This episode marks the return of History is Gay after hiatus, and we're excited to be back in your podfeeds diving into the fascinating world of classic children's literature through the lens of queer authors. Leigh is joined by wonderful guest co-host, Aubree Calvin, to explore the lives and works of several groundbreaking authors, revealing how their sexualities and personal experiences shaped the books we cherished as children.
In this first of a multi-part episode, we're focusing on four beloved authors whose works were some of our favorites: Tomie dePaola, most notable for our favorite Italian grandma Strega Nona, Margaret Wise Brown, the bisexual poet behind beloved picture books Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, Ann M. Martin, who introduced us to our friends in The Baby-Sitters Club, and Arnold Lobel, the man behind the cozy shared lives of Frog and Toad.
This conversation doesn't end here; stay tuned as we will continue to explore more queer authors and their impact on the world of children's literature in the next episode, coming soon!
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.
Locate Aubree upon the internet:
Aubree Writes on Facebook
@BreeinTX on Twitter
Take a gander at the first four authors we’ve covered in this episode.
Born September 15, 1934 in Meriden, CT, Tomie dePaola infused his Italian and Irish heritage into his stories with warmth, belonging, and encouraging kids to not be afraid to be themselves.
Tomie with some of his beloved characters
He is perhaps most well known for his Strega Nona series, but he also wrote a book called Oliver Button is a Sissy, the first children’s book to come closest to using the word “gay”.
In Oliver Button is a Sissy, the main character Oliver is a sensitive, artsy boy who is bullied for being a “sissy” and falls in love with tap dance. His peers change their tune however when he dazzles at a dance performance, and “Oliver Button is a Sissy” graffitti becomes “Oliver Button is a Star”.
dePaola drew heavily from his own life experiences for this story, externalizing his own history of being bullied for being a “sissy” child.
In 2001, Tomie starred in his own Jim Henson TV show, Jim Henson’s Telling Stories with Tomie dePaola, telling stories with muppet friends!
There’s a playlist on YouTube of several episodes that you can check out here. It’s delightful!
Referred to as the “laureate of nursery”, Margaret Wise Brown was born May 23, 1910 in Brooklyn, NY, and the Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny author had a several-years long relationship with socialite, suffragette, and erotic poet Blanche Oelrichs, also known as Michael Strange!
young Margaret Wise Brown with her sister Roberta and their pet rabbits!
While Margaret would go on to write over 200 books in her lifetime, she is arguably most well known for classics The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon, the later of which was banned in NY libraries until 1972, all because of the personal vendetta from one particular librarian, Anne Caroll Moore against the book, who was very influential in the public libraries community.
Margaret with Crispin's crispian at her cobble court cottage writing studio in the late 1940s
The view from Margaret's beloved home, Only House, on Vinalhaven, Maine
One of Margaret Wise Brown’s longest relationships was with Blanche Oelrichs, better known by her pen name and later all-time public persona, Michael Strange. We couldn’t find any photos of the two of them together, but here’s a look at Michael, as well as a photo of Margaret with James Stillman Rockefeller Jr, with whom she was together and engaged in the last year of her life.
Margaret later in life with her fiancee, James stillman "Pebble" Rockefeller, jr.
Margaret's tombstone, on which she requested not to be memorialized as a children's book author, but as a "Writer of songs and nonsense"
Born August 12, 1955, Ann M. Martin is best known for bringing the world The Baby-Sitters Club, but these days she lives in upstate New York and writes independent novels and lives a quiet life with her dogs and a rotating cast of foster kittens!
Ann with doggy friend
Ann at the 2019 National book Awards
The Baby-Sitters Club, first debuting in 1986, put Ann M. Martin on the map and connected with multiple generations of young girls, and especially resonated with queer readers who saw themselves in a group of pre-teen girls who prioritized friendship and an entreprenureal spirit. Plus it didn’t hurt that one of the characters, Kristy, was a huge tomboy!
Ann with the actors from the short-lived 2020 BSC netflix series
Ann Martin (right) with former partner and co-author of Doll People books, Laura godwin (left). She came out publicly in 2016 via a mention of godwin being her former partner in a vulture article.
Born May 22, 1933 in Los Angeles but raised in Schenectady, NY by his German-Jewish grandparents, Arnold Lobel fell in love with illustrating and children’s books at a young age. He illustrated close to 100 books during his career, and his most well-known work is the Frog and Toad series, which he wrote and illustrated together.
Frog and Toad tells stories about two best friends and neighbors, Frog and Toad, who represented two different sides of Arnold Lobel, and according to his daughter, were the beginning of him coming to terms with his sexuality and coming out to himself.
Lobel came out to his wife, Anita Kempler, and his children, in 1974, but continued to work with her for many years. In the early 80s, he met his partner Howard Weiner, who cared for him at the end of his life after suffering from AIDS.
Online Articles & Resources:
Tomie dePaola
Tomie dePaola, ‘Strega Nona’ Author and Illustrator, Dies at 85
Tomie dePaola interview by Greg Cook, The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research
Arnold Lobel
Margaret Wise Brown
‘Goodnight Moon’ author was a bisexual rebel who didn’t like kids
How a Maine Fisherman Became Margaret Wise Brown’s Alter Ego
‘Goodnight Moon’ and the Queer Love Story of the Great Green Room
Ann M. Martin
Ursula Nordstrom and the Queer History of the Children’s Book
Baby-Sitters Club Creator Ann M. Martin is Queer, How Did I Not Know This
Rainbow Rant: 'The Baby-Sitters Club' is back, and it is more queer than ever
Books & Print Articles:
Kander, Jessica. “Reading Queer Subtexts in Children’s Literature”, Eastern Michigan University: Digital Commons @EMU, 2011.
Becker R., Margot, et al. Ann M. Martin: The Story of the Author of the Baby-Sitters Club. Scholastic, Incorporated, 1993.
Fleischmann, T. “If you are to be an owl”, Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, vol. 13, no. 1 (spring 2011), pp. 77-82
Gary, Amy. In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown. Flatiron Books, 2017.
In this interview episode, Leigh sits down with scholar and creator of the Queer Digital History Project Avery Dame-Griff to discuss his book The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet and all it contains about the magic of the evolution of trans folks on the internet. From BBSes (bulletin board system) to Twitter, we discuss how trans people have always existed on and created their own unique spaces on the World Wide Web, tapping into Avery’s extensive research, interviews, and media archaeology.
The Two Revolutions explores how the rise of the internet shaped transgender identity and activism from the 1980s to the present. Through extensive archival research and media archeology, Avery Dame-Griff reconstructs the manifold digital networks of transgender activists, cross-dressing computer hobbyists, and others interested in gender nonconformity who incited the second revolution of the title: the ascendance of "transgender" as an umbrella identity in the mid-1990s.
Dame-Griff argues that digital communications sparked significant momentum within what would become the transgender movement, but also further cemented existing power structures. Covering both a historical period that is largely neglected within the history of computing, and the poorly understood role of technology in queer and trans social movements, The Two Revolutions offers a new understanding of both revolutions-the internet's early development and the structures of communication that would take us to today's tipping point of trans visibility politics. Through a history of how trans people online exploited different digital infrastructures in the early days of the internet to build a community, The Two Revolutions tells a crucial part of trans history itself.
