🖥️ A apresentação de Joana Matias no congresso "A Memoria Diversa", sobre a história Queer em Portugal no século XX, está disponível no canal YouTube da Deputación da Coruña.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeAZHUIu43w
#Histodons #QueerHistory #QueerPortugal #LGBTQIA #PrideMonth #Orgulho #HistóriaQueer #Queer #LGBTStudies #HistoricalMemory #MemóriaHistórica #MemóriaQueer
Accusations of grooming leveled against trans people are no different to the arguments Anita Bryant made when she said gay people were “recruiting” kids to join their ranks.
https://medium.com/prismnpen/the-annihilation-of-transphobia-2f5aed620e8b
As is the case with much of #queerhistory, Manion notes that archival evidence of these gender nonconforming couples resides in the media interest sparked when they were outed.
Outing might have been aggressive, but Manion’s work also shows that this didn’t necessarily put a stop to people seeking these pairings: ‘I accessed the last surviving copy of a newspaper that allowed me to confirm that two different female husband cases involved the same person!’
2/4
This #ThrowbackThursday we’re zooming our #transhistory lens onto the topic of female husbands and people assigned female at birth who dressed in male attire, lived as men, and loved women.
First, let’s turn to Jen Manion’s Female Husbands, focused on 18th and 19th century couples in which the husbands were assigned female at birth.
Read our interview with Manion here: https://wp.me/p6JJ6S-4uX
1/4
Based in #Waterford? We have an event for #Pride happening tomorrow at the Library at 1:30 pm.
🌈 Join us for this bilingual workshop at Pride of the Déise 2025!
📚 Learn how to edit Wikipedia, upload photos, and take part in #WikiLovesPride!
💻 Free workshop – open to all, no experience needed.
🔗 Sign up now: https://tinyurl.com/5fby5uuz
#Vicipéid #Wikipedia #QueerHistory #DigitalActivism #FreeWorkshop #Ceardlann #LGBTQIA #WaterfordEvents
Musical Interlude: I just learned today that the late folk legend Dave van Ronk was among those arrested at the Stonewall Riots. He hadn't been at the Stonewall Inn, but had been at a diner down the street and walked down to see what the hoo-ha was about. Once he realized what was going on, he gleefully joined in throwing bricks at the police. That, my friends, is an ally.
"He Was a Friend of Mine," performed by Dave van Ronk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdO-tuDOlGQ
#MusicalInterlude #DaveVanRonk #QueerHistory #Allyship #FolkMusic
DJs Scott Anderson and George Roussos reflect on Woof Club at historic Melbourne queer venues Club 80 and The Peel and more.
#woofclub #queerparty #queerdjs #queermelbourne #melbourneparty #gaymelbourne #melbourneradio #3CRMelbourne #queerradio #queerhistory @3CRMelbourne
"It’s easy to lionize courage. It’s harder to reconcile it with queerness — especially when you’re a country still unsure how to celebrate a gay man without special qualifiers. In the aftermath of 9/11, Mark was praised as a patriot. But he was rarely acknowledged as a gay patriot.
...
Because to some, queerness complicates the hero archetype.
It shouldn’t.
But it does."
https://stranger.social/@prismnpen/114653839513843318
@prismnpen
https://medium.com/prismnpen/a-gay-hero-saved-the-u-s-capitol-and-changed-the-course-of-history-59745be9fe2b?sk=5ebaeba3eee7d75faae5e363eabc1530
#LGBTQ #QueerHistory #Sep11#MarkBingham #Gay
Mark Bingham saved lives. But his sexuality made his story harder for America to embrace. And so it did what it always does when queerness challenges its myths: it trimmed the truth down to something more comfortable. More palatable. More straight.
https://medium.com/prismnpen/a-gay-hero-saved-the-u-s-capitol-and-changed-the-course-of-history-59745be9fe2b?sk=5ebaeba3eee7d75faae5e363eabc1530
#LGBTQ #QueerHistory #Sep11#MarkBingham #Gay
WOW! My 2021 article 'Darwin's Closet: The Queer Sides of The Descent of Man (1871),' published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, has now been viewed over 50K times!
