People are always dying, which is hard if you’re still alive. In 2009 we lost a lot of great thinkers, artists, and performers who were willing to make sex part of their life’s work. Making sex your work is never an easy path, and all of us who enjoy any sexual privilege would do well to take a few minutes to remember people who spoke so clearly, sang so loudly, wrote so thoughtfully, and danced so ferociously their experience of sex and gender in a world that often feels uninterested and unkind.
Dennis deLeon (July 16, 1948 – December 14, 2009)
Dennis deLeon was a founder of the Latino Commission on AIDS, a former human rights commissioner for New York City and one of the first city officials to come out as HIV positive (which he did in a 1993 Times Op-Ed column). From the foundation’s website:
“a tireless advocate for social justice and one of the first openly HIV-positive Latino leaders in the country. He was a pioneer and a visionary, and in his lifetime he sought to curb and eliminate health disparities among marginalized communities. As a lawyer and later a non-profit executive, deLeon believed in bridging cultural differences to effect progressive social change. He pushed lawmakers to consider community-based approaches to public health, and stressed increased accountability and responsiveness on the parts of government agencies. Throughout his career he maintained a vibrant concern for all people of color, especially those communities ravaged by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. His loss is the cause of great grief and sadness, yet his legacy is worthy of celebration.”
Read more – Latino Commission on AIDS: A Tribute to Dennis deLeon
RocknRoll Ramona (June 8, 1961 - April 22, 2009
Susie Bright contributes this entry:
"Ramona was one of the first handful of lesbian feminist strippers who came out as dykes in every part of their lives.Visit Susie Bright's siteIt was the early 1980s. She was star at both the Mitchell Brothers Theater and the first-ever lesbian "Burlezk" show, as it was called. She was the centerfold of one of the first issues of On Our Backs. She rode to Sturgis in a fringed leather g-string with her lover Bo— and all 5' of Ramona took charge at the Harley rally. It is not hard to imagine her leaving a biker gang speechless; she had that kind of charisma. She was a dancing, singing, acting, writing sensation.
Her work ethics— her deep feelings about mentoring and coming up as an erotic dancer— were profound. She knew her traditions and she epitomized "the Sisterhood."
When she was teenager, she ran away from a Christian missionary home in Ohio. Her adoptive father was a famous fire-and-brimstone preacher who died exactly one year to the day before she did. She never talked about her parents in public, but she wrote a novel about a superhero stripper who survives domestic abuse and rescues other women from the same fate.
Ramona was a leader in Narcotics Anonymous when she was in her 20s— she helped countless friends and fellow dancers in recovery.
She barely survived a near fatal accident a year and a half ago and it took a toll on her. This past April, the anniversary of her father's death, she wrote a suicide note and ate a fentanyl patch. My own personal impression was that she was royally pissed.
I'd like to toast Ramona, aka Rebecca Mast— one of the fiercest, ballsiest, sexually self-aware women I ever met. She's one of those people who wouldn't make the history books, but she did make history— there wouldn't have been a "lesbian sex revolution" without cadre like her."
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (May 2, 1950 - April 12, 2009)
A feminist scholar and key figure in the development of queer theory, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick passed away this year at the age of 58. In many ways her work legitimized something queer people had been doing for ages, finding bits of ourselves hidden in mainstream culture. In a 1998 New York Times interview Ms. Sedgwick explained that part of a critics job is to talk about what the author isn’t talking about, to see those things the author may be keeping hidden: “It’s about trying to understand different kinds of sexual desire and how the culture defines them…you can’t understand relations between men and women unless you understand the relationship between people of the same gender, including the possibility of a sexual relationship between them.”
Read more – About.com: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
David Aaron Clark (Sept. 5, 1960 - November 28, 2009)
Porn journalist Gram Ponante remembers how author, pornographer, and “full-time fringe thinker” David Aaron Clark’s “bald head, stoutness, preference for black attire, and stentorian delivery were often trumped by his whimsy and glee, which would show up whether he was (brilliantly) pointing out someone else’s foibles on an adult message board or giddily anticipating the next Wong Kar Wai film or Sci Fi Channel show.” Other friends remember Clark for his wit and voracious appetite for alternative culture.
Read more – Gram Ponante: Into the Realm with David Aaron Clark
Lux Interior (Oct. 21, 1946– February 4, 2009)
I was probably 14 or 15 when I first heard The Cramps and without the benefit of the web it was another while before I got to see video of lead singer Lux Interior perform. Once I did, I was hooked. There was something playful and chaotic about his gender performance, something that filled my queer teen heart with hope and possibility. I love what John Coulthart wrote in a post two days after Lux died “[he was] one of the few people who could successfully enthuse about the delights of female sexuality while wearing nothing more than a pair of high heels and a black G-string.”
Read More – LA Times: Lux Interior dies at 60; founder, front man of punk band the Cramps
