The Olympic Summer Games of 2016 held in Rio, Brazil have been recorded into our history books, as the biggest out athlete LGBT presence ever recorded. Although, we won’t be able to see the bulging muscles of the gymnasts, the hairless swimmers at the pool or the lycra shorts on the track for another four years, in Tokyo 2020, team LGBT did make a statement in Rio. However, in 2018 at the Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, Korea, we are sure team LGBT will have a presence again. Who could resist the gay snow bunnies on the ski slops, the glitter turns in the skating rinks and better yet the lycra jumpsuits at the speed skating track? YAAAS Queen!

Anyway, back to Rio, almost half of the publicly out LGBT athletes competing in the Rio Olympics won a medal, which is a drastically higher percentage than the athletes in general. All told, 25 of the 53 publicly out athletes that we know of — a full 47% — won a medal, including 10 athletes winning gold. This number was made higher, thanks in part to the success of the Swedish women’s soccer team and the American women’s basketball team, which combined account for almost a third of the athletes winning medals. It is odd that being publicly out would translate to Olympic success in the Summer Games. You have to wonder if there is a correlation.

Gold Medals

Nicola Adams

Great Britain, Boxing

51kg weight class

Kate Richardson-Walsh

Great Britain, Field hockey

Helen Richardson-Walsh

Great Britain, Field hockey

Susannah Townsend

Great Britain, Field hockey

Rafaela Silva

Brazil, Judo

Women’s 57kg

Seimone Augustus

United States, Basketball Team USA

Elena Delle Donne

United States, Basketball Team USA

Brittney Griner

United States, Basketball Team USA

Angel McCoughtry

United States, Basketball Team USA

Caster Semenya

South Africa, Track and Field

800 meters

Silver Medals

Alexandra Lacrabère

France, Handball

Lisa Dahlkvist

Sweden, Soccer

Nilla Fischer

Sweden, Soccer

Hedvig Lindahl

Sweden, Soccer

Caroline Seger

Sweden, Soccer

Carlien Dirkse van den Heuvel

Netherlands, Field Hockey

Maartje Paumen

Netherlands, Field Hockey

Sunette Viljoen

South Africa, Track & Field

Javelin

Rachele Bruni

Italy, Swimming

10km

Carl Hester

Great Britain, Dressage

Spencer Wilton

Great Britain, Dressage

Bronze Medals

Stephanie Labbe

Canada, Soccer

Marie-Eve Nault

Canada, Soccer

Tom Daley

Great Britain, Diving

Jen Kish

Canada, Rugby

Women’s sevens

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By Seth Hemmelgarn

A new book chronicling the lives of nine transgender women across the country who have been incarcerated comes amid historic progress for such prisoners.

“The Women of San Quentin: Soul Murder of Transgender Women in Male Prisons,” by Kristin Schreier Lyseggen, was released in September.

Schreier Lyseggen, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., traveled around the United States to speak with incarcerated trans women about their experiences with rape, assault and trying to get access to hormones.

On one front, at least, there has been some good news, as California prison officials recently announced they would provide gender-affirming surgery for a transgender inmate.

Additionally, a transgender woman in Georgia was recently released, apparently due to pressure form a lawsuit.

But Schreier Lyseggen, who didn’t give her age, indicated, despite progress, problems are likely to persist for many people.

“In order to find solutions, we have to see, how did these people end up in prison in the first place?” Schreier Lyseggen said, adding, “it is a race issue. Transgender women of color are suffering the most. They are down at the bottom of the caste system we have,” frequently struggling with a lack of employment, health care and other problems.

Asked about solutions, Schreier Lyseggen said, “First, we have to make them safe. We can’t just sit and watch them being raped.”

She added, “People like me who are white, privileged and straight” need to “start getting involved and not treat these people as second- and third-class citizens.”

One of the people featured in “The Women of San Quentin” is Shiloh Quine.

In August, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reached a groundbreaking settlement with Quine, 56, to provide surgery and other medical care.

“After so many years of almost giving up on myself, I will finally be liberated from the prison within a prison I felt trapped in, and feel whole, both as a woman and as a human being,” Quine said in a news release from the Oakland-based Transgender Law Center, which has been helping to represent Quine.

Quine has been serving a term of life without the possibility of parole since 1981 after being convicted in Los Angeles County for first-degree murder, kidnapping and robbery. She’s being held in Mule Creek State Prison, a men’s facility in Ione, Calif.

According to the book, Quine wrote to Schreier Lyseggen that she’d told police in 1980 “that the gun used to murder someone was hers, even though it wasn’t. She was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for a murder she said she did not commit.”

