Lou Sullivan (June 16, 1951 – March 2, 1991)

   

Louis Graydon Sullivan was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was a pioneering activist who, because he was also gay, played a pivotal role in changing the medical diagnosis and treatment of transsexualism. He was also a major force in creating community for trans masculine people.

When Sullivan was 17, he began a long term relationship with a feminine male lover. By 1973, Sullivan was identifying as a “female transvestite,” and launched a career of transgender community activism with the publication of the article “A Transvestite Answers a Feminist,” which appeared in the Gay People’s Union News. A second article published the following year, “Looking Towards Transvestite Liberation,” remains a landmark for its early investigation of gender identity in homosexual culture.

By 1975, Sullivan was identifying as a female-to-male transsexual, and he moved to San Francisco. He was employed as a woman, but spent most of his time living as a gay man. He sought out surgery but was consistently denied because he was gay. As a result, Sullivan became involved in a campaign to remove homosexual orientation from the list of contraindications for SRS.

He published a booklet called Information for the Female to Male Cross-Dresser and Transsexualwhich disseminated information about finding support groups, counseling, endocrinological and surgical services.

In 1979, Sullivan started taking testosterone and also became a volunteer at the Janus Information Facility (now J2CP), a referral service in San Francisco. He had top surgery in 1980 and started living full time as a gay man. Throughout the 80s, Sullivan continued to wrote about FTM issues in the gay and transgender press, started work on his biography of Jack Garland, and became a popular public speaker.

In 1986, Sullivan had genital reconstruction surgery, and organized what would become FTM International, the first known peer-support group in the U.S. devoted entirely to FTM individuals. Later that year Sullivan was diagnosed with AIDS. He died of an AIDS-related illness on March 2, 1991, at the age of 39.

For more information about Lou Sullivan, explore the Lou Sullivan Society (LSS) website. The LSS has displayed selected materials from Sullivan’s papers in a number of exhibitions, notably “Man-i-fest: FTM Mentoring in San Francisco from 1976 to 2009,”  which was open through much of 2010 in the second gallery at the society’s headquarters at 657 Mission St. in San Francisco, and “Our Vast Queer Past: Celebrating San Francsico’s GLBT History,” the debut exhibition in the main gallery at the society’s GLBT History Museum that opened in January 2011 in San Francisco’s Castro District.

October is LGBT History Month. This post on Lou Sullivan is taken from Transguys.com by Joshua Riverdale. Read all the stories on A Brief History of FTM Trans Civilisation.

20th Century Transgender Men

These historical profiles of some of the key trans men of the past century highlight their remarkable achievements. Their perseverance in the face of prejudice has earned them a place in the FTM trans history time line.