Celebrate These 6 Pioneering Figures of the LGBTQIA+ Rights Fight!

Written by: Laura Amorim and Luís Gustavo Moreira Carmo

Queer history can be one of complex navigation. Imagine taking a road trip where every turn takes you to yet another blank, freshly painted wall in the middle of the road. It seems that even at the height of the most significant era of LGBTQIA+ representation witnessed, we still find ourselves rummaging through new bits and pieces of history that barely survived the ever-constant erasure of our identities. As we enter pride month, it’s imperative that we shed light on the narratives of the substantial queer figures that helped shape this community and are still not heard of enough. Here are six queer leaders whose voices, activism, and nonconformism brought each side of the world a source for positive, genuine change:

Anna Sharyhina - Europe

Born in Ukraine, Anna Sharyhina is a lesbian, feminist activist who’s an active fighter for queer rights in the country. She and her partner Vira Chemygina led Kyiv’s first walk for equality and have been involved with the Ukrainian LGBTQIA+ community and lesbian organizations for over a decade. The second march administrated by Kyiv Pride, the organizing committee co-founded by Anna, was the scene of vandalism and violence from far-right extremists, leaving around 10 injured. In spite of facing oppression during her activities in Ukraine, she is building a legacy in human rights defense.

Sharyhina is also the co-founder of Sphere Women’s Association, a lesbian feminist non-governmental organization with a mission to promote equal rights and opportunities for women in all spheres of public life. The NGO promotes educational activities in the field of human rights, gender equality, and diversity of sexual, geinder and other identities, and features projects such as The Women’s Solidarity Week, PrideHub, and the #KharkivForAll Flashmob. She fights for a world with women leadership and without discrimination against the LGBTQIA+ community.

During the current war, with NGO Sphere and other volunteers, she has aided queer Ukrainians in dealing with mental health related issues by holding online crisis psychological support groups for LGBT+ people who remain in unsafe areas of Ukraine. Her association constructed a database with international organizations that offer refuge for queer Ukrainians and is constantly sharing information about the situation of the ongoing war on social media. Sharyhina’s also been playing a significant role in providing humanitarian aid efforts on the ground.

Click here for an inside look on the LGBTQIA+ aid happening on the Ukraine war.

Brenda Howard - North America

Born in the Bronx, New York City, Brenda Howard came from a Jewish family and grew up in Syosset. There’s little known about her journey prior to activism; Howard graduated high school in 1964 and pursued a degree in nursing. However, discovering power in her own bisexuality and amidst the strident fallout of the Vietnam War, Brenda chose to care for others through different means. In the late 1960s, she became an active member of the anti-war movement, living in an urban commune of activists and draft resisters. Shortly after the Stonewall Riots, New York City became once again the stage for queers to proudly and publicly claim their identities, in The Christopher Street Liberation Day March, organized by none other than Brenda herself. Laying the groundwork for what Pride and the LGBTQIA+ Rights Movement came to be, Howard is fondly remembered as the Mother of Pride.

Her advocacy for queer rights continued for decades. In the 1970s, she became chair of the Gay Activists Alliance’s Speakers Bureau, was an active member of the Gay Liberation Front and a Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights associate, the latter sharing great influence in the passing of the New York City’s Gay rights law through the City Council in 1986. Brenda led the first bi-friendly communication hub in New York by founding New York Area Bisexual Network, an organization that, to this day, helps coordinate services to the bisexual community. She was also a political activist under the Bisexual Political Action Committee (BiPAC) and BiNet USA.

From the late 80s to the 90s, she was a steadfast figure in the Act Up protests and other rallies for HIV-positive awareness and healthcare access. Howard was arrested multiple times for her protagonism in organizing social justice protests but nonetheless, continued leading the community in the fight for LGBTQIA+ rights. In 1993, she successfully lobbied for the inclusion of bisexuality in the March on Washington, at a time when the movement was primarily focused on gay men and lesbians. In the same year of her death, the Brenda Howard Award was first introduced by PFLAG and stands as the first award given by a major U.S. LGBTQIA+ organization that was named after an out bisexual person.

Hear more about Brenda’s amazing work here.

Erika Hilton - Latin America

Born in Franco da Rocha and brought up in São Paulo’s suburb of Francisco Morato, Erika Hilton is a travesti — an exclusively Latin American transgender manifestation — and councilwoman of Latin America’s largest metropolis. With childhood and adolescence marked by her family’s conservativeness and prejudice, Erika’s been forcibly subjected to attend church for a cure when she first started expressing her gender identity. Kicked out from her own home amid the constant violence, Hilton ended up on the streets and, with no alternatives, resorted to prostituition for survival. From the alleys to the political podium, she is not only the first trans woman in the country to occupy a chair in the capital’s Town Hall, but her victory (with more than 50,000 votes) marks an outstanding achievement for LGBTQIA+ and black Brazilian communities, as Erika was the most voted woman in Brazil’s 2020 elections.

Since the beginning of her mandate, Erika has been making progress both inside and out of the LGBTQIA+ community with projects like “CPI da Transfobia”, a parliamentary commission of inquiry to investigate transphobia cases in Brazil, and a hunger relief fund, with the intent of improving quality of life in Brazilian peripheries and protecting children and teens from famine. The Pre-Candidate for Federal Deputy in the 2022 elections is building a legacy whose impact is immeasurable. A true pioneer in places that never accepted the trans community before, Erika continues to break barriers and open ways for LGBTQIA+ people

In 2020, the councilwoman was included in MIPAD’s “100 Most Influential People of African Descent” list, being the only Brazilian in the “Politics and Government” category. Still, that doesn’t mean the ride has been easy: Hilton is constantly subjected to political gender violence, being followed by reactionaries and even threatened to be beheadeds. In spite of that, Erika is vehemently aware of her role as a revolutionary travesti in a powerful political position, and will continue to challenge the shortsighted, intolerant politics of far-right anti-queer activists.

