This Week in Queer History
Every week, Kris Fitzgerald digs into the archives of LGBTQ+ history to uncover the moments, people, and movements that shaped queer life and culture. From landmark legal victories to unsung heroes, from underground parties to mass protests - This Week in Queer History celebrates the agency, resilience, and brilliance of queer communities across time.
History isn't just what happened. It's who we are.
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This Week in Queer History
Latest Episodes
Beyond The Parties: How Fire Island Created The Blueprint For Modern Queer Community
Fire Island. Say those two words and most people picture circuit parties and share houses. But the real story of this thirty-two-mile barrier island is so much bigger than the parties.In this episode, we explore how Cherry Grove became t...
He Was Dying of AIDS. He Won the Gold Medal Anyway.
In 1986, over 3,400 queer athletes marched into Kezar Stadium while the AIDS crisis raged and the government looked away. Tom Waddell — doctor, Olympian, and man already diagnosed with AIDS — threw a javelin and won gold. Forty years later, the...
The Secret Language That Kept Queer People Alive
In 1864, a German lawyer named Karl Heinrich Ulrichs did something no one had ever done before: he invented a word for himself. Not a diagnosis. Not a slur. A word rooted in ancient philosophy that said this is what I am, and I am not ashamed. ...
He Was the Best Doctor in the British Empire. They Had No Idea Who He Really Was.
In this episode, we meet Dr. James Miranda Steuart Barry, a brilliant British Army surgeon who rose to the second-highest medical rank in the Empire, performed one of the first successful Caesarean sections where both mother and child survived,...
Compton's Cafeteria Uprising: 60 Years of Fighting Back
Three years before Stonewall, a trans woman in San Francisco's Tenderloin threw a cup of coffee in a police officer's face. That moment ignited the Compton's Cafeteria Uprising, one of the earliest acts of collective queer resistance in America...