Dr. Avery Dame-Griff teaches courses on gender, race and sexuality in the US, LGBT studies, gender and technology, digital humanities, and feminist media studies at Gonzaga University. He founded and serves as primary curator of the Queer Digital History Project, an independent community history project cataloging and archiving pre-2010 LGBTQ spaces online. In 2022, he was selected to be a Public Humanities Fellow for Humanities Washington, developing a series of interactive online exhibits, teaching guides, and workshops about the history of LBGTQ+ communities in online spaces.
As listeners may know, Leigh works at the GLBT Historical Society for their day job. And recently, a volunteer archivist, Cara Esten Hurtle, discovered an amazing CD-ROM containing the entirety of Transgender Forum, (TGForum.com) from 1995 to 1998, one of the largest trans communities online at that time, that Avery Dame-Griff also covers in his book! Hurtle uploaded the CD-rom online for anyone to peruse, and it’s absolutely amazing to see the 90s trans community right there before your very eyes!
yesterday, volunteering at the GLBT Historical Society, an archivist came in with this CD, still shrink-wrapped. this morning, I've uploaded it to the Internet Archive so everyone can have access to 90s trans community on CD-ROM.https://t.co/QsmqqZ0usU pic.twitter.com/EgNDCsZXuc
— cara.city elsewhere (@caraesten) October 25, 2023
The discovery has been covered by them online in a fantastic article which you can read here: This Archive Offers an Incredible Window Into the Early Trans Internet.
And you can peruse the CD-Rom of TGForum.com here, where Cara uploaded the archive! Just click the “START.HTM” file in the tgfcd window, and browse to your heart’s content! Want Leigh to do an interview with Cara about her discovery? Let us know!
This episode has EVERYTHING: gay haircuts, yearning, rage against the patriarchy, they were *roommates*....let’s talk about the magical world of Yoshiya Nobuko, girls’ culture, and lesbian fiction in Taishō era Japan!
Leigh is joined by guest host Erica Friedman, speaker, editor, researcher and an expert on all things Yuri. Yoshiya Nobuko was an extremely popular writer in 20th century Japan who lived with her beloved female partner for 50 years and her legacy continues today as “the Grandmother of Yuri.”. The tropes and storylines established in her writing can still be seen today in queer girls stories in and outside of Japan– get ready to learn all about modern Japan’s very own Sappho. After all, it’s all in the yearning.
Erica Friedman (she/her) holds a Masters Degree in Library Science and a B.A. in Comparative Literature, and is a full-time researcher for a Fortune 100 company.
She has lectured at events around the world and presented at film festivals, notably the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. She has participated in an academic lecture series at MIT, University of Illinois, Harvard University, Kanagawa University, and others.
Erica has written about Yuri for Japanese literary journal Eureka, Animerica magazine, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Dark Horse, Del Rey and contributed to Forbes, Slate, Huffington Post, Hooded Utilitarian, Anime News Network and The Mary Sue online. She has written news and event reports, interviews Yuri creators and reviews Yuri anime, manga and related media on her blog Okazu since 2002.
She is the author of a cyberpunk novella and is the author of By Your Side: The First 100 years of Yuri Anime and Manga, published by Journey Press.
Locate Erica upon the internet:
We’ve gathered some photos of Yoshiya (and friends) throughout her life for you to check out here!
Yoshiya and Monma fell in deep love the moment they met, and their letters to each other reveal so much about their dynamic, we had to share them here!
Yoshiya to Monma, 1923:
Beloved Chiyo
I will love you no matter what
I do not wish to make you lonely
Nor do I want to be lonely
I want you to be the source of my strength
And, if you will let me, I would like to be the source of your strength
May 23, 8:30 pm
Arriving home soaking wet from the rain
Nobuko
Monma to Yoshiya, 1923 (she addresses Yoshiya as onesama, or "older sister," a popular euphemism then and now for one half of a lesbian couple)
Beloved elder sister. I am unspeakably lonely when you leave. My heart becomes hollow, and all I am able to do is to sit in a chair and stare blankly at the wall. It’s now nighttime, isn’t it? As I wrap my unlined black kimono around my bare skin and adjust the hem, my body is aroused by feelings of longing [for you]; instead, what stretches confusingly before my eyes is dusty reality. Ah, this evening. My heart finds no consolation in this evening dream of mine or in reality. My heart sinks from a heavy sadness. If only on this night we were together in our own little house, lying quietly under the light of a lantern, then my heart would gradually warm and neither would you be so sad. I am so sad that I won’t be able to see you either tomorrow or the day after. Let us please meet again on Tuesday. Farewell for now; I am forever yours. Why have I written such things, I wonder? Please don’t worry too much about me. Goodbye, and please take care of yourself.
May 11, midnight
Thinking of my elder sister.
Chiyoko
Monma to Yoshiya, February 1925:
I can only think of how soon we can arrange to live together. There’s nothing I need more than your warm embrace. It is unfortunate that we are not a male and female couple, for if you were a male, our union would be quickly arranged. But a female couple is not allowed. Why is it that [in our society] love is acknowledged only by its outward form and not by its depth of quality — especially since there are so many foul and undesirable aspects to heterosexual relationships?
And Yoshya’s response:
Chiyo-chan. After reading your letter I resolved to build a small house for the two of us…Once it is constructed, I will declare it to be a branch household (bunke), initiate a household register [listing, by law, all family members], and become a totally independent household. I will then adopt you so that you can become a legal member of my household (adoption being a formality since the law will not recognize you as a wife. In the meantime, I aim to get the law reformed). We will have our own house and our own household register. That’s what I’ve decided…We’ll celebrate your adoption with a party just like the typical marriage reception — it will be our wedding ceremony. I want it to be really grand. We will ask Miyake Yasuko-san and Shigeri-san [the couple who had introduced them] to be our go-betweens. I wonder what kind of wedding kimono would look best on you?
Yoshiya Nobuko’s work is not without criticism, and we must mention that during the second world war, she was part of a journalistic propaganda unit of the Japanese government called the pen butai, a group of writers who traveled through areas occupied under Japan’s imperial campaign and control, including China, Manchuria, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and others, writing dispatches published in Japanese newspapers. There are very few photos, but we were able to find a few.
Yoshiya with Kan Kikuchi, Eiji Yoshikawa, and others being welcomed at tokyo station
Yoshiya with Kan kikuchi and others outside of a plane in manchuria, during her time in the pen butai
Yoshiya was writing at a time when girls’ magazines were hugely popular and instrumental in turning shojo bunka into an entire subculture. Here’s some covers of some popular shojo magazines and Yoshiya’s works!
On the left, a 1908 issue of Shōjo sekai (少女世界, "Girls′ World"), one of the first girls’ magazines in japan. On the right, a cover of sarah frederick’s translated version of “Yellow Rose”, one of the stories in Yoshiya’s hana monogatari (花物語 "Flower Tales")
cover of hana monogatari (花物語 "Flower Tales")
Cover of “Two Virgins/Two Maidens in the attic”, yaneura no nishojo, 1919
Yoshiya and Monma’s house in Kamakura was turned into a museum after Yoshiya’s death, containing memorabilia from her life and preserving her study and living spaces. It’s open twice a year.
