwilling to get married that she chose to dress as a man and joined the army, where she found herself very attractive to other women. She reciprocated their attentions passionately, and treasured the memory of her romantic affairs with women. She participated in a marriage with a young white girl, ostensibly to liberate her from Indians, and she continued the relationship, with passionate attachment, long after it was necessary to obtain the girl’s freedom."

For two years while fighting in the American Revolution, Sampson’s true sex escaped detection despite close calls. When she received a gash in her forehead from a sword and was shot in her left thigh, she extracted the pistol ball herself. Eventually, she was discovered in Philadelphia when she became ill during an epidemic, was taken to a hospital, and lost consciousness.

She ended up being honorably discharged and she went on to marry a farmer and have three children, living quite a typical life from then on as a farmer’s wife. She did, however, in 1802 complete a year-long lecture tour about her experiences, becoming the first American woman to do a thing like this. She would often dress in her full military uniform.