THE RELEVANT QUEER: Lou Sullivan, Author, Activist and Trans Pioneer

“I wanna look like what I am but don’t know what someone like me looks like.”

TRQ: Lou Sullivan, Born June 16, 1951

Author and activist Lou Sullivan was a transgender man who publicly identified as gay. A pioneer of the female-to-male transgender movement (FTM), Sullivan shaped our understandings of sexual orientation and gender identity—and the difference between the two.

Born Sheila Jean on June 16, 1951 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Sullivan grew up in a large, working-class Catholic family. He kept a diary as a child, and at the young age of 13, wrote of wishing to be a boy.

“I want to look like what I am but don’t know what someone like me looks like. I mean, when people look at me I want them to think — there’s one of those people… that has their own interpretation of happiness. That’s what I am.”
— Lou Sullivan, age 15

Later, Sullivan wrote diary entries on adolescent confusion and gay male sexual fantasies. He also explored these themes in poems and short stories. At age 17, he began a relationship with a male lover and together they played a gender-bending couple.

By 1973, Sullivan identified as a female transvestite. By 1975, he identified as female-to-male transsexual. That year, Sullivan made the choice to move to San Francisco, renowned for its accepting, liberal culture. As a going-away gift, his mother bought him a man’s suit as a show of support. Sullivan’s family also gave him his grandfather’s pocket watch.

In California, Sullivan hoped to undergo sex reassignment surgery. At first, he worked at a sporting goods company as a woman, but often cross dressed on the job as a man. He increasingly became more actively involved in both the gay and transsexual communities.

However, the medical establishment required transgender people to adopt stereotypical gender roles. Reinforcing the complete separation between gay men and trans men, gender professionals repeatedly denied Sullivan surgery because of his sexual orientation.

As a result, he lived as a feminine heterosexual woman for three years and suffered gender identity crisis. At this time, he fought for recognition of gay trans men and their ability to access medical transition. At the Janus Information Facility, he served as a peer counsellor for trans-related issues.

In 1979, after his brother’s death, Sullivan found doctors and therapists who were sympathetic to his ongoing gender-identity crisis. With their help, he could take testosterone. A year later, he underwent double mastectomy surgery. However, no surgeon was willing to do his genital reconstruction surgery.

Sullivan wrote a letter to the Stanford Clinic after his second reconstruction surgery. “It is unfortunate that your Program cannot see the merit of each individual, regardless of their sexual orientation. The general human populace is made up of many sexual persuasions—it is incredible that your Program requires all transsexuals to be of one fabric. I had even considered lying to you about my sexual preference of men, as I knew this would surely keep me out of your Program, but I felt it important to be straightforward, possibly paving the way for other female-to-males with homosexual orientations—and we do exist. […]”

After waiting for over 5 years, Sullivan underwent bottom surgery in 1986. That year he also learned that he was HIV+, which fuelled his passion for activism. He helped found the GLBT Historical Society and FTM International, the largest organisation of its kind.

In 1990 Sullivan wrote Information for the Female to Male Cross-Dresser and Transsexual, the first guidebook for trans men. That year he also wrote From Female to Male: The Life of Jack Bee Garland.

In an interview, Sullivan described living with AIDS. “In a way, I don’t even feel bad about having AIDS. In a way, I feel it’s almost a poetic justice. Because AIDS is still seen at this point as a gay man’s disease, it kind of proves that I did do it and I was successful. And I kind of took a perverse pleasure in contacting the gender clinics that rejected me, and said that they’ve told me so many years that it was impossible for me to live as a gay man, but it looks like I’m gonna die like one.”

On March 2, 1991, Sullivan died from complications due to AIDS. The National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument in New York City’s Stonewall Inn inducted Sullivan as one of the inaugural fifty “pioneers, trailblazers and heroes” in June 2019. A month later, the Rainbow Honor Walk in San Francisco’s Castro neighbourhood inducted Sullivan in August 2019.

About the Authors

Troy Wise is currently a PhD student at UAL Central St Martins and teaches fashion and graphic design at London College of Contemporary Arts. His background is in marketing and is founder and co-editor of Image Amplified. He lives in, and is continually fascinated by, the city of London.

Rick Guzman earned his most recent MA at UAL Central St Martins in Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries. He currently holds two MA’s and an MBA in the New Media, Journalism and International Business fields. Co-editor at Image Amplified since its start, he lives in London, is fascinated by history and is motivated by continuing to learn and explore.

Sources:

Lavander Magazine

Making Queer History

New Yorker