In Vietnam, Xuân Diệu is considered a highly celebrated poet, whose innovative writing style and collective body of work left an indelible mark on the country’s literary landscape. In particular, Xuân Diệu’s influence in Vietnam reigns over the realm of romantic poetry, to the extent that he is still dubbed there “the King of Love Poetry”. Though he spent decades composing countless works about intimacy, passion and longing, Xuân Diệu kept much of his writing gender-neutral and lived a highly secretive personal life, concealing his sexuality and relationships with men for the entirety of his career.
Amelio Robles Ávila was an interesting man, but not one that would usually find himself written so largely into the history books. He joined the Mexican Revolution in either 1911 or 1912 and had a successful career as a colonel in the army throughout the revolution. He would be decorated for his service after it was complete, and then settled with his wife in a small town and lived in relative quiet. What draws so many eyes to his story, in particular, is one facet: he was assigned female at birth.
At one point billed as “The World’s Greatest Actress”, Alla Nazimova, who was also for a time the highest paid actress in the film industry, is somehow a name that is still relatively unknown to most. Despite the pioneering work she did in both movies and onstage, including being the first woman to start her own film production company in the 1910s, the majority of Nazimova’s career has been lost to history, as almost all of her films were never preserved. Additionally, having bedded some of the most famous queer women in the entertainment industry and coining the term “Sewing Circle” to refer to the community of lesbian and bisexual actresses and artists who concealed their true sexuality from the public, Nazimova was also an extremely pivotal but oft forgotten LGBTQ pioneer who has been dubbed the “Founding Mother of Sapphic Hollywood.”
Although LGBTQ+ rights in Eastern Europe and Western Asia have gotten more coverage recently, many do not know how dire the situation is in Azerbaijan. As a result, many overlooked the contributions that Azerbaijani activist Isa Shahmarli made to the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, resulting in a lack of scholarship on his activism. Some of his contributions include actions he took as the founder and Chairman of Azad LGBT, bolstering queer representation, and providing a safe space for queer Azerbaijanis. Sadly, he committed suicide on January 22, 2014, when he was only 20 years old. Despite this devastating event, Shahmarli has given LGBTQ+ individuals in Azerbaijan and other Muslim-majority countries hope for a future more inclusive of the rainbow.
Dubbed by many “The Oprah of Indonesia”, Dorce Gamalama rose from the ashes of a difficult childhood to become one of the most notable and beloved transgender icons in her home country. Despite the challenges of living in a nation with limited LGBTQ rights, Dorce met any resistance and curiosity to her transition with humor and wit, and persevered to live as her true self while also promoting a life of kindness and generosity. Dorce’s integral role in the Indonesian television industry helped shed light on trans visibility in an otherwise predominantly religious and conservative country and shifted many Indonesian people’s perceptions towards transgender people on the whole.
In the 2019 documentary film Halston, filmmaker Frédéric Tcheng questions Halston’s former illustrator and confidant Joe Eula about the nature of the fashion designer’s relationship with his lover, Victor Hugo. Tcheng asks, “Why did Halston put up with Victor?” to which Eula replies, “Because he was in love with him.” Tcheng then presses further, asking: “When did it fall apart?” and Eula, without skipping a beat, retorts, “The day they met.” Victor Hugo was born Victor Rojas in Caracas, Venezuela during a coup d'état that took place on November 24th, 1948, when Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, Marcos Pérez Jiménez and Luis Felipe Llovera Páez overthrew the elected president, Rómulo Gallegos. Not much else is documented surrounding Rojas’ early life in Venezuela, but sometime in the early 1970s, he and his mother emigrated to the United States, landing in New York City.
Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria made his mark in history as a boldly effeminate bisexual ruler with a petulant personality to boot, who, at numerous times during his reign, proved to be an actually effective world leader. The self-declared “Emperor of the New Byzantium”, though bewitched by frippery and flashiness throughout his life, showcased his strength as a politician when he successfully led his country to prosperity during times of peace. Ferdinand, who was prone to dressing in flashy, feminine clothing, sashayed into a position of power amidst a sea of naysayers who spewed homophobic derisions and doubted his leadership capabilities, only to initially prove them all wrong. It was solely through a series of missteps in two consecutive wars married with Ferdinand’s unwavering vision to expand his country’s territory and help usher in a Bulgarian Renaissance, that the Tsar’s glorious reign would ultimately come crashing down and render Ferdinand an exiled failure.
