This Week in Queer History

Kris with a K
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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.  Watch the video versions on YouTube: youtube.com/@thisweekinqueerhistory  Join our community: thisweekinqueerhistory.circle.so

  1. 6D AGO

    When the WHO Finally Admitted Being Gay Isn't a Mental Illness (1990)

    On May 17, 1990, the World Health Organization endorsed the ICD-10 and quietly removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. It was, in the words of the activists who had fought for it, a seismic moment - the day a global institution finally admitted that the science had been on our side all along. In this episode, we explore what that moment meant, what it cost to get there, and why it took 17 years after the American Psychiatric Association made the same call in 1973. This episode goes back to the beginning - to Richard von Krafft-Ebing and the 1886 psychiatric text that framed homosexuality as degeneracy, to the DSM listing it as a sociopathic personality disturbance in 1952, to the aversion therapies and lobotomies and brain surgeries performed on gay people in the name of treatment. And then it tells the story of the people who fought back: psychologist Evelyn Hooker, whose groundbreaking research showed no measurable difference in psychological health between gay and straight men; Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings disrupting the APA's 1970 conference; and Dr. John Fryer testifying before the APA in a mask and voice modulator because he couldn't safely be himself at a psychiatric conference. The 17-year gap between the APA and the WHO isn't a footnote - it's the heart of the story. During that stretch, countries around the world continued to treat queerness as an illness, shaping who got healthcare, who got insurance, who could immigrate, who kept custody of their children. Classification isn't abstract. It's funding. It's policy. It's someone's life. Today that date is marked as IDAHOBIT - the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia - observed in over 130 countries. But the work isn't done. Conversion therapy still exists, still harms people, still costs lives. The same impulse that once classified us as sick shows up today in new language and new legislation. This episode is about the difference between being fixed and being helped - and why that distinction is everything. Listen to more episodes: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com Stay in touch: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com/subscribe Website: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com Send us Fan Mail Support the show

    11 min

  2. MAY 5

    They Burned the World's First Trans Clinic - And They're Doing It Again

    On May 6, 1933, members of the German Student Union marched to the Institute of Sexual Research in Berlin - with a brass band. Like a parade. They stormed the building, seized tens of thousands of volumes, grabbed patient files and address lists full of names and identities - and four days later, burned it all at Opernplatz in front of 40,000 people. In this episode, we tell the full story of what was destroyed that day, and why it matters more right now than it has in decades. The Institute of Sexual Research was extraordinary. Founded in 1919 by Magnus Hirschfeld, it housed the largest collection on human sexuality in the world. In its first year, staff conducted over 18,000 consultations for 3,500 people - many completely free. Five trans women were employed on staff. Dora Richter became one of the first people in history to receive full gender confirmation surgery there. The institute was pioneering gender-affirming care and hormone therapy decades before the rest of the world caught up. And its motto - through science to justice - wasn't just a slogan. They meant it. But the patient files seized during the raid were later used to round up gay men across Germany. The very institution built to protect queer people became a tool to hunt them. This episode traces how that happened, what was lost forever, and why only 35 items from the original collection of tens of thousands have ever been recovered. And then it connects the dots to right now - because the pattern hasn't changed. Book bans are up 63% in the United States. Kansas is seizing driver's licenses from trans people. The ACLU is tracking nearly 500 anti-LGBTQ bills in 2026. Where they burn books, in the end they also burn people. Heinrich Heine wrote that 113 years before it happened on the Opernplatz. This episode is about the safe spaces that save lives - and what it means to be the books that survived. Listen to more episodes: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com Stay in touch: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com/subscribe Website: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com Send us Fan Mail Support the show

    11 min

  3. APR 28

    When Ellen Said "I'm Gay" and Changed TV Forever

    On April 30, 1997, Ellen DeGeneres leaned into an airport PA microphone and said three words to 42 million people watching at home. In this episode, we go back to that night - the bomb threats, the pulled advertisers, the watch parties, the tears - and tell the full, honest story of what it cost to kick that door open. Because the story of "The Puppy Episode" is messier and more human than the legend. Ellen didn't become a cultural flashpoint overnight. She climbed through comedy clubs, sold vacuum cleaners, and built an act around finding the hilarious strangeness in everyday life. By 1986, Johnny Carson was inviting her to the couch after her Tonight Show debut - something he almost never did for a first-time performer. By 1994, she had her own sitcom on ABC. And by 1997, she and her writers were sitting across from Disney executives with the most terrifying pitch in network television history. This episode digs into what happened when a gay woman decided her character could simply be gay too - the GLAAD campaign, the celebrity guest stars, the local affiliate in Alabama that refused to air it, and the community watch parties that turned it into a collective coming-out moment for a generation. It also gets honest about what came after: the canceled show, the blacklisting, the years of depression, and a 2024 Netflix special that raised more questions than it answered about what accountability really looks like. And it gets personal. Because for so many of us, that night in 1997 was the first time we saw ourselves reflected back in a way that felt real. Not a punchline. Not a villain. Just a person telling the truth. We can hold gratitude for that moment and hold Ellen to a higher standard at the same time - and this episode explores why that ability to hold both things is actually what real community looks like. Listen to more episodes: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com Stay in touch: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com/subscribe Website: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com Send us Fan Mail Support the show

