Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons^™

Farnsworth, Susan, Larisa Filippov

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Susan Farnsworth is a 75 year old lesbian who has lived in Maine for over 50 years. She currently resides in Hallowell, ME, but has lived all over Maine and other places in New England. Farnsworth is an attorney and has her own law practice where she helps a variety of clients with their legal problems. She realized she was a lesbian while she was in law school during her marriage to a man. Farnsworth attended Bates College for her undergraduate degree before going to the University of Maine School of Law in Portland. The multiple political organizations she has …

Blanchard, Mike, Micaiah Wert

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Mike Blanchard is a 60 year old gay man from Westbrook Maine. He has struggled as an alcoholic due to repressing his queer identity, but has been sober for 33 years (since 1989). Through addiction recovery he was able to come out as gay in 1992. After years of struggling with alcohol and rough relationships, Mike met his husband at Blackstones in Portland, and describes their relationship as, “nothing I ever chased and everything I could have hoped for.” Mike worked for a long time in the field of recreation, but left after feeling as though he could not be …

Rand, Erica - 2022 Follow Up, Sofia Oliveri

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Erica Rand is a professor of Arts and Visual Culture at Bates College, an adult figure skater, author and activist. This is a follow-up interview to her previous interview for Querying the Past in 2017. Erica Rand was heavily involved with ACT- UP Portland and more specifically the branch of ACT UP called: Pissed Off Dyke Cell and Women’s Health Action Crew. But more recently she has been involved with a new form of activism through sports and writing. At Bates, she is pushing the importance of trans-inclusion policies in sports and even testing the gender limitations put in place …

Brownlee, Margaret, Gretchen Muehle, Shelice Wilson

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Margaret Brownlee is a multi-racial/Afro-Latina Lipstick Lesbian who was born and spent most of her life residing in Maine. Margaret was 16 when she came out and is now married to a woman and has a daughter. Margaret attended multiple universities–including Wells College, Lesley University, and the University of New England–as a first generation college student in her family with the goal of becoming a dancer. Margaret is currently a Burlesque dancer and instructor and is also employed with the Maine Department of Education. She has been involved in political activism and a number of organizations based in Maine–including Portland …

Wanderer, Nancy, Mary Wallace

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Nancy Wanderer is a professor at the University of Maine School of Law and was also the first Director of the Legal Writing Program at Maine Law. She received a B.A from Wellesley College, and M.A. from George Washington University, and a J.D. from University of Maine School of Law. Nancy Wanderer has dedicated her life to women’s rights and protecting and fighting for the rights of other minorities as well. Since growing up in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, Wanderer has always been drawn to education and Academia.

She was married to her ex-husband during her Junior year at Wellesley in …

Chann, Marpheen, Kendall Garland, Meghan Horner

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Marpheen Chann is a Cambodian, Asian-American, gay man living in Portland, Maine. He was born in California to an immigrant mother and later moved to Maine, then adopted by a white, Evangelical family. He spent his childhood in the church and would later attend Valley Forge Christian College. Then later transferring to USM to earn a Bachelor’s in Political Science and later attended Maine Law. Chann participates in advocacy work with organizations, such as the Equality Community Center and is the president of Khmer Maine. He currently works for the Good Shepard Food Bank as their Community Impact Manager.

Please …

Gifford, Dan, Erin Schott, Hailey Kamenides

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Dan Gifford is a gay white man who grew up in Arkansas, and eventually moved to Maine with his partner. Dan is now an employee at the Portland Museum of Art, where he enjoys his job and being close to art. Dan has always known he was gay, yet to some in Arkansas this was viewed in a negative light or simply swept under the rug. Dan explains that the first time he visited Maine he felt “home”, and enjoys that he can be his true authentic self here, without the scrutiny that he experienced in the South. Dan also …

