Stories of Pride: Part 5 (Tomorrow's History Books)
- beereed13
- Jun 29, 2022
- 9 min read
Updated: Jun 30, 2022
June is LGBTQIA+ Pride Month in the United States. This month was chosen because it commemorates the Stonewall Uprisings which began on June 28, 1969, when a group of queer folks - led by Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Stormé DeLarverie, and other members of the QTBIPOC community - fought back against the systematic police brutality and abuse they had lived with for decades.
Today, Pride is about so much more than this one moment in time. We’ve always been here, and we always will be. Storytelling is one of the oldest and most sacred ways of preserving and advancing culture. You cannot spell history without “story.”
This is our culture. These are our stories. And this limited five-part series is just the tip of the iceberg. May it inspire you to seek and share even more of our robust, beautiful, challenging history as a movement, community, and culture.
Katie Sowers (NFL Coach)
Football has been a big part of Katie Sowers’ life since childhood. She began playing at 8 years old and would continue playing until a hip injury forced her to retire in 2016. In college, Sowers began playing professionally in the Women’s Football Alliance for the West Michigan Mayhem before moving to the Kansas City Titans. She also played on the 2013 U.S. women’s national team in 2013, a team which would go on to win the IFAF Women’s World Championship that year with a score of 64-0 in the final game.
After her injury brought an end to her on-field career, Sowers turned her attention to the next chapter: coaching. Her first NFL coaching position was with the Atlanta Falcons when she signed on as the wide receivers coaching intern in 2016. In 2017 she came out publicly as a lesbian. That same year she also became the seasonal intern for the San Francisco 49ers, eventually earning herself a full-time offensive assistant position at the start of their 2019 season. This promotion made Katie Sowers the first female and first openly LGBTQ+ full-time coach in the history of the NFL. By the end of the season, the 49ers success would lead her to breaking those same glass ceilings on the sidelines of the Super Bowl. In 2021 Sowers joined the coaching staff of the Kansas City Chiefs, and in October of that year she was appointed Director of Athletic Strategic Initiatives (and, naturally, the coach of the women’s flag football team) at Ottawa University.
Being the first isn’t easy, and the freedom to be herself in the career she’s chosen was a hard fought battle. In fact, in 2009 when she was attending Goshen College, she was turned down for a volunteer coaching position with their team explicitly because of her sexuality. After she helped coach the 49ers into the Super Bowl, Goshen College’s president formally apologized for rejecting her. After that rejection, it would have been easy to justify keeping her sexuality private amidst her career growth in the NFL. But Sowers’ openness and authenticity has cut a path through what once was thought to be an impassable jungle for other women, other LGBTQIA+ folks, and anyone who’s been told that who they are somehow negates their skills, experience, and expertise.
R. Eric Thomas (Writer)
Disclosure for transparency: Eric is a person whom I not only know, but am fortunate enough to call a friend. So, in a lot of ways, it feels a little weird to be writing this, and it’s probably going to be a little different from the other highlights because of that. And yet, looking at his work and the way it’s growing and impacting the world, it is undeniable that he belongs on this list.
R. Eric Thomas is an award winning writer, and the work that’s out in the world already is just the beginning. In the first half of 2022 alone he has opened three World Premieres of new plays in 2 different cities, has been awarded the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Drama for his play Mrs. Harrison (premiered in 2018), and released his third book. The volume of work that he’s released this year is impressive, but not nearly so much as the impact his work has on audiences, readers, and communities.
The brilliance of Eric’s writing lies in his ability to bring together seemingly contradictory elements. It is simultaneously poignant and irreverent, universally relatable and deeply personal, heartfelt and hilarious, honest about the ugliness that exists in the world and hopeful about the beauty that the world contains. The impact of his work contains a kind of depth that is rare, even among the greats. There’s an instant spark that catches quickly, lighting up the audience or reader like a cheerful campfire. But long after the curtain or back cover is closed, the words and thoughts and ideas that were under the hilarious punchlines and relatable dialogue continue to smolder. The true impact is a slow burn that continues long after the first engagement is over.
In the year 2022 there’s no shortage of queer characters, love stories, books, movies, etc. We’re fortunate in that way. Representation has grown and shifted in some important ways. And yet, many queer characters and stories - even those written by queer writers themselves - all too frequently fall into one of two categories: the comic relief or the victim. While the truth of adversity and overcoming challenges are important pieces of character development, dwelling on these aspects tends to rob the stories and those experiencing them of the joy and fullness to be experienced in a wholehearted tale.
Almost all of Eric’s writing centers queerness, Blackness, and intersectional lives. And yet, they are not the primary theme of his work. The themes of his work are love in all its many and various forms, joy as resistance and a universal human experience, the surprising definitions of family (both biological and chosen), and the consequences - small and large, good, bad, and ugly - of daring to speak the truth. There is an overwhelming element of celebration and hope in his work which has rarely been shown on stages, screens, or pages in stories about intersectional queer folks. His characters’ queerness or non-whiteness are central, but not the most important thing about them. Their humanity (and everything that encompasses) is. This is probably why his new YA novel about two Black gay teenagers, Kings of B’More, was included in a “feel-good” summer reading list by the Washington Post - a list that not many queer-centric YA novels would end up on.
