Hello subreddit! I'm in a dnd campaign and my character is a Trans woman and was wondering if anyone had some pointers on writing her as the timeframe is in the 1930s and trans people weren't really a "thing" back then I know they existed but how would people feel about them/how would someone transition and such thanks!
Edit: I forgot to mention this is in US territory
A small-town Colorado diary entry from May 1991 involving the town’s only openly gay teenager (me), a closeted high school football player, and the start of what would become a very dramatic situation.
Today I made a pilgrimage to a site I’ve really wanted to see in person: the house in San Francisco that was once the location of the world famous fisting club from the 1970s/80s, the Catacombs.
The club was hosted in the basement of this old Victorian on 21st Street in Liberty Hill, now a beautifully gentrified neighborhood midway between the Castro and South of Market. The second photo shows the basement entrance on the lower left corner where fisters entered the play space. The club operated from 1975 to 1981 with legendary weekly all night fisting parties hosted by Steve McEachern, who owned the home and the transcription business he operated there. He carefully vetted all who asked to be put on the guest list. I began as a FF top in the late 1970s, and an acquaintance gave me Steve’s phone number. I called and tried to get invited, but either I was too green or didn’t know the right people, because I didn’t make the cut. Steve died of a heart attack during a Catacombs party in 1981 and the club closed. His lover attempted to revive the club in another location some time later, but it was short lived, in part because of the growing AIDS crisis in the early 80s.
Cultural anthropologist Gayle Rubin published the article “The Catacombs: Temple of the Butthole”, documenting the club’s history and her own personal experience as a lesbian at a gay men’s fisting party (they liked her small hands). She also appears in a fascinating short YouTube documentary about the club, including photos and other artifacts.
It was an emotional moment for me to stand in front of this important piece of fisting history today. The site has no historical marker because it is a private home, but it felt important to me to visit the site to honor our pioneering fisting brothers of the past. May their memory be a blessing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs\_(sex\_club)
**The Catacombs: A Temple of the Butthole**, in *Deviations*, Gayle Rubin, 2011 (orig pub in Mark Thompson, ed., *Leatherfolk — Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice*, Boston, Alyson Publications, 1991)
Rubin’s original article about the Catacombs
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YJ0eyRwo5sw3hnvpiTfVIkhwC0rEhewO/view?usp=drivesdk
**The Figa: a herstory of the Catacombs with Gayle Rubin**
Wonderful short documentary (with a little weird performance art) where Rubin talks about the history and significance of the Catacombs.
https://youtu.be/6ChSY3INoUE?si=069Lu7z5KDsLfShT
**Music from a Bygone Era**, Gayle Rubin, Cuir Underground, 1997
Rubin’s article about the music of the Catacombs documenting the playlist.
http://www.black-rose.com/cuiru/archive/3-4/musichist.html
**SF Catacombs Soundtrack**
Spotify playlist
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3if41AexkzDiM71XDyhDeh
One of the earliest and most disturbing examples of anti-LGBTQ military investigations in U.S. history was the in 1919.
Most people have never heard of it.
The U.S. Navy ordered enlisted sailors and young recruits in Newport, Rhode Island, to act as undercover decoys in order to identify suspected homosexual sailors and civilians.
These men were instructed to flirt with, entice, and participate in undercover encounters with suspected gay men as part of a large-scale investigation authorized under Assistant Secretary of the Navy .
What began as a supposedly limited investigation expanded into arrests, court-martials, ruined reputations, public scandal, and congressional outrage once the Navy’s entrapment tactics became public.
What struck me most while researching this history is realizing how early the roots of military surveillance and moral policing of LGBTQ people really began.
Long before: Article 125 the Lavender Scare “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” or modern debates about LGBTQ military service
there were already systems being built around suspicion, surveillance, entrapment, secrecy, and fear.
The deeper I research Friends of Dorothy, the more I realize these stories are not isolated moments.
They are chapters in a much longer history many people were never taught.
Friends of Dorothy is an LGBTQ oral history and memoir project exploring military investigations, coded language, secrecy, PTSD, emotional survival, and the hidden history many LGBTQ people quietly carried across generations.
Hi!
I am a student finishing my master's degree, and as my thesis I want to do a project that highlights Queer historical figures. However, in my search I've mostly found American and Northen-European icons, I've been struggling to find ones from other continents. I was wondering if anyone here knew any resources that would help my research for Queer historical figures from around the world.
Any help is appreciated!
(English is not my first language, so I apologize for any mistakes)
East Central Minnesota Pride in Pine City is an early one at 2005. But are there earlier?
I know the definition of what is rural is squishy as is what qualifies as a pride festival but I am just curious on rural LGBTQ history.