I'm working hard on the book. For more about that, watch this space! 🏳️🌈🐒
https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article/191/2/323/6075648
#history #histodons @histodons #histsci #histbio #HistSTM #HSTM #STS @histstm #QueerInSTEM #queer #lgbtq #lgbtqia #pride #pridemonth #queerhistory #histsex #sex #biology #nature #naturalhistory #science #animals #Darwin
This Tuesday kicks off our countdown of the Top 100 80s Gay Pride Songs! 🎉 Episode 1 features iconic hits from Madonna, Erasure, and Bronski Beat. Tune in all June long! Available everywhere you pod. #PrideMonth #80sMusic #GenX #QueerHistory #LGBTQ
The Passing of a Literary Giant: Remembering Edmund White and His Unmatched Legacy in LGBTQ+ History
Edmund White, one of the most revered gay authors of the 20th and 21st centuries, died in June 2025 at the age of 85. His death marks not only the end of a literary epoch, but also the fading of a generation of LGBTQ+ pioneers who lived, wrote, and loved out loud—despite the cultural gags placed on their identities. White’s presence in queer literature was seismic. For over five decades, he chronicled the complexities of gay identity with unflinching honesty and elegant prose, pushing open the closet doors that constrained generations before him. To write about Edmund White is to pay homage to a man who gave voice to silences too long endured.
For LGBTQ+ writers, thinkers, and readers, Edmund White was not merely an author. He was a cartographer of identity, mapping out the landscapes of queer desire, shame, tenderness, and joy in a society that was often determined to erase them. His words remain stitched into the fabric of queer history. Today, as we mourn his passing, we also celebrate a body of work that reshaped literature and society alike.
A Life Lived in Truth: Early Years and Formative Struggles
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1940, Edmund White’s journey began in the conservative midwestern United States—a region historically inhospitable to queer existence. His parents divorced when he was seven, a rupture that deeply influenced his understanding of family and identity. His early years were shaped by dislocation, internalized shame, and a dawning sense of otherness. By his own account, White always knew he was gay, but spent his adolescence mired in confusion and secrecy.
After studying at the University of Michigan, White moved to New York in the 1960s—a city that, even then, pulsed with queer undercurrents. It was there that he began to find his voice. The era was not kind to gay men: homosexuality was criminalized, demonized, and pathologized. And yet, White refused invisibility. “To be openly gay in the 1960s,” he later wrote, “was to be both radical and reckless.” But White’s bravery was not performative; it was existential. He wrote gay lives into literary legitimacy long before it was safe to do so.
His debut novel, Forgetting Elena (1973), received critical praise for its stylistic inventiveness and oblique social commentary. But it was his second novel, Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978), that signaled the emergence of a bold new gay literary voice. With its lyrical style and focus on a doomed gay love affair, the book became an emotional blueprint for a generation of queer men searching for meaning in a world that offered them little hope. White had found his calling—not merely to tell stories, but to ensure those stories centered the truth of gay experience.
The Defining Work: “A Boy’s Own Story” and the Semi-Autobiographical Canon
In 1982, White published A Boy’s Own Story, the first volume of what would become a semi-autobiographical trilogy (continued in The Beautiful Room is Empty and The Farewell Symphony). The book was revolutionary, portraying a young gay boy growing up in 1950s America—navigating desire, repression, and eventual self-acceptance. At the time, most literary depictions of gay life were veiled, tragic, or caricatured. White’s novel, by contrast, was a vivid and introspective coming-of-age tale, balancing erotic realism with profound psychological depth.
The protagonist’s experiences mirrored White’s own: sexual awakenings, fraught parental relationships, therapy aimed at “curing” homosexuality, and an endless hunger for validation and connection. But the novel was not merely confessional. It elevated the gay bildungsroman to high literary art. Critics and readers alike recognized its significance—not only for its candid portrayal of gay adolescence, but for its refusal to apologize for it.
As White continued the trilogy, he deepened his commitment to chronicling the personal and political evolution of gay men in America. The Beautiful Room is Empty (1988) offered a glimpse into pre-Stonewall New York, while The Farewell Symphony (1997) tackled the AIDS crisis and its decimation of a generation. Each book is a standalone achievement, but together they form one of the most powerful queer autobiographical arcs in literature.
Chronicler of Queer History: Biographies, Essays, and Cultural Critique
While White is best remembered for his novels, his nonfiction contributions are equally consequential. He wrote several acclaimed biographies, including Genet: A Biography (1993), about the French writer and political radical Jean Genet, and Marcel Proust: A Life (1999), which explored the closeted complexities of one of literature’s greatest minds. These works offered more than literary analysis; they recontextualized queerness in the pantheon of Western thought, insisting that homosexuality was not a footnote in history—it was central to it.
White’s essays, published widely in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other major outlets, dissected everything from gay culture to continental philosophy. In his 2009 memoir City Boy, he painted a vivid portrait of gay intellectual life in pre-AIDS New York. He was a founding member of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) in 1982—one of the first organizations in the U.S. to address the AIDS epidemic. White did not merely observe history; he lived and shaped it.
His 2006 collection, My Lives, offered autobiographical essays so brutally honest that some critics called them scandalous. But to readers familiar with the cost of invisibility, they were sacred: chronicles of survival, desire, and unapologetic self-exposure. He once said, “I wrote about my life not because it was extraordinary, but because I believed every gay life had a right to be known.”
