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There was a lot that went down in queer history on this day, Jnauary 8th. But for Throwback Thursday, yer boy Hank here is going to focus on three huge events that took place over the span of the twentieth century.
In 1907, a German-Israeli writer, activist, and suffragette, Karl M. Baer (20 May 1885 – 26 June 1956) became the first recorded person to have his official gender records changed, and be granted full legal recognition as his new gender after his sex corrective surgery the month before. Born Martha Baer, it was discovered that he was intersex, and doctors urged his parents to raise young Martha as a girl. He also gained the right to marry, doing so later that year. His work in the first few years of the twentieth century dealt with women's rights and education. His work brought him into contact with pioneering sex researcher Magnus Hirschfeld. Through this connection, he was encouraged to cater to his male dominant side and began living as a man in 1905. It was during a hospital stay in 1906 that his female anatomy was discovered, and he underwent multi-phase, rudimentary reassignment surgery. Most of the notes by Hirschfeld regarding Baer were lost in the Nazi book burnings, of which Hirschfeld's work and libraries were especially targeted. Baer and his wife were allowed to emigrate to Palestine (now Israel) in 1938, where he lived until his death in 1956.
David Bowie (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016) was born David Jones in London. Was Bowie gay, or bi, or somewhere in between or none of these? Well, depends on who you ask and in what year. Bowie would come out as gay in an interview with Michael Watts for a 1972 issue of Melody Maker. In 1976, he told Playboy he was bisexual and that the 1972 interview had misquoted him. Then, in 1983, he told Rolling Stone he was a "closet heterosexual" and that "the biggest mistake I ever made was telling that Melody Maker writer that I was bisexual. Christ, I was so young then. I was experimenting." He was married to two different women in his life, Angie Bowie in the seventies, and later to supermodel Iman, who he was with until his death in 2016. Fast forward to 2002, in an interview with Blender, when he confirms his bisexuality, basically laying it out as a financial and career decision due to the "puritanism" of America:
I don’t think (his previous bi denial) was a mistake in Europe, but it was a lot tougher in America. I had no problem with people knowing I was bisexual. But I had no inclination to hold any banners or be a representative of any group of people. I knew what I wanted to be, which was a songwriter and a performer, and I felt that [bisexuality] became my headline over here for so long. America is a very puritanical place, and I think it stood in the way of so much I wanted to do.
Whatever, who cares, it's Bowie. And to young queers of every ilk and persuasion since the early 70's, Bowie was gay AF and spoke to us, the misfits and weirdos, creative outsiders and aliens. Hell, one of his greatest personas was as the gender fluid, bisexual alien Ziggy Stardust!
I highly recommend this documentary, Moonage Daydream, now streaming on Netflix.
Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978), the influential activist and SF Castro neighborhood shop owner, would become the first openly gay person elected in California. He took office on the SF Board of Supervisors on this day in 1978. He would be assassinated alongside SF mayor George Moscone less than a year later, killed by fellow Supervisor Dan White. But his influence and reach, during his short tenure while alive, and vibrate still to this day, is unmatched.
Check out this stunning documentary, The Times of Havery Milk.
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