WRITTEN BY: ADITYA JAIN
EDITED BY: SONAL PRIYA
Barbara Gittings
Before the Stonewall riots of 1969, there were a number of activists who laid the foundation for the uprising. Barbara was an important personality in ensuring the de-classification of homosexuality as a disease by the American Psychiatric Association. Kay Lahusen, her partner, shares the story of the night when the police demanded to see everyone’s ID at a women’s bar in Philadelphia. Tobin says, “Barbara went in and she took out her ACLU card and put it down on the table. There were no arrests that night.”
Source:
- https://time.com/5793614/barbara-gittings-100-women-of-the-year/
- https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/pride50-barbara-gittings-mother-gay-rights-movement-n1008596
Vikram Seth
A prolific author and poet, Vikram Seth has written with beauty as his work stands the test of time even today. From poetry (Mappings, 1980) to travelogues (From Heaven Lake, 1983) to novels (A Suitable Boy, 1993), he has captured our minds many times over now. An openly gay person, he published a powerful essay in India Today as he was “incensed” by the 2013 Supreme Court Section 377 judgement. An important mention here would be Leila Seth, his mother, who supported his identity and LGBTQIA+ rights in her own way.
“To not be able to love the one you love is to have your life wrenched away.”
Vikram Seth
Source:
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/20/vikram-seth-india-supreme-court-ban-gay-sex
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Vikram-Seth
- https://www.legallyindia.com/the-bench-and-the-bar/justice-leila-seth-slams-377-reversal-20140127-4283
- https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/cover-story/story/20131230-vikram-seth-on-gay-rights-homosexuality-769369-2013-12-20
The Wachowskis
Lilly and Lana Wachowski are producers, writers and directors – fondly remembered as the brains behind (arguably) one of the most popular action movies of all time “The Matrix.” They came out as trans publicly after the movie’s release. Talking of trans allegory in the trilogy, Lilly tells Netflix,
“I’m glad that it has gotten out…That was the original intention but the world wasn’t quite ready yet, at a corporate level…”
They have also worked on other important movies/shows such as Cloud Atlas (2012), Jupiter Ascending (2015) and Sense8 (2015-2018).
Source:
- https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/3/30/18286436/the-matrix-wachowskis-trans-experience-redpill
- https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0905154/
- https://www.indiewire.com/2018/10/wachowskis-closing-production-offices-no-projects-development-1202015170/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adXm2sDzGkQ
- https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-53692435
Vijayarajamallika
Vijayrajamallika is a writer, speaker, teacher and social worker. She is also the first transgender poet in Malayalam whose work has been included in a University syllabus (‘Daivathinte Makal’ – MA Malayalam course, Madras University). She also initiated the first residential school for transgenders at Thrikkakara, Kochi – Sahaj International. Even though it did not take off as expected, a step forward is always a good thing. Her autobiography Mallikavasantham is the first transgender autobiography in Malayalam literature.
Source:
- https://english.mathrubhumi.com/books/authors/kerala-s-first-transwoman-poet-vijayarajamallika-to-tie-knot–1.4102941
- https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/231217/kochi-transgender-school-turns-flop-converted-into-hostel.html
- https://www.huffpost.com/archive/in/entry/the-world-that-belongs-to-us-aditi-angiras-akhil-katyal_in_5f243b08c5b656e9b09afd53
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijayarajamallika
- https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kochi/three-lives-of-a-transwoman/articleshow/61006361.cms
Suniti Namjoshi
Suniti was born in 1941 in Mumbai. She served in the IAS for a while and ended up writing Feminist Fables in 1981. She is a novelist, poet, fabulist, lesbian and feminist by a lot of accounts, When asked about politics in her writing, she says that her “temperament” is to try to write a good poem or a book. The politics came in because other people were fighting her battles and she declared:
“it wouldn’t have been fair for me to sit back.”
In an article published in The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Harveen S. Mann says, “In an attempt to chart the genesis and evolution of various identities – based on gender, skin colour, sexual choice, nationality, and religion – in both geographical and textual time and space, Namjoshi couples the selection in Because of India with highly revealing retrospective, metatextual essays.”