Mentorship, Academia, and the Passing of the Torch
Later in life, White became a mentor to countless emerging queer writers. He taught creative writing at Princeton University and continued to publish well into his 80s. He received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction in 2018 and the Lambda Literary Pioneer Award in 2019. These accolades were not merely for longevity—they were recognition of his transformative impact on literature, identity, and cultural consciousness.
White’s teaching style was reportedly generous, if exacting. He encouraged students to be vulnerable, to write toward their wounds, and to stop censoring themselves for the comfort of straight audiences. He often spoke about the need for queer writers to claim their cultural lineage and avoid diluting their narratives to meet market demands. “Authenticity,” he said, “is the most radical form of craft.”
He also supported global LGBTQ+ rights, attending events around the world and using his platform to highlight injustices from Russia to Uganda. While White was not an activist in the traditional sense, his work made activism possible. He expanded the canon to include those who had long been erased or dismissed.
The Legacy Lives On: Why Edmund White Still Matters
White’s passing invites us to reflect on the legacy he leaves behind. In an age where queer visibility is both more prominent and increasingly under threat, White’s work serves as a reminder that progress is never linear and that storytelling is one of the most potent weapons against erasure.
His influence can be seen in the works of contemporary queer authors like Garth Greenwell, Ocean Vuong, Brandon Taylor, and Alexander Chee—all of whom have acknowledged the path he paved. Even as queer literature becomes more varied and intersectional, White’s contributions remain foundational. He gave literary form to longing and crafted an architecture of language where desire, despair, and joy could co-exist without apology.
More than that, he humanized gay life. In an era when gay men were depicted as deviants, criminals, or victims, White’s characters were complex, self-aware, deeply flawed, and undeniably alive. He made room in literature for the ecstatic and the ordinary aspects of gay experience—from first loves to failed relationships, from artistic ambition to physical decline.
Final Reflections: Mourning and Celebrating a Queer Titan
Edmund White died at 85, but he lived for all of us. His body of work is more than a collection of books—it is a sanctuary, a rebellion, a home. For readers who have ever felt unseen, unloved, or unworthy, his stories offered a mirror and a map. He wrote so that we could see ourselves not just surviving, but thriving in our full humanity.
As tributes pour in from around the world—from literary circles, LGBTQ+ organizations, former students, and devoted readers—it becomes clear that White’s death is not merely the loss of an individual, but the closing of a chapter in the broader queer cultural movement. He will never be replaced, but he will always be read.
White once wrote, “Hope is the essential lubricant of the human spirit.” In that spirit, we move forward with hope—hope that the stories he told will continue to inspire, challenge, and liberate.
Rest in power, Edmund White. Your words will never be silent.
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#aBoySOwnStory #aidsCrisis #communication #EdmundWhite #gayAuthors #gayComingOfAge #gayHistory #gayRights #History #influencers #JTSantana #jtSantanaSpeaks #jtwb768 #lgbtAuthors #lgbtLegacy #lgbtPioneer #lgbtq #lgbtqActivism #lgbtqLiterature #literaryTribute #prideMonth2025 #queer #queerHistory #queerStorytelling
@christineburns Did you see the Pride flags all along the Liffey?
An annual tradition, and continued by Dublin City Council partly in tribute to their late colleague, Ed Bowden, who began the initiative some years ago, and who sadly passed away in April 2021.
#QueerHistory #LGBTHistory #LGBTQHistory #DublinPride #Pride #Dublin #MastoDaoine
personally didn't want a human rights advocate's name on a genocidal war machine to begin with… but whatevs…
boats are still gay
& gay whales still fuckin beneath
🛥️🌈
🐳💦 🐋🏳️🌈
#Pinkwash #HarveyMilk #Queer #LGBTQ #Project2025 #PeteHegseth #USNavy #Antifa #QueerHistory
Untitled work (self-portrait as Elle, Bluebeard's wife) by Claude Cahun,1929 (silver gelatin print)
#queerartist #queerart #art #photography #surrealism #pridemonth #queerhistory
A banner proclaimed the company’s “unwavering commitment to #LGBTQ+ equality.” The same company that, I’d learned from a quick Google search that morning, donated to politicians voting against our healthcare rights.
https://medium.com/prismnpen/how-pride-went-global-and-got-hijacked-by-corporations-0d0ad11ff16e?sk=c8027c1225152375105108fec6fbd533
The self-defense displayed by the #gay community — and its heroic, biting humor — during the worst years of the #AIDS pandemic was nothing short of miraculous.
https://medium.com/prismnpen/a-short-sharp-tourettes-like-aids-story-of-24-hours-in-chicago-1993-9a8953a3c82c
Today in queer history I learned about William Dorsey Swann. A former slave that became known as the Queen of Drag, William organized drag balls during the 1880s and 1890s.