Get to know more about Hilton here.

Nayyab Ali - Asia

Born in Okara, a city in the Punjab district, Nayyab Ali is a stellar transgender activist and human rights advocate of Pakistan. Her early life is marked by the disownment from her own family at the age of only 13. After that, she moved to her grandmother’s house, where she would continue her education and first start advocating for transgender rights. The subject of physical and sexual abuse and a later acid attack by her former boyfriend, Ali is one of the many victims of the widespread discrimination against Pakistan’s transgender community, dedicating her life to the fight for transgender rights.

One of the few educated transgender people in her country, Nayyab chose to directly challenge this reality by founding the Khawaja Sira Community, a non-profit organization that serves as a school for transgenders, offering a basic literacy and numeracy program, vocational training, life skills education, and driving classes. This project has so far enabled various members of the community to pursue beyond basic education.

Leading Pakistan’s political fight toward LGBTQIA+ rights, Ali ran for parliament in 2018, served as a chairperson of the Pakistan Transgender Election Network, and has been granting technical support to institutions such as the UN for the last decade, advocating for transgenders’ basic human rights such as education, employment, and healthcare. She also set up a basic legislative framework for the protection of transgender rights in Pakistan, claiming that a person self-identifying as transgender is enough proof of identity. In 2020, she was honored with the Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and Rule of Law.

Click here to get to know more about Ali’s protagonism.

Shaneel Lal - Oceania

Born in Fiji and a current resident of New Zealand, Shaneel Lal is a trans-non-binary model and activist for indigenous and LGBTQIA+ rights. Leader at the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) liberation movement and founder of the “End Conversion Therapy in NZ” project, they began their social work at 17. One of their first actions working as a New Zealand’s Minister of Education Advisor was implementing non-binary identifying options on forms for students applying to schools.

While growing up in Fiji, Shaneel went through traumatic experiences due to conversion therapy. By virtue, they became an Anti-Conversion Therapy Activist, finally achieving success during New Zealand’s 2021 Pride celebrations, when the country’s Minister of Justice announced the conversion therapy ban would be final by February 2022. However, that doesn’t mean the fight is over: Lal believes the only way to true societal progress lies in fundamental governmental strategies to assure queer lives are seen as valid in their own identities.

Shaneel wants to take their activism to other Pacific islands and finalize their work against conversion therapy in New Zealand. The activist sees in their generation a lot of power to challenge prejudiced and inequality scenarios and counts on that conviction to continue his work towards the end of LGBTQIA+ discrimination.

Shaneel was included in the 2021 People Of The Year list of Viva Magazine, check out their article here.

Simon Nkoli - Africa

Born in the Apartheid regime, in the city of Soweto, Simon Nkoli was one of four children in his family. Overworked and beaten in his early years, Nkoli enrolled in school by himself, finding that education was the only key to escaping and building a better future. At 13, pressured to leave school and work full time with his grandparents on a plantation, Nkoli made his escape to Johannesburg, where years later, he would become regional secretary of the Congress of South African Students (COSAS). Coming out as gay, he fell victim to numerous efforts to seek cure for his homosexuality, events that would further isolate Nkoli from his family and friends and lead him towards a greater interest in activism.

Simon also joined as an active member of the — primarily white — Gay Association of South Africa (GASA), where he would undergo severe segregation and constant microaggressions that caused him and other black members to feel isolated. In a direct act of resistance, he founded the Saturday Group, the first black gay group within GASA. His queer and Anti-Apartheid activism continued even after his arrest along with 21 other political activists in 1984; Simon spoke of his struggles as a black gay man in Africa in letters to the African Constitutional Court Judge Edwin Cameron, which allowed the African National Congress to reevaluate their attitude towards Nkoli’s death penalty and subsequently, towards gay rights as a whole.

Succeding his release in 1988, Simon led the fight against HIV-positive discrimination by establishing “Positive African Men”, a peer support group in central Johannesburg. He represented the African continent as a member of the International Lesbian and Gay Association Board and was a leading affiliate in the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equity. He founded the Gay and Lesbian Organization of the Witwatersrand (GLOW), which led the first Pride Parade of Africa in 1990, and was one of the first gay activists to meet with President Nelson Mandela. His work was essential not only to ensure that protection from anti-gay discrimination would be a part of the Bill of Rights in the 1994 South African Constitution, but also to repeal the nation’s sodomy law in 1998. Simon died of complications with an AIDS-related illness on November 30th, 1998.

Chech out a more in-depth article on his fight here.

Conclusion

So, were you familiar with any of these personalities already? Did you miss someone? Make sure to tell us by leaving a comment down the page! As we all know it, the fight keeps going beyond Pride month, and as much as some insist to say the LGBTQIA+ fight is a modern invention, personalities like these six prove just the opposite: people who break heteronormativity have always existed; their identities have always been a synonym of resistance. From Latin America to Oceania, queer activists made history and paved the way so others can live peacefully in their own identities. The equality fight is still long and liberty is under constant threat, but the older’s legacy — constructed at a cost of bodies and tears — will not be destitute. Our desire is that the current generation of LGBTQIA+ and those that are yet to come continue building a more welcoming and affectionate world. May society listen to queer voices beyond “Pride Month”: from all over the globe, every day is a day to celebrate the right to love.