And lastly, check out Erica’s conversation with Sarah Frederick all about Yoshiya for Yuricon!
Online Articles & Resources:
Books and Print Articles:
Coutts, Angela. “Gender and Literary Production in Modern Japan: The Role of Female‐Run Journals in Promoting Writing by Women during the Interwar Years.” Signs, vol. 32, no. 1, 2006, pp. 167–95.
Dollase, Hiromi Tsuchiya. “Yoshiya Nobuko’s ‘Yaneura No Nishojo’: In Search of Literary Possibilities in ‘Shōjo’ Narratives.” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal. English Supplement, no. 20/21, 2001, pp. 151–78.
Dollase, Hiromi Tsuchiya. “Mad Girls in the Attic: Louisa May Alcott, Yoshiya Nobuko and the Development of Shōjō Culture.” Purdue University, 2003.
Dollase, Hiromi Tsuchiya. “Early Twentieth Century Japanese Girls’ Magazine Stories: Examining Shōjō Voice in Hanamonogatari (Flower Tales).” Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 36, issue 4., 2003, p. 724-755
Fanasca, Marta. “Tales of lilies and girls’ love. The depiction of female/female relationships in yuri manga.” Tracing Pathways 雲路. Interdisciplinary Studies on Modern and Contemporary East Asia, 2020, pp. 51-66.
Frederick, Sarah. Turning Pages: Reading and Writing Women’s Magazines in Interwar Japan. University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 2006.
Frederick, Sarah. “Not That Innocent: Yoshiya Nobuko’s Good Girls.” Bad Girls of Japan, 2005.
Frederick, Sarah. “Sisters and Lovers: Women Magazine Readers and Sexuality in Yoshiya Nobuko’s Romance Fiction.” Love and Sexuality in Japanese Literature, PMAJLS, vol. 5, Summer 1999
Frederick, Sarah. “Women of the Setting Sun and Men from the Moon: Yoshiya Nobuko’s ‘Ataka Family’ as Postwar Romance.” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal. English Supplement, no. 23, 2002, pp. 10–38
Fujimoto Yukari, and Translated by Lucy Fraser. “Where Is My Place in the World? Early Shōjo Manga Portrayals of Lesbianism.” Mechademia, vol. 9, 2014, pp. 25–42
Kan, Satoko, et al. “The Destinations of ‘Women’s Friendships’: Imperializing Education in ‘The Women’s Classroom.’” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal, no. 43, 2012, pp. 106–25.
Matsugu, Miho. “Fight to Win: Female Bonding and War Propaganda in Yoshiya Nobuko’s ‘The Woman’s Classroom’, 1939.” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal, no. 35, 2008, pp. 54–79.
Pflugfelder, Gregory M. “‘S’ is for Sister: Schoolgirl Intimacy and ‘Same-Sex Love’ in Early Twentieth-Century Japan.” Gendering Modern Japanese History, edited by Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno, 2005.
Robertson, Jennifer. “Dying to Tell: Sexuality and Suicide in Imperial Japan.” Signs, vol. 25, no. 1, 1999, pp. 1–35
Robertson, Jennifer. “The Politics of Androgyny in Japan: Sexuality and Subversion in the Theater and Beyond.” American Ethnologist, vol. 19, no. 3, 1992, pp. 419–42.
Robertson, Jennifer. “Theatrical Resistance, Theatres of Restraint: The Takarazuka Revue and the ‘State Theatre’ Movement in Japan.” Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 64, no. 4, 1991, pp. 165–77.
Robertson, Jennifer. "Yoshiya Nobuko: Out and Outspoken in Practice and Prose," The Human Tradition in Modern Japan. (Ed.) Ann Walthall. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2002; 155-174.
Shaffer, Julia (2016) "Liberation Through a Different Kind of Love: Same Sex Relationships in the New Woman’s Movement," Historical Perspectives: Santa Clara University Undergraduate Journal of History, Series II: Vol. 21 , Article 9.
Summerhawk Barbara and Kimberly Hughes. Sparkling Rain: And Other Fiction from Japan of Women Who Love Women. New Victoria 2008.
Suzuki, Michiko. “Writing Same-Sex Love: Sexology and Literary Representation in Yoshiya Nobuko’s Early Fiction.” The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 65, no. 3, 2006, pp. 575–99.
Videos
In this interview episode, Leigh talks with Dr. Elizabeth Gloyn, Reader in Latin Language and Literature at Royal Holloway, the University of London, and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Her research focuses on the intersection between Latin literature, ancient philosophy, and gender studies; as well as topics of classical reception (particularly monsters) and the history of women in Classics. She is also the author of Tracking Classical Monsters in Popular Culture.
Thanks to listener Cheryl Morgan for connecting us for this wonderful conversation on queerness in the ancient world (including adorable poly couples), what Seneca really said about the Amazons, and how fanfiction has created a unique space for queering classical monsters.
What is it about ancient monsters that popular culture still finds so enthralling? Why do the monsters of antiquity continue to stride across the modern world? In this book, the first in-depth study of how post-classical societies use the creatures from ancient myth, Liz Gloyn reveals the trends behind how we have used monsters since the 1950s to the present day, and considers why they have remained such a powerful presence in our shared cultural imagination. She presents a new model for interpreting the extraordinary vitality that classical monsters have shown, and their enormous adaptability in finding places to dwell in popular culture without sacrificing their connection to the ancient world.
Her argument takes her readers through a comprehensive tour of monsters on film and television, from the much-loved creations of Ray Harryhausen in Clash of the Titans to the monster of the week in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, before looking in detail at the afterlives of the Medusa and the Minotaur. She develops a broad theory of the ancient monster and its life after antiquity, investigating its relation to gender, genre and space to offer a bold and novel exploration of what keeps drawing us back to these mythical beasts. From the siren to the centaur, all monster lovers will find something to enjoy in this stimulating and accessible book.
Dr. Liz Gloyn is Reader in Classics at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Her many research interests include the reception of classics in popular culture, with a particular focus on film and children's literature. She has recently published Tracking Classical Monsters in Popular Culture (2019). As well as writing for publications like History Today and Strange Horizons, she tweets about her research at @lizgloyn.
@lizgloyn on Twitter
Classically Inclined, Liz's blog on Wordpress
"Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken is the latest film to give a monster a makeover" for The Conversation
An episode Leigh has been dreaming of since the start of the pod is finally here! In this ep, Leigh is joined by guest host Frankie de la Cretaz, sports journalist, queer history buff, and certified Gaylor Swiftie, to discuss the queer history of women’s baseball & softball, in particular the story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, aka the inspiration behind A League of Their Own! We discuss all the extreme “no-homo”ing that was happening in the League’s rules and regulations, and all the YES HOMO-ing that happened in spite of it, making the sport into an important site of queer community.
Frankie de la Cretaz (they/them) is a writer whose work focuses on the intersection of sports and gender. They are the co-author of HAIL MARY: The Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League and their work has been featured in the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, The Atlantic, and more.
Locate Frankie upon the internet:
@thefrankiedlc on Instagram
@thefrankiedlc on Twitter
Softball started as a way to play baseball indoors during cold winters, and women were there from the very beginning. Check out this photo of the first-known organized women’s baseball team, the Vassar College Resolutes, in 1876. Those outfits!