In its news release, Flor Bermudez, TLC’s detention project director, said, “Ms. Quine will be the first transgender inmate in the country to receive gender-affirming surgery while incarcerated, to our knowledge.”

TLC executive director Kris Hayashi said, “This historic settlement is a tremendous victory, not just for Shiloh and transgender people in prison, but for all transgender people who have ever been denied medical care or basic recognition of our humanity just because of who we are.”

In an email, CDCR spokesman Jeffrey Callison said officials treat situations like Quine’s on a “case-by-case basis.”

Callison said his agency “evaluates every case individually and, in the Quine case, every medical doctor and mental-health clinician who has reviewed this case, including two independent mental-health experts, determined that this surgery is medically necessary for Quine.”

In a phone interview last month, CDCR spokeswoman Terry Thornton noted another part of the settlement is that the agency’s policy will allow transgender people access to all the items listed in prison catalogs.

“If a transgender inmate wants female items, and she’s in a male institution, she’ll have access to those items as well now,” Thornton said.

Another woman Schreier Lyseggen profiled has also been in the news recently.

Ashley Diamond, 37, is suing the Georgia Department of Corrections for denying her hormone treatments, which she had received before being incarcerated, and a safe environment, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Diamond was released in August from Augusta State Medical Prison after serving almost three years of an 11-year sentence for “a nonviolent offense,” according to SPLC, which filed a lawsuit on Diamond’s behalf in February.

The organization said in a news release that Diamond had been housed with male prisoners and was “sexually assaulted eight times.”

Diamond was going to be up for parole this fall, but SPLC attributed her release to the lawsuit.

“I’m overjoyed to be with my family again and out of harm’s way,” Diamond said in the nonprofit’s statement. “Although the systematic abuse and assaults I faced for more than three years have left me emotionally and physically scarred, I’ll continue to fight for justice and to shine a light on the gross mistreatment of transgender inmates in Georgia and nationwide.”

Facing scrutiny, GDC has “revised its gender-dysphoria policy and adopted new guidelines to provide constitutionally appropriate treatment,” SPLC said, and the state agency agreed to give Diamond access to hormones. However, the dosage was “inadequate for months,” the group said.

GDC spokeswomen didn’t respond to the Bay Area Reporter’s requests for comment.

In response to an emailed question about why she used San Quentin in her book’s title, Schreier Lyseggen said, among other reasons, the northern California institution “has been a symbol of prison life in America,” and two of the women she wrote about have been incarcerated there.

Photo Credit: outsmartmagazine.com

Seth Hemmelgarn is an assistant editor at the Bay Area Reporter. He can be reached at s.hemmelgarn@ebar.com.

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By Perry Brass

For my friend Dick Leitsch, the last president of the Mattachine Society of New York, who last May turned 80, history was unavoidable. I met Dick in two different periods of my life. At 20, I attended my first and only meeting of the New York Mattachine Society, at the old Wendell Wilkie House near Bryant Park in New York City. He moderated, handsome, stylish, with a soft-spoken Kentuckian polished air. I was turned totally off: Mattachine was strictly out of my world as, new to New York, I struggled to make sense of myself. Two years later, a few months after Stonewall, I joined the Gay Liberation Front. GLF offered me a valid political understanding of why queers were being destroyed in American society, and what we had to do, often rowdy as we were, to change it. Both Dick and Mattachine were loathed by many of my young GLF brothers and sisters, some of whom had been in it and, like unruly kids, resented their dowdier parents.

Dick was often referred to as “Pig Leitsch.” For us, he represented gay accomodationists, what we called “dragonfaggots,” “Aunt Sallies,” queer “Uncle Toms.” His very image seemed like a ghost from the 1950s and mid-1960s. Then in 1975, I started freelancing for Countrywide Publications, a scrappy pulp magazine conglomerate on lower Park Avenue, run by the infamously cheap Myron Fass and his brother (often described as “borderline personality” types for their explosive dealings with employees), who presided over a farm team for a later generation of successful writers and editors. My editor was Robert (Bobby) Amsel, a gifted young man editing a group of low-end, hetero porn magazines often written by hungry gay scribes like myself. Bobby and I became close; he literally taught me how to write for commercial publication. He revealed that his long-time partner was Dick Leitsch, “president of the old Mattachine Society.”

