10 trailblazing queer women to celebrate
Trailblazing queer women to celebrate for International Women's Day, including Gladys Bentley, Barbara Gittings and Chavela Vargas.
Over the centuries, lesbians and other queer women have pushed the world forward, often challenging norms and defying the expectations of their times. From 1700s England to the contemporary shores of New York’s Fire Island, these women forged new paths and made a space for others to do the same.
Some of those on this list lived at a time when there was no language for queer identity as in the present time, and often could not come out due to societal restrictions and concerns for their own safety. Like much of LGBTQ history, identifying who someone was requires squinting through the haze of the past and reading between the lines of diaries, historical records and second-hand accounts.
What is certain, though, is that queer women have always been around, even if their circumstances forced them to obscure their full selves.
Anne Lister.Visual Arts Resource / Alamy Stock PhotoAnne Lister, who has been described as “the first modern lesbian,” was born in northern England and lived during the height of the Industrial Revolution. Educated, wealthy and masculine in appearance, she had relationships with women beginning at an early age and by all accounts was unabashedly queer and self-assured, navigating her way around polite society while excelling as a businesswoman. Her womanizing reputation earned her the nickname “Gentleman Jack,” the latter part being a slur for lesbian at the time, but the name was reclaimed on Lister’s behalf, thanks to the BBC-HBO series “Gentleman Jack,” which ran from 2019 to 2022.
Though she did not use the word “lesbian” to describe herself, she wrote in her diary in 1821, “I love and only love the fairer sex and thus beloved by them in turn, my heart revolts from any love but theirs.” Lister married her neighbor and fellow landowner, Ann Walker, in 1834 at a church in York, England, an event considered to be the first recorded lesbian wedding in the history of Britain. Though it is unclear exactly what transpired at the church, experts are in agreement that the pair made vows to each other and exchanged rings. There was no legal recognition of the marriage at the time, but a commemorative plaque adorns the church and celebrates their union.
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