Prompted by the shortages of men in professional baseball due to World War II, chewing-gum magnate and owner of the Chicago Cubs, Phillip K. Wrigley, started recruiting women for his new All American Girls’ Softball League (which would change its name to the All American Girls’ Professional Baseball League) in 1943.
Phillip K. Wrigley
The original logo for the AAGPBL, when it was still the All-American Girls Softball league
1945 flier for aagpbl GAME
The first players signed to the AAGSL in 1943: Clara Shillace, Ann Harnett, Edie Perlick, and Shirley Jameson
The league’s regulations about makeup, grooming, and dress were extremely strict and feminized, to dispel associations of the league with lesbians.
Racine Bells vs. South Bend Blue Sox, September 14, 1947
AAGPBL doing calistenics in Opa-Locka, Florida, 1948
Dorothy Harrell, shortstop for the Chicago Colleens, in an amazing catch from a 1948 game
Inspired by the success of the recruiting efforts of the AAGPBL, Forest Park roofing company owner Emery Parichy, who also owned the Chicago Cardinals football team, started the National Girls Baseball League, a professional underhand fast-pitch softball league based out of Chicago, that ended up being the primary rival league for the AAGPBL.
Where the All-American focused on femininity and image, the NGBL focused more on the sport. They allowed the players to compete in shorts, didn’t have makeup and charm school requirements, and was integrated.
Emery Parichy, the founder and owner of the national girls’ baseball league (NGBL)
The NGBL and AAGPBL were in constant rivalry for players and poached from each other enough that an official peace agreement had to be drawn up
Parichy’s Bloomer Girls in 1946
Pink Poirok and Ricki Caito
Lois Roberts, the famously barefoot outfielder for the Ngbl!
Nancy Ito, NGBL’s first Japanese american player in the ngbl, played shortstop for the bloomer girls in 1953.
Betty Chapman, the first Black woman to play professional softball. She was an outfielder for the admiral music maids, 1951
Gwen Wong, the NGBL’s first chinese-american player, a left-handed rookie pitcher from san francisco for the bloomer girls.
Their Turn at Bat: The Story of the National Girls Baseball League is a documentary project in the making by filmmaker Adam Chu, the premiere expert on the NGBL! Please visit his website to support the efforts to make the film and check out all the amazing memorabilia for the NGBL he has, and thank you to Adam for letting us use these photos and introducing our listeners to the NGBL!
Take a look at some of the ball players we mentioned in the episode who were/are queer!
Born January 16, 1927 in Inglewood, CA, and was a pitcher for the Peoria Redwings in the AAGPBL. She then went on to play for the Cardinals in Emery Parichy’s NGBL, and then the Jax Softball Club of New Orleans, LA.
She came out at the age of 95 during the press tour for the new A League of Their Own series, which she consulted on, and is now living her best gay life!
November 23, 1924 – August 18, 2013. Born in Chicago, IL, and played outfield for 2 seasons with the South Bend Blue Sox in the AAGPBL. She set an all-time record for fewest strikeouts in a season, until she was fired from the league for a “butchy” haircut. She went on to become a PE teacher and a hero of the Chicago public school system for 34 years.
Her obituary mentioned that she identified as a lesbian since she was a teenager.
JoJo D’Angelo, outfield for SOuth Bend Blue Sox
December 11, 1919 - July 21, 2002. Born in Brooklyn, NY, and ended up playing 10 seasons with the AAGPBL, as a Rockford Peach, Kenosha Comet, and a Fort Wayne Daisy, and was known as The Babe Ruth of Women’s Softball.
Her obituary mentioned her partner, Margaret Nusse, as her companion and survivor.
Babe Ruth feeling Millie Deegan’s bicep during an exhibition game, 1938. (Photo: The Diamond Angle, via Archive Today)
Millie and Margaret’s funeral plaque
Terry Donahue, August 22, 1945 - March 14, 2019, born in Saskatchewan, Canada. Played as catcher for the Peoria Redwings in the AAGPBL from 1946-1949, before playing for the Admiral Music Maids in the National Girls Baseball League in 1950.
She met her partner, Pat Henschel, during an off season from the AAGPBL at a hockey game, and they fell in love quickly. They kept their relationship secret from family until they were in their eighties, and a documentary A Secret Love was made about their relationship. They got married in 2015 at their assisted living facility.
Terry passed in 2019, and Pat Henschel is still living in the assisted living facility. Their legacy was cemented with a pair of bobbleheads, showcasing their sports prowess!
Born October 9, 1921 in Phoenix, AZ — we noted in the episode that she was still alive at the age of 101, but unfortunately she passed a few days after we recorded our episode.
One of the greatest women’s softball players of all time — Wilkinson was offered a contract with the AAGPBL and turned it down, put off by the homophobic rules and she was attached to her softball team, The Phoenix Ramblers, which she had been playing for since she was a bat girl at the age of 11.
She and her partner, Estelle “Ricki” Caito, met as rival softball players who then became friends and then began dating, in a REAL LIFE ENEMIES-TO-LOVERS trope!!
Dot WIlkinson, perhaps the best women’s softball player of all time. Played for the Phoenix Ramblers for 32 years.
Ricki Caito, second baseman for the Bloomer Girls of the NGBL. She also played softball for the California Orange Lionettes, opposite Dot WIlkinson’s Ramblers
February 16, 1922 - January 2014. Hurdle never played for a professional league, but she played softball and baseball when she was part of the Women’s Army Corp, serving in WWII. She joined the military in 1944, moved to California in the 1960s, and had a successful tax advising business with a large group of Black and queer friends. She apparently frequently had crushes on femmes, including a school bus driver named Miss Ruby who called Hurdle “Daddy”. She was a classic old-school butch who liked cars, sports, and gambling.
Hurdle playing pool in her women’s army corps uniform. Lorraine Hurdle papers. Collection Number: 2018-12. GLBT Historical Society
Lorraine Hurdle and Baseball Team. Lorraine Hurdle papers. Collection Number: 2018-12. GLBT Historical Society
Online Articles & Resources:
"A Secret Love's Pat Henschel Shares What Made Her 72-Year Relationship Last"
"Lesbian Couple From Netflix Doc A Secret Love Made Into Bobbleheads"
"‘A Secret Love’ spotlights remarkable 70-year lesbian relationship"
"A Secret Love Update: What Happened to Pat Henschel After Terry Donahue Passed Away"
"Revealing the long but hidden history of queer women in sport"
"‘A League of Their Own’ – Most were lesbian, former player says"
“How 101-year-old softball legend Dot Wilkinson found her two great loves in the same place”
How World War II Spurred a Decade of Women’s Pro Baseball, History.com
National Girls’ Baseball League articles
https://news.wttw.com/2016/04/20/ask-geoffrey-league-chicago-s-own#women
Women's History Month: A Great Time to Reflect on Softball's Rich History
A Lavender League of Their Own? Voice and Visibility of Lesbian Ballplayers
She Inspired ‘A League of Their Own.’ At 95, She’s Far From Done.