I blinked twice. Bobby had actually had a history with Mattachine, and after Stonewall, as Mattachine was folding, became president while Dick remained executive director. I soon met Dick again, and quickly adored him. He was a throwback to another era, of courtly Southern gentlemen (he’s from Louisville) and old-school gay bar queens, denizens of a complete culture of gay bars, something that younger people now find difficult to understand. For decades, gay bars were our most visible institutions. Gay men and lesbians found their only home in them. In New York, bars were raided cyclically: usually before elections, before major events like the 1964 New York World’s Fair when Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. closed the bars to keep innocent tourists from wandering in (like, what were they going to do in them?), or when cops decided they wanted to squeeze out a bit more payola from mafia barkeeps.

This was fostered by New York’s state alcoholic beverage agency, which had rules dating from the 1920s against serving homosexuals “openly” in any bar. In 1966, Leitsch, along with other members of NY Mattachine staged the “Sip-In,” the first “out” gay demonstration in New York state history. They walked into Julius’, an oft-raided bar on Waverly Place in the West Village, declared themselves gay and were immediately refused service. The event was recorded in Fred W. McDarrah’s famous photo showing Dick in profile next to Craig Rodwell (soon to open the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore, the first gay bookstore in the United States) and long-time activist Randy Wicker. Mattachine took Julius’ and the state agency to court, paying the bar’s legal fees because, as Dick put it, “We just wanted to make a case, not punish them.” A New York judge declared that the state’s policy denied gays their basic right to free assembly; the rule was unconstitutional. But this did not stop gay bars from being harassed, and three years later a June raid on the Stonewall Inn in the Village exploded as no one thought it would.

Dick told me he never thought of himself as being political; he was simply for “our right to exist.” For close to a decade before Stonewall, he was one of a few openly gay men in America. To be that open, he’d had to take a virtual vow of poverty, and for several years lived rent-free in a room in a spacious rent-controlled apartment leased by Madolin Cervantes, a straight woman and Mattachine officer who loved gay men. To make money, as a solitary advocate for gay rights, he got sent out on college lecture circuits where he met the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, America’s second openly gay man.

“We would criss-cross each other on college campuses,” Dick told me. “We became friends. He published stuff in Mattachine publications.”

Dick worked as a journalist, a holiday decorator for restaurants and stores and a bartender. He loved working in bars and restaurants.

“When you’re a writer, you have to wait for the reviews to come out. When you work in a restaurant, you get the review immediately. It’s called a tip.”

He was very close to his siblings back in Kentucky who all had children, so Uncle Dick had a large extended family. Later when I became close to Jack Nichols, another Mattachine pioneer and a prolific writer who died in 2005, after becoming much more radical than most of his generation, Dick told me that having family made him less interested in leaving a legacy for history.

“I have lots of nieces and nephews,” he told me. “They will live after me.”

But history is unavoidable. We are now starting to see what huge courage and sacrifices these gay pioneers went through — Frank Kameny, who was jobless after a federal witchhunt deprived him of a position as an astronomer; Nick Nichols, whose own father, an FBI agent, plotted to have him murdered as a teenager; and Dick Leitsch, who took his role in it with such gallantry, never trying to re-invent history to try to concoct a place himself. He went from being America’s most famous, if only, homosexual, to almost forgotten.

In 2006, on the 40th anniversary of the Sip-In, he was asked by Scott Simon on National Public Radio: “Mr. Leitsch, is there still a Mattachine Society?”

He answered, “Oh, no, not after Stonewall. I kept saying, what’s the goal of Mattachine? And I always said the goal of Mattachine is to put ourselves out of business. When the cops walked into Stonewall, they tried to close it. People said, no, you’re not going to close our bar. We have a right to have our bars and it’s been established we have the right to have our bars. And Mattachine had nothing to do with Stonewall. That was something where the people rose up and did it. And that’s the beginning of the gay movement.”

Photo Credit: nwpapride.org

Perry Brass has published 19 books, is the author of the bestseller “The Manly Art of Seduction, How to Meet, Talk to and Become Intimate with Anyone” and Ferro-Grumley Award-nominated “King of Angels,” a gay, Southern Jewish coming-of-age novel set in Savannah, Ga., in 1963. His newest book is “The Manly Pursuit of Desire and Love, Your Guide to Life, Happiness and Emotional and Sexual Fulfillment In a Closed-Down World.” “The Manly Art of Seduction” is now available as an audio book through Audible.com. Brass frequently writes for the Huffington Post and can be reached through www.perrybrass.com.

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As the gay and lesbian community celebrates marriage equality across the United States, the transgender members of the LGBT community continue to work diligently to place their civil rights front and center, as we move into the next chapter of LGBT equality.