In the telling of history, certain names are linked together. This is the case for Carmen Rupe and Dana de Milo, two transgender women from New Zealand. In the later years of her life, Dana was often interviewed and quoted in discussing Rupe and their friendship, which has led to the story of Rupe eclipsing that of de Milo. But Dana, as a woman who ran away at 13 and lived openly as a transgender woman, is an interesting person in her own right and deserves more attention in the discussions of New Zealand’s queer history.
2022 has been a contentious year for many of us, but amidst our shared struggles are also well-fought victories. As we wrap up 2022 and hope for a better 2023, let’s look at 22 of our community’s victories.
As the first man to undergo modern gender affirmation surgery, Karl M. Baer’s name is a familiar one in the story of queer history. Tangled together with the legacy of Magnus Hirschfeld, a fellow queer Jewish man living through the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, Baer’s is an interesting and worthwhile story to tell. Growing up as an intersex child who was assigned female at birth, he would go on to become a fierce feminist who identified as a man years before he got the medical support he would stumble upon. Like many transgender people, he was able to carve out a way to authentically exist as himself before he received any level of validation and would go on to live through one of the darkest moments of human history and find life after it.
Headlines were recently made when Netflix removed the “LGBTQ” tag from its series on Jeffrey Dahmer, after significant backlash from customers. As one viewer lamented, while it is "technically true" that serial killer Dahmer was gay, "this is not the representation we're looking for." Which begs the question, how are we meant to remember those who make queer history for criminal, immoral, or perceivably evil actions? As queer people–a people so often villainized throughout history based on the identity alone–our tendency now is to look for the role models, promote the do-gooders, and disassociate ourselves from the iniquitous, more controversial queers of the past. Constantly assuring the masses that we are not bad people because of our gender identity or sexual orientation, we eagerly tout our queer heroes while shoving the so-called queer villains of history under the rug. And while we know that one’s queerness and moral compass are not necessarily conjoined criteria, when it comes to a sinful queer figure, what often follows is an exploration of one’s relation to and effect on the other.
Transgender Day of Remembrance is an impossible day no matter how it is observed. In a world with increasing visibility for transgender people, there is increasing danger. There are celebrities spending every cent of their social currency attacking the most marginalized amongst us and politicians scrambling to unravel every inch of progress that has been made. Most pressingly, the violence has not stopped. It has not stopped since the first vigil was held in Rita Hester’s honour. Not since Chanelle Picket’s murder. This year as the names are read, there will be too many to remember fully.
Within the queer community, the connections between generations have always been strained. Outside of the queer community, there are many forces that are actively trying to inhibit the ability of queer people to connect, which are a large part if not all of this strain. The queer people that have been able to bridge these gaps, whether directly or indirectly, are massively important to the development of the queer community as a whole. There are costs that come with being able to defy the cultural norms and make those connections though, and those costs are clear when looking at the story of Roman Tam.
One way or another, in 1938 Monción was offered a scholarship to the recently established School of American Ballet, founded by the renowned Russo-Georgian-born choreographer George Balanchine, alongside Edward Warburg, and of course, Lincoln Kirstein. The school, which had only opened in 1934, had just begun recruiting male students at a time when few males in America were making their way into classical ballet. The School of American Ballet was looking to fill their roster, and so they accepted Monción as a scholarship student despite his dearth of experience. As a result, Monción only began professional dance training at twenty years old, an incredibly late age for any dancer to be starting out. Nevertheless, he immediately found himself in technique classes taught by the likes of accomplished dancers such as Pierre Vladimiroff, Anatole Oboukhoff, and Balanchine himself. Much like someone thrown into the deep end of a pool without knowing how to swim, Francisco was forced to adapt quickly.