There was recently a post crossposted from r/BodegaJukeBox about Arsenio Hall and "Queer Nation" I want folks to know, that there is no homophobia allowed on that sub.
Please do no miscontexualize Arsenio's work and support of the LGBTQ+ community. He like my mother and myself, knew many black and brown POCs from that community who tragically lost their lives in the fight for equality.
Peace.
Honestly, I wasn’t fully prepared emotionally for the response people have had to the Friends of Dorothy Project.
What started as me trying to understand my own experiences during the Article 125 and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” era has slowly become something much bigger.
Veterans. Marines. Sailors. Older gay men. People from entirely different generations and backgrounds have started sharing memories, fears, coded language, survival stories, investigations, secrecy, loneliness, and emotional experiences they carried silently for decades.
Some of these stories are heartbreaking. Some are funny. Some are deeply personal. And many of them were never formally documented anywhere.
What’s affecting me the most is realizing how much LGBTQ history survived not through institutions — but through whispers, friendships, coded phrases, bars, rumors, private conversations, and memory.
People weren’t using phrases like “Friend of Dorothy” because it was cute slang.
They used it because many people genuinely were not safe being openly identified as gay.
Not in the military. Not in churches. Not in schools. Not in small towns. And often not even within their own families.
I think that’s why the phrase resonates with so many people across generations.
It quietly carried recognition. Belonging. Protection. And survival.
Reading these stories has honestly been emotional for me because I’m realizing how many people spent years believing they were alone in what they experienced.
And they weren’t.
Thank you to everyone who has shared memories, stories, corrections, historical context, encouragement, and pieces of yourselves with me so far.
You are helping preserve an important part of history before it disappears.
C. Mark Wathen
Navy Veteran | Author
Friends of Dorothy Project
friendsofdorothyproject@gmail.com
Here is one of the responses
“Former Marine, early 1990s”
Writing
I served in the U.S. Marine Corps during the early 90s. I served before and after the implementation of “Don't ask, don't tell.”
Outside of reading a couple of books at my local library about gay people, I had no one growing up. Gay men on TV were always portrayed as feminine and something abnormal and made fun of. I remember watching the 700 Club, a Christian evangelical tv show, because they always portrayed queer people as being ungodly, trying to recruit children, and ruin the American nuclear family. But I would watch, just to see people like me. I didn’t go to prom. I didn’t even show up for graduation.
There is a scene in the movie Broke Back Mountain where Ennis explains that his father forced him and his brother to look at Earl's body in an irrigation ditch to warn them about the consequences of being gay. According to the script and the original text: "They'd taken a tire iron to him. Spurred him up, dragged him 'round by his dick till it pulled off." I remember when first seeing that, it brought back memories of similar things I had heard about gay men when I was a boy.
I came of age during the HIV/AIDS epidemic in a small, conservative town. I had bought a car when I was 16, and that let me travel to a larger city and hang out in gay spaces for the first time. But they were haunted. One day, you would walk into a bookstore, and the nice clerk that was there last week had vanished, never to be seen again. A ghost.
I listened to the press secretary laugh at us when we were dying of the “gay plague.” I heard Christian ministers on television say AIDS was God’s punishment for our deviant lifestyle. I saw trans women nursing men because hospitals would not even admit patients with the ”gay cancer.“
Having had enough of that, and having graduated high school, I joined the Marine Corps Infantry. I thought the Marines were badass and no one would question my sexuality again. I practiced answering the question, with a straight face, “Are you a homosexual?” before going through the medical exam.
There was way too much fear.
I spent most of my weekends in a hotel room, where I could at least see hot guys on TV and jerk off. I heard about a bar called “Friend’s Lounge.” I imagined how awesome that would be. But then feared: What if the bar got raided while I was there? And what would I do if I saw someone there that I knew?
One day I bought a five-pack of gay magazines. It was the first time I got to see two men together, and it thrilled me.
Then one week we had a surprise inspection of our lockers. I tucked the magazines in my trousers and took them to the nearest dumpster. Later someone found them. I heard people laughing nearby and was terrified they had discovered my secret.
That weekend while sleeping in the barracks, a couple Marines wrapped me in a blanket and carried me outside as a prank. I was kicking and screaming. I thought they were going to kill me because they found out I was gay. I ran for miles terrified.
Later in life, Matthew Shepard’s murder affected me deeply. When I learned what they did to him, I swore I would never come out. He was someone just like me — same generation, same kind of conservative town, same fears.
It was everything I had feared they would do to me.
My response
Honestly, his response affected me more emotionally than I expected because so much of what he described mirrored the fear, secrecy, hypervigilance, and isolation many of us quietly carried during that era.