To many, it seems as if the transgender movement has come from nowhere in the last decade, but the reality is that transgender Americans have been fighting for civil rights right along with the lesbian, gay and bisexual members of our community for decades. Here are a few key high- lights of transgender people within the tableau of American LGBT civil-rights history:

1800: “Woman Chief” Barcheeampe

A leader of the Crow nation, the “woman chief” was known for her war exploits and had several wives.

1871: We’Wha

Two-spirit Zuni Native American who was born male but lived as a woman. An ac-complished weaver and potter, in 1886 the six-foot Zuni maiden met President Cleveland, who was unaware that she was two-spirit.

1952: Christine Jorgensen

A trailblazer who was the first person in America to receive sexual-reassignment surgery, Jorgensen, a former GI, became a household name and put the issue of gender identity in the American conscience.

1957: Billy Tipton jazz album released

Renowned Jazz musician lived his life as a man and “married” several women. He was discovered to be biologically female upon his death.

1965: Dewey’s Coffee Shop Protest

One hundred and fifty “non-conforming” people protested Dewey’s Coffee Shop in Philadelphia because it refused service to young people who were dressing in clothing that did not conform to their gender. The protest led to an end of the discriminatory policy.

1966: “Transsexual Phenomenon” published

Dr. Harry Benjamin published a seminal work that described the medical transition for transgender people. Benjamin helped Jorgensen in her transition and acknowledged her in the preface of the book: “Without Christine Jorgensen and the unsought publicity of her ‘conversion,’ this book could hardly have been conceived.”

1969: Stonewall Riots               

The legendary seminal event of the LGBT civil-rights movement included members of the transgender community. The LGBT community resisted police abuse on the night after Judy Garland’s funeral, which many attribute for the frayed nerves.

1970: Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR)

Started by transgender legends Sylvia Rivera and Marsha Johnson, STAR was an advocacy group for transgender people. Both Rivera and Johnson were rioters at the Stonewall Inn and helped usher in the tepid acknowledgment of transgender Americans as part of the gay civil-rights movement.

1975: Minneapolis passes transgender legislation

Minneapolis becomes the first city to pass an anti-discrimination law protecting transgender people. That’s right, Minneapolis, in 1975.

1977: Rene?e Richards

The next transgender icon who pierced the American consciousness. Richards was an eye doctor who became a professional tennis player and challenged a ban that prevented her from playing in the U.S. Open as a woman. The New York Supreme Court overruled the ban, making Richards the catalyst for a landmark decision concerning transgender rights.

1986: FTM newsletter

Lou Sullivan published the FTM newsletter, which was later transformed by Jamison Green into FTM International, the world’s largest information and networking group for female-to-male transgender people and transsexual men. Sullivan is credited with bringing female-to-male transgenderism to the forefront.

1991: Rift with Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival

Nancy Burkholder was removed from the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival when she was discovered to be transgender. The removal led to an annual protest by the transgender community, which continued through this year, when the festival ceased.

1993: Brandon Teena

Teena, a transgender man, was murdered in Nebraska. The story of his journey and death was later chronicled in the Oscar -inning film “Boys Don’t Cry.”

1995: GenderPac formed

Transgender activist RiKi Wilchins formed the first advocacy group dedicated to gender identity and expression. The organization ushered in the period where the national transgender movement took hold.

1999: First Transgender Day of Remembrance

The first Transgender Day of Remembrance honored those who have died due to anti-transgender violence. The commemoration was a direct result of the murder of Rita Hester in Massachusetts.

Transgender Pride flag created

Monica Helms created the transgender flag, saying, “The stripes at the top and bottom are light blue, the traditional color for baby boys. The stripes next to them are pink, the traditional color for baby girls. The stripe in the middle is white, for those who are intersex, transitioning or consider themselves having a neutral or undefined gender. The pattern is such that no matter which way you fly it, it is always correct, signifying us finding correctness in our lives.”

2002: Transgender legal-aid organizations established

The Sylvia Rivera Law Project in New York and the Transgender Law Cen ter in San Francisco were created to advance transgender civil rights using the legal system.

2003: National Center for Transgender Equality established

Activist Mara Keisling, with the support of other transgender activists, founded the organization dedicated to advancing the civil rights of transgender people.

Expansion of San Diego antibias law

The San Diego City Council added gender identity to the city’s antidiscrimination ordinance, the Human Dignity Ordinance, with a unanimous 7-0 vote.