With his career taking off to new heights, and his voice being one that we very badly need in the world right now, I cannot wait to see what’s coming next from the mind and keyboard of R. Eric Thomas. His writing is changing the world already, but I predict that its impact will be bigger than that. I think his writing could, and quite likely will, change the way writers approach writing queerness. And that’s an impact that will magnify and expand in ways none of us can possibly even imagine.
Jowelle De Souza (Politician)
Jowelle De Souza is no stranger to being “the first.” In 1993 at the age of 19 she became the first person in her home country of Trinidad and Tobago to undergo gender confirmation surgery. In 1997 she became the first trans person to file a lawsuit against her country’s government (a case which she won). This year she became the first transgender person sworn in as a Senator in her country.
Throughout her life and her career, De Souza has faced plenty of animosity and adversity, but this hasn’t shifted her focus from serving the underserved and protecting those that can’t protect themselves. In spite of hateful campaigns launched against her by the religious leaders of her island, she rallied support from the people of her community by fighting for marginalized demographics. When asked what platforms she’d be focusing on, she told a reporter, “I believe in equal opportunities for all: the disabled, the senior citizens, single mother, the impoverished.” This passion for fighting for those who cannot fight for themselves extends beyond her human companions. In 2014 she was awarded a Hummingbird Medal award for her extensive, life-long animal rights activism.
With a formidable spirit, De Souza has always stood her ground when it came to issues of corruption and abuse at the hands of those in power. The clearest example of this came in 1997 when she was arrested for assault after pushing a photographer who was taking photographs of her without her consent. Following the arrest, she endured extensive harassment from the police including the male officers insisting they needed to be the ones to search her (despite her legal ID showing that she was a woman) and, ultimately, an illegal strip search by a female officer. Because of the nature of the charges against her, no search of any kind was legal. The illegal strip search became the grounds upon which she made her winning case against the government.
Despite an unsuccessful run for Parliament in 2015 and a non-traditional path to get there, on February 21, 2022, Jowelle De Souza broke another barrier down when she was sworn into temporary office as a Senator of Trinidad and Tobago, filling in for a Senator who fell too ill to fulfill their commitment. With plenty of glass ceilings left to be broken and no sign of her intending to slow down, I would not be surprised if we continue to hear headlines about this trailblazer for years to come.
Rebecca Sugar (Animator)
By the time Rebecca was in high school, they knew they had a passion for art, attending the Visual Arts Center at Albert Einstein High School and earning a slew of awards and accolades before moving on to the School of Visual Arts in New York. Here they got their first real experience with directing and creating animated films.
When the Cartoon Network show Adventure Time started its first season, Rebecca was hired as a storyboard revisionist before quickly being promoted to storyboard artist. They began putting pieces of themselves into the characters they were developing at the encouragement of the creative team. They would continue this personal, heart-felt character development with Steven Universe. They served as the executive producer and driving force of this groundbreaking children’s show, creating a diverse cast of queer, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming characters.
Steven Universe was monumental in opening new doors of expression and representation in children's programming. In its fifth and final season, it became the first children’s show to showcase a same-sex engagement and wedding. It won a slew of awards including the 2019 Peabody Award for Children’s and Youth Programming, the 2019 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Kids & Family Programming, and the 2018 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation. All five seasons currently hold perfect 100% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.
With this groundbreaking series, Rebecca Sugar began their lifelong endeavor “to champion LGBTQIA content in G-Rated, family entertainment.” Here’s hoping this is just the beginning.
Stonewall Visitor Center (National Park)
When the National Park System was first created in 1916, it was established with the goal of preserving the nation’s natural and cultural heritage for generations to come. On Friday, June 24, 2022 a small crowd gathered in Greenwich Village for the groundbreaking ceremony at the site of what will become the Stonewall Visitor Center. This will be the first National Park Visitor Center devoted to celebrating, preserving, and advancing LGBTQ+ culture and history.
The Stonewall National Monument was dedicated in 2016 to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall Uprisings. Prior to this six-day riot, there had been many groups and individuals fighting the good fight for gay liberation and rights, resisting oppression, and speaking out against police brutality. But none of these gained the amount of momentum that Stonewall provided. As the week went on, gay, queer, and trans people from across the city came together to protest and fight back against the daily onslaught of harassment they’d come to view as normal, gaining global press and recognition. Today the Stonewall National Monument stands as a visual reminder of the events that happened on those grounds.
In 2024, 55 years after the uprisings, the services on this site will be expanded and developed in new and dynamic ways. The addition of the Visitor Center will provide a safer space to host queer-centric events, feature exhibits and art installations by queer and trans artists, and dive even deeper into the history and culture of the LGBTQIA+ community. New York State governor Kathy Hochul remarked during Friday's ceremony, “[It’s] the appropriate recognition to what went on here many decades ago, and to the early pioneers who stood up against the tides of their time. Long after we’re gone, we want this story to be told, this story to be an inspiration.”
*AUTHOR’S NOTE: Language around what we identify as queerness or homosexuality today has changed a lot throughout history. Nuance over labels and terms is still a hot and ever evolving topic. For the sake of telling these (hi)stories, I have utilized different terms as I saw best fit to convey the meaning and context to a general audience. If you choose to carry these stories with you to share with others (and I hope you will), please feel free to update or change these terms if and when you see fit.
More From This Series
Comments