Books and Print Articles:
Pierman, Carol J. “Baseball, Conduct, and True Womanhood”. Women’s Studies Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 1/2, Women and Sports (Spring-Summer 2005), pp. 68-85. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40005502
Cahn, Susan K. “From the ‘Muscle Moll’ to the ‘Butch’ Ballplayer: Mannishness, Lesbianism, and Homophobia in U.S. Women’s Sport.” Feminist Studies, vol. 19, no. 2, 1993, pp. 343–68. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3178373.
Adams, Natalie, et al. “Tomboys, Dykes, and Girly Girls: Interrogating the Subjectivities of Adolescent Female Athletes.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 1/2, 2005, pp. 17–34. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40005499.
Have you, like our dear host Leigh, gotten totally sucked into the amazing new Amazon Prime adaptation of A League of Their Own? Do you want to hear all about the show, its meticulous research into queer life of the 1940s and how the writers, producers, and cast opened up the scope of the movie to focus on the lives of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League’s queer players? Well then, hop in to this episode, where I’m joined by co-creator Will Graham to dive deep into A League of Their Own, early queer nightlife, the importance of representation both on and behind the camera, and what it means to be a young, queer kid who just wants to play ball and has finally found their team.
A League of Their Own follows queer women athletes and players during the first season of the All-American Girls’ Professional Baseball League, started in 1943 by chewing gum magnate and owner of the Chicago Cubs, Phillip K. Wrigley, in response to a shortage of male players due to World War II, We’ll be doing a full episode on the queer history of the AAGPBL and queer women in baseball/softball during this era next, so stay tuned!
Will Graham is a writer, director, and showrunner. He directed and executive produced episodes of Amazon’s Emmy and Golden Globe-winning series Mozart in the Jungle. He also wrote multiple episodes of Amazon’s comedy series Alpha House. Graham was one of the original founders of The Onion’s Onion News Network web series and won a Peabody Award for his directing and executive producing work on the show. He subsequently served as showrunner on IFC’s The Onion News Network series.
He founded Field Trip Productions in 2017, along with former UTA agent Hailey Wierengo. The company is currently producing multiple series through their first-look TV deal with Amazon Studios, including A League of Their Own, with Graham serving as co-creator and co-showrunner alongside Abbi Jacobson; Daisy Jones and the Six with Hello Sunshine, as well as many other forthcoming shows.
To give you a taste, check out the trailer!
@WillWGraham on Twitter
@willwisslergraham on Instagram
@LeagueOnPrime on Twitter
@LeagueOnPrime on Instagram
Anyone remember that pin & bumper sticker with the slogan that serves as the title for this episode? Well, I hope you’re hungry, because we’re talking lesbians and food in this interview with Dr. Alex Ketchum, Director of the Just Feminist Tech and Scholarship Lab, lecturer, and author, whose work integrates food, environmental, technological, and gender history.
We talk about her latest book, Ingredients for Revolution: A History of American Feminist Restaurants, Cafes, and Coffeehouses, the first history of the more than 230 feminist and lesbian-feminist restaurants, cafes, and coffeehouses that existed in the United States from 1972 to the present. We dive into the ways these institutions provided spaces and community to tackle questions around the intersections between feminism, food justice, queer rights, and other social justice movements while serving as training grounds for women workers and entrepreneurs, as well as what the landscape of queer feminist restaurants looks like today.
Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the trailblazing restaurant Mother Courage of New York City, Ingredients for Revolution: A History of American Feminist Restaurants, Cafes, and Coffeehouses is the first history of the more than 230 feminist and lesbian-feminist restaurants, cafes, and coffeehouses that existed in the United States from 1972 to the present. As key sites of cultural and political significance, this volume shows the essential role these institutions served for multiple social justice movements including women’s liberation, LGBTQ equality, and food justice, as well as for training women workers and entrepreneurs.
This systematic study outlines the crucial steps it took to establish these businesses during eras when sexism was so institutionalized it was difficult for unmarried women to obtain a bank loan, while also showing the continuities and influences of past businesses on contemporary places. Through an examination of important establishments across America, Alex D. Ketchum first examines the foundational principles behind these businesses, noting key differences between cooperative, for-profit, and non-profit models. She then looks to issues of financing, labour, pay, food sourcing, and cultural programming to understand how these organizations reconciled feminist beliefs with capitalism and how they strove for more equitable and sustainable business practices.
Brimming with illuminating archival research, interviews with influential restaurateurs, and illustrated with photographs, menus, posters, and calendars, Ingredients for Revolution is a fundamental work of women’s history, food history, and cultural history.
Dr. Alex Ketchum is the Faculty Lecturer of the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies of McGill University in Montreal. She is the Director of the Just Feminist Tech and Scholarship Lab and the author of Engage in Public Scholarship!: A Guidebook on Feminist and Accessible Communication. Her work integrates food, environmental, technological, and gender history.
Alex’s latest book, Ingredients for Revolution: American Feminist Restaurants, Cafes, and Coffeehouses, 1972-2022, is the first history of the more than 230 feminist and lesbian-feminist restaurants, cafes, and coffeehouses that existed in the United States from 1972 to the present.
You can order your copy of Ingredients for Revolution for 20% off (for U.S. readers) through University of Chicago Press, or through Concordia University Press for Canadian readers.
There’s also an accompanying podcast: Feminist Ingredients for Revolution: A Food and Queer History Podcast, full of interviews with others in the food justice and feminism world. Check it out at TheFeministRestaurantProject.com. You can listen to the trailer here!
@aketchum22 on Twitter
@dr.alexketchum on Instagram
For this episode, Leigh is joined by Sam Campbell to discuss the history behind Two Spirit identities. In this episode, they cover the pre-colonial significance of Two-Spirit people to Indigenous communities, how early colonists were able to shape the narrative of what it meant to be Two-Spirit and how that has changed, and last, how colonization has nearly eradicated Two-Spirit histories. How can we uplift these stories to highlight Two-Spirit resilience despite the genocide they faced?
Sam Campbell is a Diné and Yome Two-Spirit individual who has dedicated their time to supporting LGBT2s+ groups. As a board member and former drum keeper for the Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS), they have helped facilitate community connection and healing. As a two-time TEDx speaker, Sam has worked to highlight the complexity of gender and sexuality as well as bring awareness to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls movement.
Locate Sam upon the internet:
@genderisauniverse on Instagram
@welcometothecosmos on TikTok
Firstly, let’s define what we mean by “Two-Spirit”— below is a fantastic video from them.us, featuring Geo Soctomah Neptune (Passamaquoddy), a Two-Spirit activist, model, basket maker, and politician, whom we mentioned in our episode:
Some Historical Images/Illustrations of Two-Spirits:
“Employments of the hermaphrodites”, watercolor by jacques le moyne and then engraving by theodore de bry, 1591. The image depicts Timucuan two-spirt people carrying wounded peopleand the dead on stretchers, showing their roles as caretakers, medicine people, and death workers.
“Dance to the berdash”, 1835-1837, by george catlin. depicting multiple men dancing around a two-spirit person among the sauk and fox
cheyenne he’emane’o in a ledger drawing depicting the victory dance held after Custer's defeat in 1876
Cheyenne hetaneman, 1889. An AFAB two-spirit person in battle, wearing a men’s breechcloth, depicted on a ledger drawing.
a unknown quechan kwe’rhame, c. 1890s — one of the only known photographs of an afab two-spirit person from this era, wearing a men’s breechcloth and bow guards on their wrists.