2006: California’s Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act

AB 1160 passed into law prohibit the use of so-called “panic strategies” in criminal defenses. The legislation was named in the memory of a transgender teenager from Newark, Calif., who was attacked and killed in 2002. The law proved ineffective when tested during the murder trial for Larry King’s killer.

First transgender person elected to statewide office

Kim Coco Iwamoto was elected to statewide office in Hawaii as a member of the Board of Education.

2008: First transgender mayor in America

Stu Rasmussen became the first openly transgender mayor in America in Silverton, Ore. Rasmussen previously had served as the mayor prior to coming out as transgender. He prefers male pronouns but dresses as a woman.

2009: Chaz Bono transition

Child of celebrities Sonny and Cher, Chastity Bono, transitioned to become a man. He chronicled his transition in a documentary, then went on to become a contestant on “Dancing with the Stars,” as well as a transgender activist and spokesperson.

2010: First transgender presidential appointees

President Obama appointed the first two transgender people in history. Amanda Simpson was appointed as senior technical adviser in the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, and Dylan Orr was appointed as special assistant to the Department of Labor Assistant Secretary.

First transgender judge in America

Victoria Kolakowski became the first openly transgender judge in America, elected by the voters of Alameda County in the Bay Area.

New passport policy

The U.S. State Department announced a new policy eliminating the requirement for surgery to update gender markers on passports.

2011: First NCAA trans athlete

Kye Allums became the first openly transgender athlete to play in the National Collegiate Athletic Associate.

California’s Gender Nondiscrimination Act

AB 887 passed into law, expanding the state’s nondiscrimination laws to protect transgender people by including discrimination based on “gender identity and expression” as a type of “gender” discrimination.

New veterans policy

Veterans Health Administration (VHA) establishes a policy of respectful delivery of healthcare to transgender and intersex veterans.

2012: ‘Matrix’ director transitions

Lana Wachowski came out as transgender while promoting her new movie “Cloud Atlas.” She is most noted for the “Matrix” trilogy created with her brother.

2013: Official debut of ‘gender dysphoria’

The American Psychiatric Association debuted the term gender to describe those who deem themselves transgender.

2014: Laverne Cox covers Time

The “Orange is the New Black” star made headlines as the first transgender person to be featured on the cover of Time.

Women’s colleges open doors

Mills College and Mount Holyoke allowed transgender women to enroll at their female-only institutions.

Gender identity protected in federal employment

The Department of Labor issued a rule banning discrimination based on gender identity in federal employment.

Surgery covered by Medicare

The Obama administration lifted a decades-old ban on using Medicare coverage for gender-reassignment surgery.

2015: Caitlyn Jenner debuts

The former Olympic athlete and reality star came out as transgender, going on to be featured on the cover of Vanity Fair.

First trans national anthem singer

Breanna Sinclaire? became the first transgender person to sing the national anthem at a professional sporting event at the Oakland Coliseum before the A’s game with the San Diego Padres.

Pennsylvania gets transgender physician general

Pennsylvania made U.S. history with the appointment and confirmation of Dr. Rachel Levine as the nation’s first openly transgender state physician general.

White House appointment

President Barack Obama appointed transgender attorney Shannon Price Minter to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships. Minter was the lead attorney arguing before the California Supreme Court to overturn Proposition 8.

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P.L. Travers: A spoonful of speculation

By Gary M. Kramer

P.L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins, was born Helen Lyndon Goff on Aug. 9, 1899 in the city of Maryborough, in Queensland, Australia, (not in England, as many assume). She moved to England in 1924, and used the name P.L. Travers, an abbreviation of her pseudonym Pamela Lyndon Travers, which she used in her days as a dancer and Shakespearean actor on the Australian stage. Reportedly, her wealthy relatives did not approve of Travers performing, so, being independent-minded, she moved to England where she forged a career as a writer.

The name P.L. Travers appealed to Goff because it sounded more masculine — or at least, gender-nonspecific. Travers was the name of her father, an alcoholic banker whose career declined almost as quickly as he did. (He died of tuberculosis at age 43). His daughter was 7 years old when he passed.

The author, who first published poems as a teen in Australia, was fond of myths and fantasies. This may be why she was so good at acting and writing. She constructed her own rather mysterious persona so that no one really knows her truth. Her famous literary heroine, based on an aunt of Travers’, was a magical nanny who helped her charge through difficult situations with sensible, even tough advice. Travers, who was very no-nonsense herself, was also fascinated with eastern philosophy and theosophy, Sufism and Hinduism.

