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 10 – Candy Darling

#QueerHeroes Day 10.
Candy Darling.

Candy was born in 1944. After learning “the mysteries of sex from a local salesman in a children’s shoe store,” she began presenting as feminine and frequenting a queer bar called The Hayloft. When her mother confronted her about the rumors, Candy went in the next room then returned to face her mother in a dress. Her mother said, “I knew then that I couldn’t stop my [Candy]. Candy was just too beautiful and talented.”

In 1967, she starred in an off-broadway play written by Jackie Curtis and co-starring a young Robert DeNiro. Warhol attended a performance. The two were introduced by friends that night at a club called Salvation. By the end of the night, Candy was the latest of Warhol’s muses. She would go on to star in a number of his films. But she wasn’t just limited to Warhol. She played Karen in the 1971 film “Some of My Best Friends Are” (also starring Rue McClanahan aka Blanche Deveraux from “The Golden Girls”). The movie is, I think, sentimental and kind of a bore, but it was edgy for its time because it took place in a Greenwich Village gay bar on Christmas Eve.

Candy was just as entrancing when she wasn’t playing a character. In addition to being Warhol’s muse, she also inspired a lyric in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”:

“Candy came from out on the island,
In the backroom she was everybody’s darling,
But she never lost her head
Even when she was giving head
She says, hey baby, take a walk on the wild side
Said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side.”

Darling died in 1974 of Lymphoma at age 29. She’s been portrayed in films, television, and onstage. She even has a magazine, C☆NDY, known as “the first transversal style magazine,” named after her.

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#QueerHeroes Day 9 – E.M. Forster

#QueerHeroes Day 9.
E.M. Forster

Forster was an English novelist most known for writing A Room With a View, Passage to India, and Howard’s End. However, at the second half of his life he never published another novel; only occasional short stories and essays. This sudden drop in output mystified historians until a collection of papers discovered after his death revealed that he’d spent his youth suppressing his same-sex attraction until losing his virginity at 38 to a wounded soldier in 1917 and finally began pursuing relationships and affairs after that. He didn’t have the same capacity to write novels at the same rate and couldn’t access the voices of upper class straight characters of the era anymore. “I should have been a more famous writer if I had written, or rather published more, but sex prevented the latter,” he wrote in his private diary.

The last novel he ever wrote wouldn’t be published until after his death.

Forster finished Maurice in 1913 and showed it to a few friends but didn’t dare publish it during his lifetime. It told the story of two male university students who realize their feelings for each other and carry on a decades long romance. Neither of the men become invalids or commit suicide or face social ostracism. They’re fully faceted. What’s more, it’s damn well-written. I admittedly haven’t read any of his other works, but. devoured “Maurice” and recommend it to everyone.

Forster died in 1970. Maurice was published in 1971.

 

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#QueerHeroes Day 8 – Sylvester

#QueerHeroes Day 8
Sylvester.

As a child, he stopped singing at church (because of the congregation’s disapproval) to pursue secular music. His grandmother was a blues singer in the 30s and supported the expression of his sexuality and his artistry wholeheartedly.

After moving to San Francisco in 1970 in a queer cabaret called The Cockettes, often doing a Billie Holiday drag tribute. He soon found two backing singers in Izora Rhodes and Martha Wash aka Two Tons O’ Fun (And later, as The Weather Girls, the two would take the world by storm with “It’s Raining Men.”). By the end of the decade, he was known as the “Queen of Disco.” Then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein declared March 11 “Sylvester Day,” giving him keys to the city to boot. This was the same year of his anthem “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).”

He’d later go on to be screwed over financially by his record label. As the disco era began to fade, he’d be forced to tone down the campiness that made him such an asset to producers in the previous decade. But if you’re ever in a queer bar when Mighty Real comes on, look at the faces around you lighting up and even the biggest prudes beginning to dance. He’s gonna live forever.

 

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#QueerHeroes Day 7 – Ma Rainey

#QueerHeroes Day 7
Ma Rainey.

Ma Rainey was born in the 1880’s and came to fame as a blues singer shortly after there came a demand for recording black women. Her recordings spread like wildfire and she soon was touring the country and released a set of recordings with Louis Armstrong.

Though most of her songs detailed romantic relationships with men, Ma Rainey was openly attracted to women. One night, her neighbors filed a noise complaint that led the cops to her door while she was having an orgy with a few of her background singers and fans. If your orgy gets a noise complaint, you did it right.

Ma Rainey was the only one who couldn’t evade the cops in time. The ensuing dispute led her to write “Prove it on me Blues,” which included the lyrics: “Went out last night with a couple my friends / It must’ve been women cause I don’t like no mens. / Wear my clothes just like a fan / talk to the girls just like any old man. / They say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me / Y’all got to prove it on me.”

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#QueerHeroes Day 6 – Edward Sagarin (Alias: Donald Webster Cory)

#QueerHeroes Day 6.
Edward Sagarin (Alias: Donald Webster Cory).

I was conflicted about including him, but his contributions are undeniable and his story is an interesting one.

Sagarin was born in 1913. He married his wife in the 30’s and worked in the perfume and cosmetics industry.

But he led a double life. Under the pseudonym Donald Webster Cory, Sagarin published “The Homosexual in America” in 1951 which earned him the reputation as “Father of the Homophile Movement.” It was one of the first publications in the US to not only discuss homosexual political causes and action, but to stand staunchly in support of us. He said, “The only homosexual problem that exists is the one created by heterosexual society.” The book sold thousands of copies, though hardly anyone read it in public.

If the Kinsey report showed gays of the era the scope of our numbers, “The Homosexual in America” rallied them. It’s undoubtable that the information and calls to action in the book helped advance the cause, however Sagarin didn’t advance with it.

Sagarin (as Cory) was a member of the Mattachine Society, and a conservative one at that. The group reached a divide and Sagarin was on the wrong side of it. Fellow Mattachine member Frank Kameny said to them in a speech, “The entire homophile movement is going to stand or fall upon the question of whether homosexuality is a sickness, and upon our taking a stand on it.” We know that this is exactly what happened and we began advancing leaps and bounds faster as society began to relinquish the idea that we are mentally ill. However, at the time, Sagarin was against Mattachine taking the position that homosexuality was not an illness or maldevelopment. He threatened to leave the organization if it took that position, to which Kameny replied: “You have become no longer the rigorous Father of the Homophile Movement, to be revered, respected, and listened to, but the senile Grandfather of the Homophile Movement, to be humored and tolerated at best, to be ignored and disregarded usually; and to be ridiculed, at worst.”

Sagarin remained closeted all his life.