Pride Month: Lou Sullivan
Lou Sullivan was an activist, lay historian, and writer who was born in Wauwatosa in 1951 and grew up in Milwaukee. He became a member of the Gay People’s Union and a close friend of Eldon Murray, and first publicly identified publicly as transgender in an article in the August 1973 issue of GPU News titled “A Transvestite Answers a Feminist”. Sullivan, who lived his life as a gay man, was one of the first FTM transgender people in the nation to speak out about his medical transition and the many roadblocks and instances of discrimination he encountered along the way.
In 1980 Sullivan wrote Information for the Female-to-Male Crossdresser and Transsexual, one of the first publications to share recommendations on clothing choices and body language as well as advice on finding support groups, counseling, and endocrinological and surgical services for FTM transgender men. The booklet is held in the Eldon Murray Papers at UWM Archives and is available in full online.
Sullivan moved to San Francisco in 1975, where he completed his medical transition and continued his engagement with activism and advocacy for the transgender community. He was a founding member of the GLBT Historical Society and was involved in editing and publishing their newsletter.
After receiving an HIV diagnosis in 1986, Sullivan spent the last years of his life amplifying his activism in support of the trans community and increasing his advocacy amongst the doctors and psychiatrists who had delayed his own transition- in part through the founding of FTM International, the oldest group for trans men in the U.S, and contributing to FTM International Newsletter. He died of AIDS-related complications in 1991, at the age of 39.
The Louis Graydon Sullivan papers, Lou Sullivan’s personal archive, was donated to the GLBT Historical Society of San Francisco in 1991. Over 350 of the records from this collection are available online courtesy of the Digital Transgender Archive.
We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan, 1961-1991, which documents Sullivan’s social and medical transition, can be found in the Golda Meir Library’s main collection. From Female to Male: The Life of Jack Bee Garland, which Sullivan wrote in 1990, is held by UWM Special Collections.
--Ana