Thank you for sharing this with me. I honestly sat quietly for a while after reading it because so much of what you described felt painfully familiar.
Not necessarily the exact events themselves, but the fear, the secrecy, the hypervigilance, the isolation, and the emotional exhaustion of constantly monitoring yourself just to survive.
What you wrote captures something many people outside that era may never fully understand: being LGBTQ back then was not simply about hiding who you loved. It was about learning to live inside fear every single day.
Fear of being exposed. Fear of investigations. Fear of humiliation. Fear of violence. Fear of losing everything. Fear of being seen as weak, deviant, dangerous, or broken.
And for many of us, that fear did not end when military service ended.
It followed us home.
Into relationships. Into addiction. Into self-destructive behavior. Into depression. Into hypervigilance. Into nightmares. Into isolation. Into the way we trusted people — or didn’t trust them.
Reading your memories about AIDS-era fear, Christian condemnation, inspections, hiding magazines, hearing people laugh nearby while wondering if they had discovered your secret… all of that hit me hard because it reflects the emotional environment so many of us were living inside at the time.
I remember during my own NCIS investigation in Japan feeling like every conversation could become dangerous. Every friendship felt uncertain. Every interaction made me question whether someone knew something, suspected something, or might report something. Family members were questioned. Phone calls were monitored. My trash was searched. Investigators asked me about “Friends of Dorothy,” a phrase I genuinely did not even understand at the time.
But what stayed with me the longest was not the paperwork.
It was the fear.
The feeling that I was always being watched.
And honestly, I don’t think many people realize how deeply that kind of prolonged fear can shape a person psychologically over time.
Years later, I would eventually be diagnosed with delayed-onset PTSD, major depressive disorder, severe anxiety, and other trauma-related issues that I now understand were connected not only to childhood trauma and addiction, but also to years of concealment, hypervigilance, shame, emotional suppression, and survival-mode thinking.
That is one reason your story matters so much.
Because what happened to many LGBTQ service members during that era was not just policy.
It became psychological.
Emotional.
Spiritual.
And in many ways, generational.
Your memories about seeing positive representation so late in life, the terror surrounding Matthew Shepard’s murder, the AIDS epidemic, and the loneliness of those years are historically important because they preserve not just events — but emotional truth.
I truly believe stories like yours deserve to be remembered and preserved before they disappear.
I’m currently working on a nonfiction memoir and oral history project called Friends of Dorothy focused on LGBTQ military experiences during the years surrounding Article 125 and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The project combines personal memoir, oral history, archival research, FOIA records, and firsthand testimony from veterans who lived through those years.
With your permission, I would be deeply honored to include your voice and portions of your story in the project, either anonymously, under a pseudonym, or however you would feel most comfortable. I believe your experiences would help other veterans feel less alone and help preserve an important part of history that too often remained hidden.
Thank you again for trusting me with something so personal and painful. Your story matters more than you probably realize.
C. Mark Wathen
Navy Veteran | Author
Friends of Dorothy Project
An interview from 1991 with a group of trans lesbians, I wasn't sure what tag to add.
Martial was like many other Roman writers whose explicit poetry about same sex acts were erased by earlier translators for immorality.
This author on this page has done an amazing job of restoring some of the sexual humour of the past that have been erased from the records for being immoral. I'm very keen to stress that this is from a time and place of its own and we have to put it into context.
https://people.well.com/user/aquarius/martial.htm
The Roman world and these poems were not commensurate with our values and understanding of sexuality but this poem felt like a good example of relating to the past but also content warning many of these poems reflect the reality of slavery and other Roman sociocultural beliefs which are uncomfortable to read. Also Martial does spend a lot of time making fun of his peers for not being able to 'perform' so it isn't like this is all funny or tasteful, But many of these are quite funny:
9.33
If you hear applause in any bath, Flaccus, know that Maro's dick is there.
Born on this date in 1920, Tom of Finland (né Touko Laaksonen) had a profound impact on gay pornography and gay aesthetics in general. Characterized by hyper-masculine aesthetics (with sexual features to match), Tom's work has grown in stature over the years.
Originally considered scandalous at best, and illegal at worst, the images he created are now generally recognized for their importance, such that, in 2014, his native Finland released a series of commemorative stamps featuring some of his illustrations, and in 2023, the Finish national museum of contemporary art put up a major retrospective of his work.
Born in Amsterdam in 1904, Frieda Belinfante became the first woman in Europe to be artistic director and conductor of an ongoing professional orchestral ensemble in 1937. She enjoyed significant success for the next several years, until the rise of the Nazis.
