Episode 11: Notable Queer Gemini - Lou Sullivan

Megan and Ryen are back to serve more hot takes on the witchy, the woo and the weird. Just in time for Pride month, they meet up to discuss the life and times of Lou Sullivan: the transmasc trailblazer who fought for gay trans men to be able to access gender affirming care during a time when trans people were expected to perform cis het normativity in order to be given the treatment they were seeking. Tragically, he was also the first trans man to be diagnosed with AIDS. Also in this episode, Megan and Ryen discuss the trauma of growing up queer kids during the height of the AIDS crisis.

CW: medicalized transphobia, AIDS-related death/dying

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Sources:

Beardsley, Ally (Host), Thomas, Babette (Host). 2025, August 25. Lou Sullivan and the Pink Butt Book (w/Zach Ozma & Ellis Martin). In Gender Spiral with Ally Beardsley and Babette Thomas. https://www.genderspiralpod.com/

GLBT Historical Society. “Primary Source Set: Lou Sullivan”. Glbthistory.org. Retrieved April 17, 2026.

Johnson, William. “Desire and Discovery in 1970s San Francisco”. Lambdaliteraryreview.org. Retrieved April 17, 2026.

Rohrer, Megan. “Man-i-fest: FTM Mentorship in San Francisco from 1976-2009”. OutHistory.org. Retrieved April 16, 2026.

Stryker, Susan. “The Difficult Decades.” in Transgender History. Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2008.

Stryker, Susan (2017). Transgender History (Revised ed.). BasicBooks. pp. 143-149.

Sullivan, Lou. Diary. 1966. As quoted in “FTM Newsletter”, Summer 2007, edited by Susan Stryker. Archived from the original on November 4, 2015.

Sullivan, Lou. Martin, Ellis (editor). Ozma, Zach (editor) (2019). We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan 1961 – 1991. Nightboat Books.