LGBTQ* People You Should Know
Reed Erickson (1917-1992)
* Born as Rita Alma Erickson and was the first biological female to graduate from Louisiana State University with a degree in mechanical engineering
* Erickson was introduced to equal rights/political reformation while dating a woman from NYC after graduating from LSU
* Erickson was fired from first job as an engineer after refusing to fire a woman suspected of Communism
* Started a company making bleachers for stadiums and inherited family business and money after father’s passing
* In 1963 - became a patient of Dr. Harry Benjamin (the “father of transgender medicine” in the United States) and started to live openly as a man
* Erickson underwent a hysterectomy and double mastectomy in 1963 (which was required by the state of Louisiana to be legally recognized/change documentation of birth sex)
* Erickson also legally married his first wife in 1963 (divorcing two years later). — He went on to marry Aileen Ashton of New Zealand with whom he had two children. (He proposed to her on their second date.)
* 1964 — founded the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF), financed entirely by himself. The organization (which Erickson contributed millions to) went on to assist in the early development and organizations for LGBTQ* movements from 1964-1984
Their Mission Statement:
“to provide assistance and support in areas where human potential was limited by adverse physical, mental or social conditions, or where the scope of research was too new, controversial or imaginative to receive traditionally oriented support.”
* Longest-running recipient was ONE Inc - the newspaper and homophile organization founded in 1952. -Erickson contributed over 75-80% of their budget for a number of years.
(Above and Below: Pictures of Erickson - dates unknown)
For More on Reed Erickson:
Aaron Devor writing as Holly Devor. “Reed Erickson (1912-1992): How One Transsexed Man Supported ONE.” In Vern Bullough (ed). Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context. New York: Haworth. 2002.
Online at: http://web.uvic.ca/~ahdevor/ReedErickson.pdf
Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the the United States.Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press.
2012 Lesbian and Gay Rights in the World Maps
Maps from: IGLA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association)
For larger images, click on direct post and then click images.
Thoughts on bisexuality and biphobia
I’ve been lucky in that I haven’t faced much direct oppression because of my pansexual identity. I was never bullied in school. I’ve always been very open about it and have never gotten my car vandalized or anything like that. I’ve never seen much biphobia around me. But I know it exists, obviously. I read Project Queer’s post about Dan Savage and his bigotry, and I was especially interested in reading about his biphobia. (I really liked this post from Greta Christina) It got me thinking a lot about biphobia in general and how it applies to me.
I really appreciate this post. It’s a breath of fresh air considering a lot of the animosity on Tumblr that goes around sometimes surrounding bisexuality and pansexuality.
Yes, biphobia hurts pansexuals too, but it seems like some don’t want to acknowledge that. I think it’s partially what fuels the need for some to pretend they are absolutely nothing like bisexuals at all, as if this will somehow magically exempt them from biphobia. Whenever pansexuals reinforce biphobia, I want to say “HI HELLO YOU AREN’T DOING YOURSELF ANY FAVORS” (but I rarely do, I usually just get shouty and ranty though I’m kinda over that). Society just kind of lumps us all together, so stereotypes toward one group can often impact another.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently contradictory or wrong about identifying as both bi and pan. I wouldn’t say they’re always more or less the same thing, but that’s because there are different ways to approach and interpret both of those identities and those ways may not always gel with each other, not because they are Completely Different Things as some insist. More often than not, the two overlap.
In general, I don’t believe that bisexual people are strictly attracted to cisgender men and women,
Plenty of us are attracted to binary and nonbinary trans people. And some of us are such people (people always seem to forget that and think only cis binary people are bi).
but I’m sure there are plenty of people in the world that are strictly bisexual.
It’s probably true that some are only attracted to two genders, but that’s not what the “bi” in bisexual refers to. I do question if there is anyone out there to which the specific number of genders they are attracted to is so important that they define their sexual identity around it alone.
The “bi” in bisexual refers the old belief that such people with multi-gender attractions were psychologically possessing both male and female characteristics (likewise, gay men were considered to be mentally feminine and lesbians were considered to be mentally masculine). It was borrowed from botany which used it to describe plants with both male and female parts. Look at a thesaurus and you’ll likely see that bisexual has intersex and androgyny listed as synonyms. This is why.
So whenever someone says “bisexual literally means you’re only attracted to two genders” I want to say “no, it literally means I’m a plant.”
if i had known about the plant related history of the word
i would have understood things much more clearly ages ago
egg on my face, etc
(Source: steenroller)
