Clint Witchalls, "‘Rainbow Wave’ of LGBTQ Candidates Run and Win in 2020 Election"
”More LGBTQ candidates ran for office in the United States in 2020 than ever before – at least 1,006. That’s a 41% increase over the 2018 midterms, according to the LGBTQ Victory Fund.”
Chris Johnson, "Gay conservatives get small victory: LGBTQ vote goes 61% Biden, 28% Trump"
”Amid celebration in the LGBTQ community over the wins of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2020 election, gay conservatives are claiming a small victory of their own with President Trump claiming a better than expected percentage of the LGBTQ vote.”
Emma Powys Maurice, “The Good, the Bad and the Sometimes Ugly History of New President-Elect Joe Biden and LGBT+ Rights"
”Though Biden is certainly now a powerful advocate for the LGBTQ community, his allyship is something he’s learned over a long, uneven career.”
Maria Cramer, "Woman Who Says She Was Fired for Being a Lesbian Is Elected Sheriff"
”Charmaine McGuffey, an ex-major in the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office in Ohio, defeated her former boss in a primary and won the general election against a candidate the sheriff had backed.”
Chris Johnson, “New ‘Blueprint’ Lights Way for Biden to Reverse Trump Policies on LGBTQ Rights"
”With LGBTQ advocacy organizations eager for change in the new Biden administration, the Human Rights Campaign has laid out proposals lighting the way forward with a detailed guide on administrative actions to reverse President Trump’s anti-LGBTQ policies.”
Zalman Rothschild, "‘Religious Equality’ Is Transforming American Law"
”The idea that people of faith must be protected from discrimination—even when that means they themselves will discriminate against others—is gaining traction in the courts.”
Monika Pronczuk and Benjamin Novak, "European Union Tries to Counter Anti-L.G.B.T.Q. Wave in Hungary and Poland"
”The bloc is trying to stop the Eastern European member nations from advancing discriminatory measures, but its legal powers are limited.”
Other Media
Podcast: Adventures in Time & Gender
”New Time-Traveling Drama Podcast Takes Listeners on a Moving and Inspiring Journey Through Transgender History. Adventures in Time and Gender is a light and quirky drama in which nothing is taboo and gender, science and history are playfully questioned. Listeners are invited to join a talking suitcase and their curious non-binary companion on a moving odyssey through time, space and Ikea to uncover transgender history.”
Article Spotlight
Lauren Jae Gutterman, ‘“Not My Proudest Moment”: Guilt, Regret, and the Coming-Out Narrative’, The Oral History Review, 46:1 (2019), 48-70, DOI: 10.1093/ohr/ohy059
This article draws on oral history interviews with twenty-six lesbian and bisexual women who came out within the context of heterosexual marriages between the 1970s and the early 2000s. Despite the extent to which the LGBTQ community emphasizes narratives of progress and triumph, feelings of shame, guilt, regret, and ambivalence figured significantly in these women's life stories, particularly with regard to their experiences of coming out. This article thus considers how oral history can provide queer narrators with an opportunity to share negative feelings that often remain unspoken within mainstream LGBTQ culture and politics.
Episode Spotlight
In 1966, before breast implants were widely available or popular, Jack Feather patented a "spring type breast developer." He made millions of dollars promising women that they could change their bodies and increase their sex appeal.
For more, listen here.
Books
Upcoming Events
Book Launch: Rachel Hope Cleves, "Unspeakable: A Life beyond Sexual Morality", 17 November 2020
”Unspeakable is the clear-eyed biography of Norman Douglas, a once beloved, now largely forgotten author—and an unrepentant and uncloseted pederast. Rachel Hope Cleves’s careful study of Douglas’s life opens a window onto the social history of intergenerational sex in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, revealing how charisma, celebrity, and contemporary standards protected Douglas from punishment—until they didn’t.”
Book Launch: Paulo Drinot, "The Sexual Question: A History of Prostitution in Peru, 1850s–1950s", Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation (CEDLA), University of Amsterdam, 4 December 2020
”Exploring links between sexuality, society, and state formation, this is the first history of prostitution and its politics in Peru. The history of prostitution, Paulo Drinot (University College London) shows, sheds light on the interplay of gender and sexuality, medicine and public health, and nation-building and state formation in Peru. With its compelling historical lens, this landmark study offers readers an engaging narrative, and new perspectives on Latin American studies, social policy, and Peruvian history.”