Hine, Rook, Ty Bolduc

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Rook Hine is a 47-year-old transfemme non-binary person from Connecticut. In this interview, Hine describe their life experiences, from challenges in her household, zir benefits and complications within education, and finding their identity as ze grew up. They discuss masking, performing arts as an outlet for gender expression, activism in college and beyond. Ze also mentions developing their non-binary identity, use of the term metagender, polyamory, and internalized transphobia, as well as adventures around the country - attending Sarah Lawrence College in New York, spending time in New Orleans as a tarot card reader, stripper, and phone sex operator after …

An Interactionist Approach To Btlg Pride, Lain A.B. Mathers, Jason E. Sumerau

The Qualitative Report

Within and beyond Symbolic Interactionism, sociological studies of bisexual, transgender, lesbian, and gay (BTLG) populations have expanded dramatically in the past two decades. Although such studies have invigorated our understanding of many aspects of BTLG life and experience, they have thus far left BTLG Pride relatively unexplored. How do BTLG populations experience Pride, and what insights might such efforts have for sociologically understanding such populations and events? We examine these questions through an interview study of bi+ people (i.e., sexually fluid people who identify as bisexual, pansexual, or otherwise outside of gay/straight binaries; Eisner, 2013). Specifically, we analyze how bi+ …

Labbe, Roland, Wendy Chapkis

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Roland Labbe discusses growing up in Maine in Millinocket, Winterport, and Lewiston, before moving to Worcester, MA at 14 with an older lover. He also talks about his time as a young man in New York City; that made him realize that Portland needed a gay bar which he opened in 1967: “Roland’s Tavern” on Forest Ave. He shares stories about challenges he faced in opening Portland’s first gay bar, including licensing struggles with the city of Portland and hostility from police and some of the public. He discusses his tremendously supportive family, with his mother and siblings often working …

“…And I Thought That Was A Queer Thing To Do”: Transmasculine Identity In The Lokasenna, Tevye J. Schmidt

The Confluence

This paper seeks to explain the viewing of Loki through a lens of transmasculine identity, focusing on the ways in which gender expression and identity were viewed in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages. The current scholarship on Loki and gender expression, specifically in his interactions with the other gods in the Lokasenna, suggests a reading that is misogynistic on Loki’s part. This reading and translation also suggest homophobia and transphobia from Odin. This paper argues that these translations lack the nuance that a reading of Loki as transmasculine brings, and that this reading is important in breaking down modern …

Michelangelo Buonarroti And Homophobia In The Renaissance, Grace T. O. Ray

The Confluence

Tommaso de’ Cavalieri was a young man with an aristocratic background when he first met famous artist Michelangelo Buonarroti in Rome. Tommaso was known to be an incomparable physical beauty, with intelligence and elegant manners, as well as being a member of one of the most illustrious families of Rome—the Orsini. Some have said this is what drew the artist to Cavalieri from the start. Though not much is known about their encounter, it is confirmed that Cavalieri remained a close and loyal companion to Michelangelo for thirty-two years until the artist’s death in 1564. Furthermore, throughout their years together …

Macnaughton, Daniel, Wendy Chapkis

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Dan MacNaughton was born in 1955 in Bangor, Maine, and raised in Hampden, Maine with his mother, father, and older brother. He came out as gay in high school with supportive teachers and classmates who were either supportive or indifferent. However, he had deeply internalized homophobic attitudes and believed that being gay meant he had very limited employment options. In college at the University of Maine Orono, MacNaughton became active in the newly formed Wilde Stein student group where he became the first Vice-Chair of the club, met Sturgis Haskins, and became involved in educational efforts on campus. He also …

Ghosting Humanity: In Search Of An Ethics For The Disappeared, John Kaiser Ortiz

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This paper visualizes what an ethics of the disappeared might look like if the troubled ontology of ghosts and their (un)seen realities are posited as real as allied discussions of the victims of human trafficking and other instances of violence against women, including femicide and sexual slavery.

Review Of Walaa Alqaisiya. Decolonial Queering In Palestine. London: Routledge, 2023, Ankita Chatterjee

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Decolonial Queering in Palestine by WalaaAlqaisiya offers an in-depth study of the conquest of Palestine with respect to the variegated power structures of settler colonialism and underscores the political significance of a reformulated mode of decolonization. It argues for the need to interweave queer into the native Palestinian positionality termed as 'decolonial queering', so as to challenge the (hetero) sexualizing and gendered discourses embedded within both the Israeli/Zionist settler colonial regime and the Palestinian Nationalist visions of liberation. By the 'ethnographic' engagement with the works of Palestinian artists and activists from one of the prominent queer groups, alQaws, the book …

Perhaps Discomfort Is The Answer: Refusing Liberal Feminism And Imperial Cartographies Of Thinking/Feeling, Saida Hodzic

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs is an unsettling feminist ethnography that traces the movements of three objects: the endings of female genital cutting in Ghana, their relationship to anti-cutting campaigns and the forms of governance they instantiate, and the role anthropology and feminism have played in this governance since colonial rule. It makes the case that the three objects must be studied together: namely, that we need to understand the practice of female genital cutting alongside its endings; that cutting does not exist outside of anti-cutting campaigns; and that anti-cutting campaigns are entangled with both …

Review Of Saida Hodzic. The Twilight Of Cutting: African Activism And Life After Ngos. Oakland: Univeristy Of California Press, 2017., Tobe Levin Von Gleichen

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

With considerable fanfare, in Adieu !'Excision. Histoire et fin d'une tradition (Raymond Hounsa, 2009), Christa Muller rejoices in having saved Benin from FGM, the French text lauding eradication. The effort instigated by a Saarbrucken-based NGO, it has banned blades from the vicinity of vulvae. In 1996, on a state visit, Muller, then married to Saarland's governor Oscar Lafontaine, was asked by Benin's First Lady Rosine Vieyra Soglo¹ to assist her Inter-African Committee (IAC) chapter by creating an association. This she did, launching I(N)TACT, e.V. and securing 300,000 Euros for the movement, a sum with strings, however. Berlin insisted on …

Lg Ms 107 Karen Bye Papers, Katelynn Paul

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Biographical Note

Karen Bye was born and raised in Stonington, Maine on Deer Isle in 1952. Karen enrolled at the University of Maine’s Orono campus, joining the class of 1975. Karen was a member of the queer community and went on to join Gay Support and Action (GSA), a community organization located in Bangor, Maine. Karen advocated for GSA to start a group at the university, but was initially denied. Nevertheless Karen persisted and continued to advocate, and eventually formed a group of students that would soon become the Wilde-Stein Club. Karen held the role of secretary, and had been …

A History Of Ecofeminist: Socialist Resistance To Eco-Crisis In India, Gowri Parameswaran

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This article traces the history of women's environmental activism in India after independence. The earliest organizing efforts came from women from indigenous communities who wanted to collectively push back against government and private encroachments into communal lands. From the 1970s to the late 1980s, ecofeminism became a dominant paradigm to analyze and respond to environmental issues globally. Indian feminists adapted the model to analyzing ecological issues locally while also pushing back against its essentialism and its blindness to social and economic inequities. Indian eco(feminist) socialists demanded a centering of the voices of the most vulnerable communities in environmental movements. In …

Productivity To Precarity On Instagram: Digital Feminism In India During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Anhiti Patnaik

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This paper examines how digital feminism deconstructed neoliberal ideals of technological productivity in India during the Covid-19 pandemic. By creating a productivity scale, I delineate new social disparities and risk factors brought on by the unprecedented shift to a work-from-home digital economy. Through theories of biopower, I argue that technology is not neutral, apolitical, or unequivocally in favour of equal access and human rights. The creation of a new social group termed the 'technoprecariat' during lockdown is discussed using a 'cripqueer' approach to digital feminism. I extend Judith Butler's early work on gender performativity to the neo-liberal ideal of gender …