In England, Travers lived with Madge Burnand, the daughter of the editor of Punch. The women shared a flat in London, and later rented a cottage together in Sussex. Much speculation has been made about whether they were lovers.

Actor Emma Thompson played Travers in the 2013 film Saving Mr. Banks, which depicted Travers’ battle with Walt Disney to make “Mary Poppins.” The actress was quoted in article on the film in The Advocate about Travers’ relationship with Burnand.

She stated, “I don’t know whether they were lovers or not, but she did live with Madge for a long, long time, and she certainly had very complex, passionate relationships with both women and men. She was an explorer of her own condition, and very possibly her own sexuality.”

It was while living with Burnand that Travers published Mary Poppins, the work that would give the author her greatest fame. Travers wrote five sequels to Mary Poppins and, as Saving Mr. Banks depicted, she reluctantly sold the rights to Disney, who produced the famous film. Travers, apparently, was not fond of the Julie Andrews/Dick Van Dyke musical and particularly hated the animated dancing penguins.

As mentioned, Travers is said to have had relationship with men and women, but few specifics about her sexual relationships have ever been detailed. Her diary recounted her friendship (and possibly a relationship) with Jessie Orage, whose husband, Alfred Richard Orage, was a pupil of the spiritual teacher G.I. Gurdjieff.

Travers became a follower of Gurdjieff, and through him became an occasional member of The Rope, a group that consisted mostly of lesbian writers, including Jane Heap, founding editor of Little Review, and Kathryn Hulme, author of The Nun’s Story. [Fun fact: Many members of The Rope were acquainted with Gertrude Stein, but Stein did not follow Gurdjieff; whether she and Travers ever connected is not known].

Valerie Lawson, author of Mary Poppins, She Wrote, a biography of Travers originally titled Out of the Sky She Came, indicated that both Travers and Orage “loved men.” Their close friendship, Lawson indicates, was formed over the loss of Orage’s husband, and Travers’ editor, George William Russell.

Whether their friendship crossed over into a sexual relationship is not known. But Jim Korkis, a Disney historian, was quoted in the Orlando Weekly (around the time of Saving Mr. Banks) saying that, “It has been assumed that Travers was bisexual, although no one really knows for sure. She was known to be extremely flirtatious around younger men. At one point, she told an acquaintance that she thought that Walt [Disney] had ‘eyes’ for her.”

Travers certainly was secretive and private. It was perhaps a source of pride for her. A quote from her in a New Statesman article entitled, “The strange life of the creator of Mary Poppins,” read, “I’m a private sort of person, as anonymous as possible — and that’s not humility.”

Other articles about the author that surfaced around the time Saving Mr. Banks was released have been even more candid. According to the Daily Mail, Travers was said to be “neither warm nor kindly. She was an intellectual snob who wrote erotic prose, was a one-time fascist sympathizer, occasional lesbian and appalling mother.”
Unpacking that quote, Travers is known to have written poetry for the erotic publication The Triad, and she wrote book reviews for New Pioneer, an anti-Semitic British magazine of the far right in the 1930. The article’s last point likely refers to the fact that, at age 40, Travers adopted a son, Camillus, who discovered he was a twin at age 17. Upon learning this — and that his twin grew up poor in Ireland — his relationship with Travers became strained.

It is entirely possible that Travers adopted Camillus so she would have someone to love. While she lived with Burnand, and was close to Orage, her rumored same-sex encounters may have happened without being disclosed. This is likely because Travers was alive (and prominent) during the era when women did not discuss relationships outside of marriage. Females in those days were expected to marry; if they lived together, there was always speculation about them being lovers. Moreover, if a woman lived alone, it was presumed she was likely promiscuous. Travers was certainly sharp enough — and discrete enough — not to let anyone know her true nature. For all anyone knows, she could have been asexual, given how little evidence there is of any lover(s).

But whether Travers was asexual, bisexual or something else entirely, it was certainly a taboo at the time for a woman to be intimately involved with other women. As Travers was gaining fame as a children’s author, the exposure of a same-sex relationship could have been especially harmful to her career. (Travers was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1977). This may account for why she felt she needed to maintain privacy.

Travers never published an autobiography. And while the news articles and biographies hint at what might have been, all anyone can really do is speculate.

Gary M. Kramer is an award-winning, Philadelphia-based film critic. He is a contributing writer to Philadelphia Gay News, Salon.com, indieWIRE and various other media outlets. He is the author of “Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews” and co-editor of “Directory of World Cinema: Argentina.”

Photo Credit: nypost.com

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