Some notable Two-Spirit individuals in the historic record, whom we’ll be covering in their own episodes!
Bíawacheeitchish, also kown as Woman Chief or “Pine Leaf”, a Crow warrior
Hosteen Klah (Diné: Hastiin Tłʼa), a Diné nádleehi artist and medicine person
Lozen (1840-1889), Chiricahua Apache warrior woman, prophet, and one of the most trusted member’s of geronimo’s band fighting against colonizers
Osh-Tisch (also spelled Ohchiish), a Crow badé
We’Wha (1849-1896), a Zuni lhamana, fibert artist, weaver, and potter who became a cultural ambassador for the Zuni people and indigenous americans in general
What happened to these histories: The Effects of Colonialism
As soon as European invaders arrived, the oppression of Native peoples in the Americas begun, and violence and anti-indigenous treatment generally went one of two ways — violence and genocide or assimilation.
One of the most infamous events of genocide and hatred against Indigenous Two-Spirit peoples was in 1513, when Spanish colonizer Vasco Nuñez de Balboa had forty two-spirit people that he encountered in Panama put to death by his dogs. The event was depicted in an engraving based on a painting published by Theodore de Bry.
One of the other ways settler colonialism enacted violence upon Indigenous peoples was to work through assimilation and erasure and restriction of their culture — namely through institutions called “residential schools” or “boarding schools”, though they are better described as assimilation camps.
The children in these institutions were subjected to countless types of abuse, from physical, sexual, emotional, to religious. They were given new Anglo-Saxon names, forced to wear western dress and their traditional clothing destroyed, forbidden from speaking their languages or practicing Indigenous customs, and their hair was cut.
Indigenous children at the Carlisle Indian School, an assimilation camp (“Residential/boarding school”), founded in 1879 with the goal of separating children from their families and “killing the indian to save the man”.
A Diné (Navajo Nation) student of carlisle Indian Boarding School in the 1880s, in a “before and after” sequence. The student file lists him as Tom Torlino— his Diné name was Hastiin To'Haali.
Two-Spirit Artists, Activists, and Influences to Follow Today:
Geo Soctomah Neptune (Passamaquoddy), she/they, is a master basket weaver, performer, and model. She became the first openly Two-Spirit person elected to public office in Maine during 2020!
View this profile on InstagramGeo Soctomah Neptune (@niskapisuwin) • Instagram photos and videos
Kairyn Potts (Nakota Sioux), he/him, is a Winkte Two-Spirit Indigenous youth advocate, comedian, and actor. He hosts a Snapchat video series on Indigenous youth culture with Marika Sila called Reclaim(ed). He also has some really hilarious comedy videos on his Instagram and TikTok you should definitely check out.
View this profile on InstagramKairyn Potts (@ohkairyn) • Instagram photos and videos
Anachnid (Oji-Cree/Mi’kmaq), she/her, is a Canadian electronic musician based in Montreal and won the Felix Award for Indigenous Artist of the Year at the 43rd Félix Awards in 2021. Her album, Dreamweaver, was released in February 2020
(Note: We mispronounced this artist’s name as Arachnid in the episode, our apologies!)
Bobby Sanchez (Quechua Wari), she/they, is a rapper, poet, and model. Check out her amazing track “Quechua 101 Land Back Please”:
Recommended reading for Two-Spirit poetry and literature:
Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature
BAAITS Two-Spirit Powwow 2023
The Bay Area American Indian Two Spirits Powwow is coming up on Saturday, February 4 in San Francisco! If you are local to the area, or even just want to check it out virtually via the livestream or some of the events they have going on in the week preceding the event, check it out at www.baaits.org!
Online Articles & Resources:
"LGBTQIA+ Pride and Two-Spirit People" by Anya Montiel, Smithsonian Magazine.
"Appropriate Terms" by Alice B. Kehoe, Society for American Archaeology
"Turquoise Boy: Origins of the Two-Spirits" by Dancing Moccasins
"Two Spirits, Nádleeh, and LGBTQ2 Navajo Gaze" by Gabriel S. Estrada
Two-Spirit People: Sex, Gender & Sexuality in Historic and Contemporary Native America
Books and Print Articles:
Fulton, Robert, and Steven W. Anderson. “The Amerindian ‘Man-Woman’: Gender, Liminality, and Cultural Continuity.” Current Anthropology 33, no. 5 (1992): 603–10. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2743927.
Parsons, Elsie Clews. “The Zuñi Ła’mana.” American Anthropologist 18, no. 4 (1916): 521–28. http://www.jstor.org/stable/660121.
Smithers, Gregory D. “Cherokee ‘Two Spirits’: Gender, Ritual, and Spirituality in the Native South.” Early American Studies 12, no. 3 (2014): 626–51. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24474873.
Dozono, Tadashi. “Teaching Alternative and Indigenous Gender Systems in World History: A Queer Approach.” The History Teacher 50, no. 3 (2017): 425–47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44507259.
Katz, Jonathan Ned. “Native Americans/Gay Americans 1528-1976”, Gay American History: Lesbians & Gay Men in the U.S.A.
Kit Heyam. “‘Because of the manifestation of Spirit’: Gender, spirituality and survival in North America and South Asia”, Before We Were Trans
Roscoe, Will. Changing Ones: Third & Fourth Genders in Native North America
Williams, Walter L. The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture
Roscoe, Will (editor). Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology
In this interview episode, Leigh sits down for a conversation with historian and writer Hugh Ryan about his landmark book The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison. The Women's House of Detention is the story of one building: the people it caged, the neighborhood it changed, and the resistance it inspired. Listen for an extremely enlightening conversation on the unlikely queer community found in a space of incarceration in the heart of New York's Greenwich Village, the ways in which the carceral state specifically targets queer women and transmasculine people, and the case for abolition as prioritizing of systems of care.
-Publisher’s Weekly
Photo credit: M. Sharkey/Bold Type Books
@hughryan on mastodon.lol
@hugh_ryan on twitter
@hughoryan on instagram
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.
Photo credit: Sharona Jacobs
Shortly after Last Night at the Telegraph Club was published, Malinda treated readers to a wonderful series on her blog called Notes from the Telegraph Club, presenting some of the research she had conducted for the novel and diving into the historical context that makes up Lily and Kath’s world in 1954 San Francisco.
We highly recommend reading them! You can read the whole series at the link above, but here are some of our favorite articles:
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:
@malindalo on twitter
@malindalo on instagram
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.
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:
@krheyam on Twitter
Some of Kit’s writing:
“How Museums Hide Women’s and Queer Histories in Plain Sight”, The Public Medievalist
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:
Articles on Medium
@TylerAlbertario on Twitter
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
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.
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.
Online Articles & Resources:
Books and Print Articles:
"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
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:
Articles on Medium
@TylerAlbertario on Twitter
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.
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.
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.
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.
Online Articles & Resources:
‘Homophiles’: The LGBTQ rights movement began long before Stonewall
“From Homophile Movement to Gay Liberation” by Clark A. Pomerleau
“The Women of Color Behind the Daughters of Bilitis” by Malinda Lo
GLBT Historical Society’s Primary Source Set: Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon
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.