As the Nazis gained power, Belinfante joined the Dutch resistance who helped prepare forged documents for Jewish people and others wanted by the Nazis. She also helped organize the bombing of the population registry in 1943, which destroyed thousands of files, stymying Nazi efforts to identify forged documents. After the bombing, she went into hiding, dressing as a man for three months while living with friends. When her attempts at hiding, she fled the Netherlands, culminating in crossing the Alps on foot to reach Switzerland.
Following the war, Belinfante returned to the Netherlands, but in 1947, she emigrated to the United States, where she resumed her musical career. She was the founding artistic director of the Orange County (California) Philharmonic and built the ensemble into an important second-tier organization. She led the organization from 1954-1962, when a combination of sexism and homophobia led to her ouster.
Reflecting on her career, she said, "It was just too early for me. I should be born again. I could have done more, that's what saddens me. But I'm not an unhappy person. I look for the next thing to do. There's always something still to do." Perhaps she was born too early to achieve all the musical success she deserved, but she was born just in time to save hundreds or thousands of lives in World War II.
The response to the Friends of Dorothy Project so far from Reddit members has honestly been far more emotional and meaningful than I ever expected.
What started as me trying to understand and process my own experiences during the Article 125 and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” era has slowly become something much larger.
Veterans. Marines. Sailors. Older gay men. People from completely different generations and backgrounds have started sharing memories, coded language, investigations, fear, secrecy, loneliness, survival stories, and emotional experiences they carried silently for decades.
Some remembered hearing and using the phrase “Friend of Dorothy” long before the internet existed. Others shared memories of the AIDS epidemic, military fear, religious shame, hidden relationships, inspections, violence fears, and the emotional toll of constantly living in survival mode.
One thing becoming very clear to me is this: so much LGBTQ history survived not through institutions or official records, but through whispers, friendships, coded language, bars, private letters, oral storytelling, and memory.
Many people truly were not safe being openly identified as gay during those years. Not in the military. Not in churches. Not in schools. Not in small towns. And often not even within their own families.
That’s why phrases like “Friend of Dorothy” mattered.
They carried recognition. Belonging. Protection. And survival.
I’ve also realized how much of this history risks disappearing entirely as older generations pass away and memories are lost before they are documented.
Thank you to everyone who has shared stories, encouragement, historical insight, corrections, memories, and pieces of yourselves with me so far.
You are helping preserve an important part of LGBTQ history that deserves to be remembered.
C. Mark Wathen
Navy Veteran | Author
Friends of Dorothy Project
During the early 1990s, while I was stationed at Yokosuka Naval Hospital in Japan, I was going through my own investigation tied to homosexuality allegations during the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” era and the years surrounding it.
At the same time, another event shook the military community in Japan — the murder of Navy sailor Allen Schindler in 1992 in Sasebo, Japan. Schindler was beaten to death by another sailor in what later became one of the most widely recognized anti-gay hate crimes in U.S. military history.
I still remember hearing sailors openly say he “deserved it” simply because he was believed to be gay.
At the time, I worked at Yokosuka Naval Hospital’s alcohol rehabilitation department. I remember the atmosphere of fear, silence, and hypervigilance that existed then. People watched what they said. Many hid who they were completely. Some feared criminal investigation more than anything else.
Years later, I began realizing how deeply that fear affected many veterans psychologically long after their service ended.
I’m currently working on a writing/history project called The Friends of Dorothy Project, focused on preserving stories from LGBTQ veterans and service members who lived through investigations, silence, fear, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Article 125 cases, or related experiences during that era.
This is not about politics or attacking the military. It’s about documenting lived experiences and understanding the emotional impact many carried for decades afterward.
If anyone would like to privately share experiences or memories from that time period, you can contact me at:
friendsofdorothyproject@gmail.com
Stories can remain anonymous if preferred.
C. Mark Wathen
Navy Veteran
Friends of Dorothy Project
For those unfamiliar with the phrase, “Friends of Dorothy” was historically used within the LGBTQ community as a quiet coded way for gay people to identify one another safely during decades when openly discussing sexuality could be dangerous socially, professionally, or legally. The phrase became especially meaningful during military service years when secrecy often felt necessary for survival.
Years later, I began realizing how deeply that fear affected many veterans psychologically long after their service ended.
This is a video, about transgender people's AIDS advocacy. Does anyone have more information on how trans people were affected by the AIDS epidemic?
Reed Erickson (1917-1992) was an American transgender man, a philanthropist known for his involvement and support transgender research. He is founded the Erickson Educational Foundation in 1964, the foundation was a good resource for transgender people and it funded early trans research, educational movies and newspaper articles about trans people. He also supported homophile movements, initially helping ONE. inc. Read more here: https://www.uvic.ca/transgenderarchives/collections/reed-erickson/index.php Making Gay History also has an episode on him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrapslDTpQE
