The Barnard Center for Research on Women is delighted to showcase the work of photographer and photo-journalist Syd London. A selection of London’s vast archive has been organized and curated for this issue by Art Editor Lindsay Caplan. London’s work has appeared in nationally-renowned publications and in exhibits across the United States. As Queers for … Read more
I am the director of Center Kids, the family program of the LGBT Community Center. My partner and I and our infant son were one of the first families in the program in the fall of 1988, when we were still meeting in one other’s apartments and did not yet have a name or an … Read more
In 1998 New York state signed the Hudson River Park Act into law, which essentially created a public-private partnership to develop the dilapidated piers from Battery Park to 59th Street along the West Side of Manhattan. The Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT) was born as the overseers for the future development of each pier, one … Read more
D was 17 years old when she was kicked out of her mother’s house. D’s mother didn’t accept D’s sexuality. While she was never able to state honestly that it was D’s sexuality or gender expression that was an issue, she constantly tried to change who D was. She fought with D about who her … Read more
This is the story of how we won; of how a coalition of advocates and activists came together and used a rights-based argument to lift a 23-year-old US bar on the entry, residence, and stay of HIV-positive people. We were told our objective was unrealistic and that our tactics wouldn’t work. Yet, after a little … Read more
Tara is a 27-year-old transgender woman from Guyana. When she entered the United States at JFK airport in New York, she declared to immigration officials that she was escaping lifelong torture and recent rape in Guyana and was seeking asylum in the United States. To her surprise she was held in an immigration detention facility, … Read more
The riots that erupted at the Stonewall Bar on Christopher Street on the night of June 28, 1969, like the one at San Francisco’s Compton Cafeteria in 1966, signaled a real turning point in queer activism. And yet, rather than being narrated as an urgent act of resistance and rebellion against state violence, the story … Read more
In 2003 I attended the Dyke March in Toronto during that city’s LGBT Pride celebration. In conversation with a gay man I met there, I mentioned the surprising decision that the United States Supreme Court had just issued in Lawrence v. Texas. After years of struggle in the streets and the courts, the LGBT movement … Read more
Twice in the last handful of years, I was given the opportunity to share my thoughts about the state of the LGBT movement and about issues of strategic direction. In November 2005, in Oakland and in January 2009, in Denver, I spoke at plenary sessions of the NGLTF’s (National Gay and Lesbian Task Force) Creating … Read more
When my daughter was born, the biggest thing I noticed was that the daily details of my life were suddenly more like my childhood than like the years of adulthood. I was 39 when I became a parent. Since leaving home at 18, I had created a life for myself rich in friendships, networks, political … Read more
