Category: #QueerHeroes

In June of 2018, I began posting a brief bio and picture/video of a different queer hero every day to Facebook to celebrate Pride. The posts became invigorating to write and research; a way to commemorate the reasons Pride exists.

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#QueerHeroes Day 25 – Dan Choi

#QueerHeroes Day 25.
Dan Choi.

Choi studied at Westpoint and after getting degrees in Arabic and engineering, he toured in Iraq. After serving, he transferred to the New York National Guard. Choi fell in love in 2008 and then came out to his parents. They weren’t accepting. Now that the worst had happened, he found himself less afraid.

He started a group of gay West Point graduates called Knights Out of which he was the spokesperson, but he really began making waves during an appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show, where he said:

“I am an infantry platoon leader in the New York Army National Guard, and by saying three words to you today—I am gay—those three words are a violation of Title X of the U.S. Code.”

He was right. With those three words, his military career was over. His discharge was finalized in 2010 and he went on to dedicate his life to queer activism, going on a seven day hunger strike and chaining himself to the White House fence three times. He was even arrested in Moscow for marching in a Pride parade banned by the city.

In 2010, a federal judge ordered the defense department to stop enforcing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Choi immediately went to the army recruiting center in Times Square to re-enlist in the military.

When DADT was finally repealed later that year, he was by President Obama’s side to watch him sign the bill.

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#QueerHeroes Day 24 – Gilbert Baker

#QueerHeroes Day 24
Gilbert Baker.

Baker was an army medic stationed in San Francisco in the 60’s. He was out even then and later honorably discharged. While working to pass one of California’s first marijuana legalization bills, a fellow activist taught him to sew.

He began making banners for early queer rights organizations and later joined the drag activist group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (he’d quit later, saying that Evangelists had begun using them as propaganda).

In 1978, he designed a flag meant to symbolize the entire LGBTQ community. It was a rainbow constructed of eight colors: Hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for serenity, and violet for spirit. He never trademarked the design because he said it was for the LGBTQ community. He and thirty activists stitched the first two flags for San Francisco’s Gay Freedom Day Parade.

He moved to New York in the 90’s, creating special editions of the flag to commemorate Stonewall anniversaries. One stretched from Key West to the Gulf of Mexico.

Baker passed away last year in his sleep.

 

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#QueerHeroes Day 23 – Robert Mapplethorpe

#QueerHeroes Day 23.
Robert Mapplethorpe

Mapplethorpe was raised in a strict Catholic family before moving to New York in the 60’s. There, he met the legendary Patti Smith and the two began living together.

Originally, Mapplethorpe mostly worked with sketches and collage. He would visit magazine shops to purchase numerous issues of porn magazines, then cut them up in his apartment at the historic Chelsea Hotel.

It got frustrating because most of the magazines would be wrapped in plastic, so he wouldn’t be able to know if the contents were worth purchasing til after he’d done so (though he was sometimes too broke to buy them and would get caught stealing them).

Another Chelsea Hotel resident gave him a secondhand camera and Mapplethorpe began experimenting with photography, starting with candid photographs including those of Patti Smith (He shot the cover for her breakthrough album Horses).

Mapplethorpe came out as bisexual and his work began to delve into the cruising culture of the 70’s, synthesizing leather and sex and religious iconography.

He even did a book of photographs of flowers that somehow still teemed with eroticism. Mapplethorpe even made flowers NSFW. His photography and unyielding documentation of S&M, queer love, and perceived perversion took New York and eventually the world by storm.


He passed away from AIDS in 1989. A biopic called “Mapplethorpe” will be released later this year.

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#QueerHeroes Day 22 – Angel Haze

#QueerHeroes Day 22.
Angel Haze

Angel Haze is an agender pan Brooklyn rapper. As a child, they used writing as a form of therapy, with their first poem published at thirteen. They began freestyle rapping at 18 and quickly gained popularity through free streaming of their original songs on sites like SoundCloud.

Their tracks are motivational in their anger and emotional transparency, addressing blackness, misogyny, organized religion, and sexuality with a complexity that’s nothing short of mesmerizing. Before releasing their first full album Dirty Gold, Roes released a version of “Same Love” with all new verses that strike to the heart of what it is to be queer.

“We are boxed in and labeled
Before we’re ever able to speak who we believe we are
Or who we dream we’ll become
Like drum beats forever changing their rhythm
I am living today as someone I had not yet become yesterday
And tonight I’ll only borrow pieces of who I am today
To carry with me to tomorrow
No, I’m not gay
No, I’m not straight
And I sure as hell am not bisexual
Damn it I am whoever I am when I am it
Loving whoever you are when the stars shine
And whoever you’ll be when the sun rises
So here’s to being able
Here’s to love
Here’s to loving just because
Here’s to acceptance
Here’s to never fearing the fear of rejection
Here’s to love and never neglecting who you feel you are
Here’s to bullies because beatings cannot last forever
Here’s to the moment you realize things do get better
Here’s to the parents who will get it when its too late
Here’s to second chances
Here’s to new fate
Here’s to every single moment you’ve ever had to hide you
Here’s to the single star shining bright inside you, asking you to guide you
Here’s to who you’ll be when you figure it all out
Here’s to momentary doubt
Here’s to feeling, because we all feel it the same
Here’s to the moment that things will change
Because we all feel love, we all feel it the same
Here’s to love, here’s to change”

“I’m really fucked up right now too, because I’ve learned that I don’t even write my own music. I stopped doing every drug known to man, I didn’t drink before. I’ve been completely sober since last March. I’ve been living my life every day inside of my body, working on this kind of awareness — understanding that every area of your life is calling out to you in some way. It’s not about the Bible. It’s not about going to church. It’s not about anything other than that we are all energies connected with a force that’s greater than us. It’s an energy that’s omniscient, it covers the whole world and everybody here is created for a reason. Mine happens to be to make the music and inspire the people who are stuck in dark places.”

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#QueerHeroes Day 21  – Aubrey Beardsley

#QueerHeroes Day 21
Aubrey Beardsley.

Beardsley is regarded by most as asexual, but his art teemed with eroticism from the content to the curves and complements of every stroke.

He was popular with the eccentrics of London. He was great friends with Oscar Wilde and even illustrated a published edition of Wilde’s controversial play Salomé. He also illustrated an NSFW edition of Trojan Women as well as a variety of magazine covers.

Shortly after Wilde’s infamous gross indecency trial, Beardsley converted to catholicism and began an effort to have his sexual drawings removed from circulation. It only made them more popular.

Beardsley changed the course of design and is considered one of the founders of the Art Noveau movement. In her essay Notes on Camp, Susan Sontag describes Beardsley’s decadence and style as pure camp, but like all great camp, there’s a beautiful earnestness and sensitivity underlying it.