June is LGBT month, but I've wanted to do a list of events and people in LGBT history as I delved more into the topic in my free time because I feel most people, even those who are LGBT themselves, don't know their history or even what's happening now. Even in schools that cover the LGBT civil rights movement, a lot of people and events are left out which I find to be a shame. So let's begin.
Queer People Throughout History Up To Today
1. Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln, while well-known for his marriage to Mary, is often thought of as bisexual for his relationship with Joshua Speed (they slept in the same bed for three years) and David Derickson.
2. Shakespeare
Another bisexual for the books, Shakespeare is known for writing over 100 love sonnets to men. In fact, the famous line "oh how can I compare thee to a midsummer's day" was from one of these poems.
3. Emperor Ai of Han
Emperor Ai was well-documented for his homosexuality, particularly his relationship with Dong Xian, whom he gave lots of money to and even built a place for him just outside the imperial palace.
4. Sylvia Rivera
Sylvia Rivera was a Puerto Rican-Venezuelan trans woman known for her involvement in the Stonewall Riots. She founded STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), an organization to help homeless trans women of color and drag queens. She was also bisexual.
5. Alexander the Great
That's right. The creator of one of the largest empires in the world and spreading Greek culture to multiple continents was bisexual, well known for his love for Hephaestion.
6. Sally Ride
The first woman in space was also the first lesbian and LGBT person in space. Her sexuality wasn't known until her death as she was a very private person.
7. The Wachowski Sisters
Lily and Lana Wachowski, the creators of the Matrix, are both openly trans and queer and continue to work on projects such as Sense8.
8. Eleanor Roosevelt
The First Lady and wife of Theodore Roosevelt was bisexual. She is known for falling in love with Lorena Hickok, a lesbian Associated Press reporter. She wrote many letters to Hickok, with lines like "I want to put my arms around you and kiss you at the corner of your mouth."
9. Chevalier d'Eon
Chevalier was a French diplomat, spy, and soldier who infiltrated the Russian court as a woman and continued to identify as so for the rest of her life, even blackmailing the French government to change her records to female.
10. Julie d'Aubigny
Julie d'Aubigny was a 17th century bisexual swordswoman and opera singer. She gave many fencing demonstrations with an assistant fencing master named Serannes, but she is most well-known for infiltrating a convent and burning it down to get with her female lover.
11. Albert Cashier
Albert Cashier was a Union soldier who was likely a trans man, as not only did he use a male identity to fight in the civil war, but maintained it for the rest of his life.
12. Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin was MLK's right hand man who received a lot of flick for being gay, being frequently attacked for being "immoral" or a "pervert". Regardless, he challenged many segregation laws and worked in numerous pacifist groups like the War Resisters League.
13. Alan Turing
Alan Turing was a mathematician and logician who is considered the father of the modern computer, leading to the entire internet and computer industry we have today. He was gay and The British government arrested him for indecency, forcing him to undergo hormonal treatment to reduce his libido. This likely contributed to his suicide by Cyanide in 1954.
14. Carlett Brown
Carlett Brown was one of the first trans women to undergo gender transition surgery. She was a veteran and While in the Navy, a doctor discovered she was intersex. While physicians advised her to have surgery to become more masculine, she went the opposite way. She planned to travel to Europe to have the procedure done and to renounce her US citizenship, but an anti cross dressing law and taxation issues made her story go cold.
15. Thomas(ine) Hall
Thomas(ine) Hall was an English servant in 1600s Virginia who alternated between male and female attire. This sparked so much controversy that it reached the Courts and it was ruled that Thomas(ine) was both a man and a woman and ordered them to dress in both male and female attire simultaneously.
I left out so many people (Marsha P Johnson, James Buchanan, Christine Jorgenson, and more). I unfortunately don't have all the time in the world to cover queer people throughout the present and past so I recommend you research this for yourself if ur interested.
For now, here's a few facts regarding LGBT history.
1. The lavender scare was a mass firing of all lgb people from US employment for being "security risks" and "communist sympathizers".
2. In the 1960s, AC/DC was a slang term for bisexuals, referring to two types of electrical currents.
3. The Roman Church officiated a gay marriage in 1061 in Spain between Pedro Diaz and Muño Vandilaz.
4. The monocle was considered a lesbian fashion choice in the earliest 20th century.
5. The first Pride parade was organized by bisexual activist Brenda Howard.
6. Christine Jorgenson, in 1952, became the first person ever to go under gender transition therapy and surgery.
All of these have links and evidence to back them up, but it would take up too much room and time to post them all. If you're curious about a particular part or evidence, you can comment below 😎