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!
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 Writes on Facebook
@BreeinTX on Twitter
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.
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.
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
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.
Online Articles & Resources:
Column: How 2.8 million California voters nearly banned gay teachers from public schools
The Briggs Initiative: Remembering a Crucial Moment in Gay History
Celebrating Harvey Milk and the Defeat of the Briggs Initiative - #ACLUTimeMachine
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
“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
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. “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 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:
www.xenawarriormusical.com
@XenatheMusical Twitter
@XenaWarrior Musical Instagram
@XenaWarriorMusical Facebook
@XenaWarriorMusical Youtube
You can purchase and download the entire concept album for Xena: Warrior Musical on Bandcamp!
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:
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
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.
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.
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:
"The Warrior Woman" by Geoffrey Bunting for History of Yesterday
“Unearthing the Secret Life of a Viking Warrior Woman” by Sarah Durn for Atlas Obscura
“An officer and a gentlewoman from the viking army in Birka” from Science Daily
Gesta Danorum (The Danish History) by Saxo Grammaticus, available on Project Gutenberg
“Warrior Women of West Africa” by Michael Lyons for Xtra Magazine
“The legend of Benin’s fearless female warriors” by Fleur Macdonald for BBC
In this episode, we introduced everyone to all the details we could fit about the badass warrior women of antiquity, the Amazons! In this first part of a two-part episode examining warrior women throughout history, we dove full-tilt into the myths, legends, and misconceptions about the all-female militant society that struck fear into the hearts of ancient Greek men – powerful women, GASP! Where did these stories come from? How queer were they? And were they real, or just figments of mythology? Listen to the episode for those answers, and come back here for more bonus material!
But first, let me introduce to your fantabulous guest hosts for this episode, Lucier&Rose!
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 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:
www.xenawarriormusical.com
@XenatheMusical Twitter
@XenaWarrior Musical Instagram
@XenaWarriorMusical Facebook
@XenaWarriorMusical Youtube
You can purchase and download the entire concept album for Xena: Warrior Musical on Bandcamp!
The history of the Sauromatae is as I will now show. When the Greeks warred with the Amazons (whom the Scythians call Oiorpata, a name signifying in our tongue killers of men, for in Scythian a man is oior, and to kill is pata) after their victory on the Thermodon they sailed away carrying in three ships as many Amazons as they had been able to take alive; and out at sea the Amazons set upon the crews and threw them overboard. But they knew nothing of ships, nor how to use rudder or sail or oar; and the men being thrown overboard they were borne at the mercy of waves and winds, till they came to the Cliffs by the Maeetian lake; this place is in the country of the free Scythians. There the Amazons landed, and set forth on their journey to the inhabited country. But at the beginning of their journey they found a place where horses were reared; and carrying these horses away they raided the Scythian lands on horseback.
Now the men could not learn the women's language, but the women mastered the speech of the men; and when they understood each other, the men said to the Amazons, "We have parents and possessions; now therefore let us no longer live as we do, but return to the multitude of our people and consort with them; and we will still have you, and no others, for our wives." To this the women replied, "Nay, we could not dwell with your women; for we and they have not the same customs. We shoot with the bow and throw the javelin and ride, but the crafts of women we have never learned; and your women do none of the things whereof we speak, but abide in their waggons working at women's crafts, and never go abroad a‑hunting or for aught else. We and they therefore could never agree. Nay, if you desire to keep us for wives and to have the name of just men, go to your parents and let them give you the allotted share of their possessions, and after that let us go and dwell by ourselves. The young men agreed and did this.
In ancient time, when Otreus fill'd the throne,
When godlike Mygdon led their troops of horse,
And I, to join them, raised the Trojan force:
Against the manlike Amazons we stood,
And Sangar's stream ran purple with their blood.
But far inferior those, in martial grace,
And strength of numbers, to this Grecian race.
[2.5.9] The ninth labour he enjoined on Hercules was to bring the belt of Hippolyte. She was queen of the Amazons, who dwelt about the river Thermodon, a people great in war; for they cultivated the manly virtues, and if ever they gave birth to children through intercourse with the other sex, they reared the females; and they pinched off the right breasts that they might not be trammelled by them in throwing the javelin, but they kept the left breasts, that they might suckle. Now Hippolyte had the belt of Ares in token of her superiority to all the rest…Having put in at the harbor of Themiscyra, he received a visit from Hippolyte, who inquired why he was come, and promised to give him the belt. But Hera in the likeness of an Amazon went up and down the multitude saying that the strangers who had arrived were carrying off the queen. So the Amazons in arms charged on horseback down on the ship. But when Hercules saw them in arms, he suspected treachery, and killing Hippolyte stripped her of her belt. And after fighting the rest he sailed away and touched at Troy.
[E.5.1] Penthesilia, daughter of Otrere and Ares, accidentally killed Hippolyte and was purified by Priam. In battle she slew many, and amongst them Machaon, and was afterwards herself killed by Achilles, who fell in love with the Amazon after her death and slew Thersites for jeering at him.
[E.5.2] Hippolyte was the mother of Hippolytus; she also goes by the names of Glauce and Melanippe. For when the marriage of Phaedra was being celebrated, Hippolyte appeared in arms with her Amazons, and said that she would slay the guests of Theseus. So a battle took place, and she was killed, whether involuntarily by her ally Penthesilia, or by Theseus, or because his men, seeing the threatening attitude of the Amazons, hastily closed the doors and so intercepted and slew her.
[E.1.16] Theseus joined Hercules in his expedition against the Amazons and carried off Antiope, or, as some say, Melanippe; but Simonides calls her Hippolyte. Wherefore the Amazons marched against Athens, and having taken up a position about the Areopagus19 they were vanquished by the Athenians under Theseus. And though he had a son Hippolytus by the Amazon,
[E.1.17] Theseus afterwards received from Deucalion in marriage Phaedra, daughter of Minos; and when her marriage was being celebrated, the Amazon that had before been married to him appeared in arms with her Amazons, and threatened to kill the assembled guests. But they hastily closed the doors and killed her. However, some say that she was slain in battle by Theseus.
[3.9.2] And Iasus had a daughter Atalanta by Clymene, daughter of Minyas. This Atalanta was exposed by her father, because he desired male children; and a she bear came often and gave her suck, till hunters found her and brought her up among themselves. Grown to womanhood, Atalanta kept herself a virgin, and hunting in the wilderness she remained always under arms. The centaurs Rhoecus and Hylaeus tried to force her, but were shot down and killed by her. She went moreover with the chiefs to hunt the Calydonian boar, and at the games held in honor of Pelias she wrestled with Peleus and won. Afterwards she discovered her parents, but when her father would have persuaded her to wed, she went away to a place that might serve as a racecourse, and, having planted a stake three cubits high in the middle of it, she caused her wooers to race before her from there, and ran herself in arms; and if the wooer was caught up, his due was death on the spot, and if he was not caught up, his due was marriage. When many had already perished, Melanion came to run for love of her, bringing golden apples from Aphrodite, and being pursued he threw them down, and she, picking up the dropped fruit, was beaten in the race. So Melanion married her. And once on a time it is said that out hunting they entered into the precinct of Zeus, and there taking their fill of love were changed into lions. But Hesiod and some others have said that Atalanta was not a daughter of Iasus, but of Schoeneus; and Euripides says that she was a daughter of Maenalus, and that her husband was not Melanion but Hippomenes And by Melanion, or Ares, Atalanta had a son Parthenopaeus, who went to the war against Thebes.