Source:
- http://agentsofishq.com/suniti-namjoshi/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suniti_Namjoshi
- https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/zC9Uf7aWUSZp6PuiIyK94N/Suniti-Namjoshi–The-fantastic-fabulist.html
- https://zubaanbooks.com/bookauthor/suniti-namjoshi/
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/1315429
Marsha P. Johnson
Marsha P. Johnson was an African-American gay man and drag artist. He was one of the key figures who stood with the community when the New York Police carried out a raid at Stonewall Inn in 1969. Marsha said the P in his name stands for “Pay it no mind” – a phrase used to dismiss any negative comments about his orientation and choices. Marsha and good friend Sylvia Rivera founded STAR – Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries – an organisation to support gay and trans individuals who had lost their homes.
Marsha P. Johnson Institute stands as a legacy of his work and impact and support a BLACK trans people dealing with various issues. There is a Netflix documentary called “The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson” which explores his life and also investigates the mysterious subsequent death.
Source:
Alexya Salvador
Alexya Salvador calls herself the “first transgender shepher of Latin America.” Apart from being a pastor, she is also a political activist. As religious organizations usually ostracise queer identities and are openly cis-centric, her impact becomes even more powerful in perspective. She also ran for the office of a state representative in 2018, her campaign centred on LGBTQIA rights, education, adoption and fighting against racism. She made waves when she held Cuba’s first LGBTQ-friendly mass in May 2017. They talked of God’s love and community acceptance.
Source:
- https://illustratedwomeninhistory.com/for-lgbthistorymonth-i-will-be-posting-an-lgbtq-womaninhistory-every-day-today-is-alexya-salvador-who-calls-herself-the-first-transgender-shepherd-of-latin-america-salvador-made-history/
- https://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/researchdigest/latinamerica2/digest-human%20rights%20in%20latin%20america%20vol%202-brazil.pdf
- https://sur.conectas.org/en/alexya-salvador-it-is-against-this-god-who-kills-that-we-are-fighting-and-resisting/
- https://de.zxc.wiki/wiki/Alexya_Salvador
Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King is one of those athletes with innumerable feathers in her cap. She has won a record 20 Wimbledon Championships, was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame and became the first female athlete to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2009. In 1981, she was outed as a lesbian and even when her publicists asked her to deny the claim, she confirmed it and became one of the first publicly female gay athletes. Post this, she has broken barriers and embraced her identity being a vocal supporter of community rights. She also has two autobiographies to her name.
Source:
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Billie-Jean-King
- https://www.biography.com/athlete/billie-jean-king
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Jean_King
- https://www.tennisfame.com/hall-of-famers/inductees/billie-jean-king
Elliot Page
Elliot Page is one of the most popular queer actors out there. Having starred in Oscar-winning Juno, Nolan’s Inception, and Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy, Elliot has had a few milestones in his career. Elliot had first come out as gay in 2014 and then subsequently as trans in 2021, becoming the first trans man to be on the Time magazine cover.
Page had told time that there was always a disconnect between how the world saw him and how he felt himself, which is a powerful re-affirmation for anyone confused about their identity and still exploring bits and pieces about themselves. Page told TIME,
“I felt like a boy, I wanted to be a boy. I would ask my mom if I could be someday.”
Source:
- https://time.com/5947032/elliot-page/
- https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/english/hollywood/news/juno-actor-elliot-page-becomes-first-trans-man-on-time-magazine-cover-mark-ruffalo-calls-it-a-historical-milestone/articleshow/81542176.cms?from=mdr
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliot_Page
Sonal Giani
Sonal is a youth icon – a bisexual LGBTQIA+ activist and a filmmaker, she has been featured on The Better India list of ‘8 Inspiring Indian LGBT Individuals’, ‘Rainbow list of 20 LGBT Role Models’ by Cosmopolitan. She was also an Advocacy Manager at The Humsafar Trust, dealing with crisis handling for the queer community inclusive of Section 377 based violations and co-founded an LGBT youth initiative called ‘Yaariyan’. One of her most far-reaching marks is the Zee show ‘Connected Hum Tum’, sharing her experiences as an Indian bisexual woman.
Source:
- https://www.thebetterindia.com/106115/list-lqbtq-famous-personalities-pride-month/
- https://www.storiyaan.com/sonal-giani/
- https://www.femina.in/celebs/indian/i-was-outed-without-my-consent-sonal-giani-109212.html
- https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/profile/sonal-giani
- https://thecsrjournal.in/indian-lgbt-activists-history-month/
The Silent Sexism Project 