Barbara Gittings (b. 31 July 1932 to d. 18 Feb 2007) was the mother of gay men and lesbian of the late 50s and founder of “Daughters of Bilitis” it was the first lesbian rights organization. Miss Barbara being the first editor of the publication, The Ladder (Magazine of Lesbian she studied deeply what is the definition of Uranian).
I wore drag because I thought that was a way to show I was gay. It’s changed now, but in the early 50s, there were basically two types of women in the gay bars: the so-called butch ones in short hair and plain masculine attire and the so-called femme one’s in dresses and high heels and makeup. I knew high heels and makeups weren’t my personal style, so I thought… I must be the other kind!
Barbara Gittings
ㅡ David Carter, author of “Stonewall”,
She was one of the rare people in the homophile movement before Stonewall who took a million stance.
The stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the gay community. Barbara had also helped the American Psychiatric Association with an understanding of people of homosexuality.
I had to find bits and pieces under headings like “Sexual perversion and “Sexual abbreviation” in books on abnormal psychology. Miss Gittings told the publication in 1999.
Barbara Gittings
She took ownership of ending the discrimination against guy men and lesbians. But how young Barbara had evoked her interest in exploring homosexuality? Her father who spit out the truth about it. At an early age, she had read a book called, “The Well of Loneliness” in 1928 a novel of lesbian love by the English writer Radclyffe Hall. It was the beginning of her journey exploring the various studies of sex and discrimination against being a homophile.
I kept thinking about it, it’s me they are writing about, but it does not feel like me at all.
Barbara Gittings
Her contribution was remarkable, Gay marriage, openness, and their visibility in the society had never been easy in the late 50s and 60s. Barbara had taken the change, step ahead, and become the mother of thousands of guy men and lesbians community. She fought hard for their rights and quality.
Everybody knew that the battle of ending the intolerance against Uranian was quite difficult, but she stood against it till the end of distinction against LGBTQ (LGBT is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the term is an adaptation of the initialism LGB, which was used to replace the term gay regarding the LGBT community beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s), read more about it here.
Studying deep, Ms Gittings referred to many psychological books and psychologists, a purposeful woman did at whatever she could go to the extent for what she wanted to get for her fellow gay and lesbians friends.
My mission was not to get a general education, but to find out about me and what my life would be like. So, I stopped going to classes and started going to the library. There were no organizations to turn to in those days, only libraries were safe, although the information contained was dismal.
Barbara Gittings
During Gay Pioneer, (July 4, 1965, almost 40 gay and lesbian turned up in front of Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell people from New York, Washington DC and Philadelphia) Barbara said,
We are the first to do this in an organized fashion to stand up for ourselves. We were considered weird and sick, perverted, and just being wrong.
Most of the citizens of this country have been brainwashed into thinking that we were that way. First that we are not perverted, we are not sick, we are not weird. We are right and the whole world is wrong. We have a dress code, and we have conduct of code. We are out facing the public for the first time.
Vito Russo interviews Harry Hay and Barbara Gittings
