For the past five years I've taken a few days at the end of the year to put together a list of people we lost in the previous year who spent at least some, if not most, of their life working around sexuality and gender. Some are artists and activists trying to envision a better world, some are people who found themselves making a living by being public about their sex lives. I make the list and publish it not to single these people out as better than others, more worthy of our grief, but because many people who work in sex and gender don't get the acknowledgment they deserve, in life or death. So it feels like a very small way of acknowledging their passing.
As always, this list is incomplete. Anyone can be added, and I welcome additions, as these kinds of lists should really be a collective task if we want to remember not just those we know, but those we would have been better for knowing.
Lucille Clifton (June 27, 1936 - February 13, 2010)
Poet and childrens author Lucille Clifton left a body of work which "trained lenses wide and narrow on the experience of being black and female in the 20th century, exploring vast subjects like the indignities of history and intimate ones like the indignities of the body." Clifton's work, for which she received the National Book Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, often confronted the multiple intersections of race, gender, class, as well as violence and sexuality, in language that was accessible and biting, and funny. The Times obituary reprints her "homage to my hips", but you can watch/hear Clifton read it here on YouTube. Also check out "i was born with twelve fingers".
Read more - New York Times: Lucille Clifton, Poet Who Explored Intricacies of Black Lives, Dies at 73
Laura Hershey (August 11, 1962 - November 26, 2010)
Laura was a writer, poet, disability activist, partner, ally, friend, and mom. She had an ability in her writing to convey hope and pride while confronting difficult parts of human experience, suffering, isolation, shame, and fear. She didn't shy away from messiness or conflict and the simple way she integrated sexuality into everything else she did gave permission for others to do the same, and worked as a efficient rebuke to those who would try and deny access to the basic right of being sexual.
Read more - Laura Hershey, 1962 - 2010
Will Munro (February 11, 1975 - May 21, 2010)
Will Munro was an artist, club promoter, and community builder. In Toronto, his adopted city, he may have been best known as the creator of Vazaleen, a queer club night that created a space open to many who never had a place of their own, which also became a safe place for many different communities to intersect in an intensely joyful way. Filmmaker Bruce LaBruce wrote a loving remembrance of Will for Torontoist, describing Munro as a Renaissance man, a warrior, a friend and colleague for nonconformist artists, thinkers, and partiers everywhere.
Read more - Torontoist: Will Munro
Juliet Anderson (1939 - January 10, 2010)
Juliet Carr, whose screen name was Juliet Anderson, was a well known and much loved porn star turned sexual healer. She began her porn career at the age of 39 and went on to make over 80 films. David Steinberg describes Anderson as a "true sexual enthusiast" who "projected life and joy" in all her work. In 1999 she produced and starred in one of the first explicit videos about older adults having sex called Ageless Desires speaking out for herself and an entire population that had been, and continue to be, sexually marginalized.
Read more - SFGate.com: A fond farewell to Aunt Peg
Read the complete list of Sexual Losses 2010
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