    12 min

  4. APR 21

    He Could Have Escaped - But Refused to Hide | Oscar Wilde's Trial

    What happens when the most famous man in England is told his love is a crime? In 1895, Oscar Wilde stood in a London courtroom and called love between men "beautiful" and "noble," refusing to apologize, recant, or run. This is the trial that sent queer people underground for seventy years, and the defiance that planted a seed we're still growing today. By early 1895, Wilde was untouchable. Two plays running in the West End, a reputation as the wittiest man alive. But behind the velvet and the wit, he was living a double life with Lord Alfred Douglas, and the walls were closing in. When the Marquess of Queensberry left a card accusing Wilde of "posing" as a sodomite, Wilde sued for libel. The trap closed. Within weeks, Wilde himself was in the dock, charged with gross indecency under the same vaguely worded law that would later destroy Alan Turing. Friends begged him to catch the evening boat to France. He stayed. Because running meant agreeing that love was something to hide. When asked about "the love that dare not speak its name," Wilde delivered one of the bravest speeches ever given in a courtroom. The gallery erupted in applause. The jury did not. He was sentenced to two years of hard labor at Reading Gaol. This episode explores what silence costs, not just the person being silenced, but everyone around them. Kris shares a deeply personal story about his own family, the grandfather who never knew, and the grandmother who crossed the line at the very end. It is a story about choosing truth over safety, about the people who refuse to hide, and about the seeds they plant for the rest of us. Listen to more episodes: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com Stay in touch: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com/subscribe Website: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com Send us Fan Mail Support the show

    14 min

  5. APR 14

    The Drag Nuns Who Saved Lives When the Church Stayed Silent

    In 1979, a group of queer activists in San Francisco put on nun habits as an Easter joke. Within a few years, they were saving lives. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence started as camp and irreverence, but when the AIDS crisis arrived and official institutions looked the other way, these drag nuns stepped up. They published "Play Fair," one of the very first safer-sex guides in the country, at a time when the government was silent and the church was hostile. They raised money, cared for the sick, and used humor and visibility to fight back against shame and stigma. This episode tells the story of how joy became a form of resistance, and how a group of people in face paint and habits became genuine lifesavers. Today, more than 600 Sisters operate in chapters around the world, still using camp and community to fight for queer rights. When religion abandoned so many of us, the Sisters created their own. This is the story of drag nuns, sacred rebellion, and love as a radical act. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/qYF0e_TCaSg Stay in touch: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com/subscribe Website: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com Send us Fan Mail Support the show

    11 min

  6. APR 7

    The Straight White Boy Who Accidentally Saved Gay Lives

    Ryan White never asked to be the face of AIDS in America. He was a teenager from Kokomo, Indiana, who contracted HIV through a blood transfusion used to treat his hemophilia. He was thirteen years old. And when his school tried to bar him from attending class, his family fought back, and in doing so, forced a terrified nation to confront the myths it had built around the epidemic. Ryan was straight, white, young, and from the heartland. For a country that had been telling itself AIDS was something that happened to other kinds of people, he was impossible to dismiss. His story generated empathy that the government and media had withheld from gay men, from Black communities, from IV drug users for years. He died in 1990, at eighteen. Six months later, Congress passed the Ryan White CARE Act, the most significant piece of HIV/AIDS funding legislation in American history. Today, that program primarily serves low-income queer people and communities of color, the very people the country once looked away from. That's not irony. That's a legacy growing beyond the story that created it. Plus: a personal reflection on the fear that shaped an entire generation. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/uKSHN7LPid0 Stay in touch: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com/subscribe Website: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com Send us Fan Mail Support the show

    13 min

  7. MAR 31

    We Buried a Generation to Get This Drug. Don't Let Them Take It Back.

    In 1996, a new class of HIV drugs changed everything. The protease inhibitors, combined with existing antiretroviral treatments, turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable chronic condition for people who could access them. The dying slowed. Friends who had been given months to live started making plans for years. This episode is Part 3 of "How Queers Saved Modern Medicine," and it tells the story of how that breakthrough happened, and what it cost to get there. It covers the activists and researchers who pushed for faster trials, better data sharing, and international access. It covers the 1996 International AIDS Conference in Vancouver, where the results were announced and the room erupted. And it looks at where we are now: PrEP, the drug that can prevent HIV transmission almost entirely, is under political threat at the moment this episode was recorded. The activists who fought for protease inhibitors and the Ryan White CARE Act and parallel track trials paid with their grief, their health, and their time. Some paid with their lives. The treatments that exist today are their inheritance to us. What we do with that inheritance is our responsibility. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/_ZhbHARQzDA Stay in touch: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com/subscribe Website: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com Send us Fan Mail Support the show

    12 min

  8. MAR 24

    A 19-Year-Old Dropout Who Helped Save Millions of Lives

    A playwright. A bond trader. A college dropout. A teenager. These are the people who walked into the FDA in the late 1980s and early 90s and came out having redesigned how drugs get approved in America. This is Part 2 of "How Queers Saved Modern Medicine," and it focuses on the activists who didn't just protest, they taught themselves virology, pharmacology, and clinical trial design in their living rooms. Then they sat down with the scientists, argued with them, and won. Spencer Cox was one of them. He was nineteen years old, had dropped out of school, and was working odd jobs when he joined ACT UP and started reading everything he could find about HIV treatment research. Within a few years he was helping redesign the parallel track system for drug trials, an innovation that allowed people with life-threatening illnesses to access experimental treatments while trials were still ongoing. That system is still in use today. It helped speed the development of cancer drugs and COVID vaccines long after the activists who built it were gone. Mark Harrington. David Barr. People who refused to accept that expertise was something that belonged only to people with the right credentials. This is what radical intelligence looks like in service of survival. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/4_ThEj30aIQ Stay in touch: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com/subscribe Website: https://thisweekinqueerhistory.com Send us Fan Mail Support the show

    13 min
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About

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.  Watch the video versions on YouTube: youtube.com/@thisweekinqueerhistory  Join our community: thisweekinqueerhistory.circle.so

Information

  • Creator
    Kris with a K
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    95
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 This Week in Queer History
  • Show Website
    This Week in Queer History

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