An ancient Greek Attic white-ground alabastron, depicting an Amazon wearing pants, wielding a bow. Image credit: British Museum
Atalanta wrestling Peleus. Chalcidian black-figure hydria, ca 6th century BCE. Staatliche Antikensammlung collection, Berlin, Germany.
Check out the geometric patterns and hat on the figure on the right, depicting an Amazon warrior!
Amazonomachy on a vase ca. 420 BCE— check out the similar patterns as above!.
Amazons battling the Athenians, Theseus in the center. It may be Hippolyte or Antiope on the horse. Terracotta red-figure volute-krater, ca 450 BCE, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
Amazonomachy frieze on the mausoleum at Halicarnassus.
Heracles battling the Amazons, Hippolyte wearing Ares’ war belt in the center — Attic black-figure neck amphora, ca. 510-500 BCE.
Another vase depicting Heracles battling the Amazons and killing Hippolyte.
And here’s a different version of the myth depicted on a vase— this time Hippolyte freely offering Heracles the war belt. Red-figure bell krater, Campania, Italy, ca. 4th-5th century BCE. Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester.
Achilles killing Penthesilea on an amphora
Look at the contrast between the vases depicting Amazons and this one, showing the more demure, domestic life of Greek women.
The areas we’re dealing with when talking about Amazons generally consists of the lands surrounding the Black Sea, where various nomadic tribes lived— including the Thracians, Scythians, and Sarmatians:
Artist D V Pozdnjakov’s impression of a Scythian woman warrior on horseback.
Drawings of Scythian tattoos, illustrated by Elena Schumakova, from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethography, Russian Academy of Sciences.
Tattoos of the 13 year old “Ice Princess” Ukok mummy, discovered by Natalya Polosmak on the Ukok Plateau in Siberia.
A 2500 year-old Iranic Scythian woman mummy, showing the stag tattoo on her arm.
Some Scythian tattoo designs seen on a mummy found in 2017 - State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
Scythian woman wearing a ceremonial headdress. Institute of Russian Archaeology, Academy of Sciences
Golden Scythian warrior from the Issyk kurgan. Image credit: Derzsi Elekes Andor
Preserved Scythian women’s boots, leather, cloth, tin and gold, excavated from the Pazyryk kurgan area, ca. 300-290 BCE.
Two Scythian warrior women’s graves excavated at a cemetery called Devitsa V in Siberia, which contains 19 burial mounds. Look at the bowed position of the bottom graves’ legs, as if she were riding a horse! Institute of Archaeology RAS.
Mythical Amazon queen Penthesilea being presented with a love-gift of a rabbit by Thracian huntress Theraichme, one of the few pieces of visual evidence we have of possible wlw relationships between Amazons. white-ground alabastron, Pasaides Painter, ca. 525-500 BCE
Small metal plaques depicting Scythians drinking, most likely fermented mares’ milk — State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2017.
Amazon terracotta figures, ca. 300-280 BCE. South Italian Canosan
Detail from a Karagodeuashkh kurgan headdress, showing the Scythian goddess Tabiti surrounded by priestesses and androgynous enarei shamans (shown on the right).
Cannabis burning equipment found in a Scythian grave.
Some gold vessels found in another grave — the Scythians really knew how to make fancy blinged-out bongs!
Books and Print Articles:
The Amazons: Lives & Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor
“Amazons: Warrior Women of the Ancient World”, National Geographic History, January 2020 issue
The Library of Greek Mythology by Apollodorus, translated by Robin Hard
Online Articles/Resources:
“Atalanta: The Forgotten Greek Heroine” by Bethany Williams, for The Collector
“Amazon Warriors Did Indeed Fight and Die Like Men” by Simon Worrall, for National Geographic
“Siberian Princess reveals her 2,500 year old tattoos” for The Siberian Times
“Were There Ever Real Amazons?” by Jessica Mason for The Mary Sue
For the first time on the pod we’re covering someone who is still among us: Synth pioneer Wendy Carlos. This computer nerd and classical music enthusiast helped create electronic music the way we know it today. Her friend Robert Moog might be the one whose name is attached to the different kinds of synthesizers, but according to Moog himself Wendy Carlos deserves all the credit. From The Beatles to Donna Summer, from The Shining to Daft Punk— none of them would have sounded the way we know them now. Even classical artists like Bach and Beethoven were completely redefined because of Carlos’ work. Get ready for a deep dive into the achievements of this transistor trans sister!
But first, let me introduce to you our guest host for this episode, Hannah van Rhee!
Music plays a huge role in queer life. With so many memories, anecdotes and other stories that have songs attached to them, it would be a shame if no one would ever share them. Through the QueerSounds podcast, Hannah van Rhee (they/them) hopes to give queer folks a break from all kinds of activism by creating a space where they can just talk about their favourite songs and have a laugh. From obscure Indonesian movie soundtracks to the biggest pop divas in the world, Hannah and their guests cover it all.
They're born a Pisces and raised in the Netherlands. They're close to getting a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a minor in music marketing and management. Hannah is a stereotypical vegan, yoga-practicing, thrift-shopping brand of queer with some of their favourite types of music being Punk and Disco.
Locate Hannah and QueerSounds upon the internet:
@duchessofdeer on Twitter
@queersoundspod Twitter
@queersoundspod Instagram
Robert Moog with his Moog Synthesizer in 1970. Jack Robinson/Getty Images
Wendy in 1972.
Wendy in 1979 at her Moog synthesizer.
Another 1979 photo. Image from Len Delessio/Corbis/Getty Images
Wendy in her studio in 1992, flanked by her three Siamese cats.
Wendy in her studio in the early 1990s
Blueprints for Wendy’s studio in her NYC apartment, lovingly nicknamed “The Spaceship” by her and friends.
First up, check out the transition from Beethoven’s original composition “Ode an die Freude/Ode to Joy”:
And below, Wendy’s synthesizer version arranged for Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange in 1971:
And another clip from A Clockwork Orange, this time Beethoven’s Ninth.
Below, the opening sequence to Wendy’s return to Kubrick with The Shining, one of the two tracks produced by Carlos and Elkind that ended up in the final film:
And music from Tron:
Before Wendy had come out publicly, here she is demonstrating her Moog in 1970, with the pasted-on sideburns and wig, dressing in drag for this BBC feature.
And here’s another from BBC, this time in 1989
Here’s one with her and Robert Moog!
We’re not usually fans of Amazon around here, but considering you can’t get Wendy’s music anywhere online other than the few bits we linked to above, they will be the best resource for purchasing her albums! You can check them all out here.
Books and Print Articles:
Online Articles/Resources:
History is Gay podcast that examines the underappreciated and overlooked queer ladies, gents, and gentle-enbies that have always been there in the unexplored corners of history. Because history has never been as straight as you think.
