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Q: Which 19^th Century lesbian social worker was the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize?

A: Jane Addams (1860-1935)

Jane Addams was the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1931, for her work in the international women’s peace movement. She devoted her entire life to social causes starting in 1889 with the founding of Hull House in Chicago. Hull House provided social services and cultural activities for neighbourhood residents, as well as a hands on environment in which students could train in social work.

 One of the social workers who came to study at Hull House was Mary Rozet Smith, who would quickly become Addams’ life partner. While daring for a turn of the century lesbian couple, Addams and Smith considered themselves married, sharing a bed as they travelled the U.S. on Addams’ lecture tours and eventually buying a house together in Maine. Their relationship would last more than 40 years.

 In addition to her extensive efforts in the area of peace and the women’s suffrage movement, Addams lectured and lobbied on behalf of many disadvantaged groups including African Americans, children, and factory workers. In 1920, she helped found one of the nations most prominent advocacy organizations, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

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Q: Which 1930’s jazz musician was born with female genitalia but lived and was perceived as a man until his death?

 A: Billy Tipton (1915-1989)

 From the formation of his musical group, The Billy Tipton Trio, until his death in 1989, Billy Tipton was perceived by the world as a man, although he had been born with female genitalia. He married and adopted three sons, but it is possible his sons, and even his wife did not know he was born with female genitalia until this fact was revealed by the funeral director after Tipton’s death. His wife then explained that their relationship did not include sexual intercourse and that Tipton had worn bandages across his chest claiming to have had an injury which required them.

 Tipton played the saxophone and piano. His band members, never suspecting, would always support Tipton when others would joke about his baby face and high voice. When the media explained Tipton’s life as a man as a solution to the difficulties of a woman achieving success in the 1930’s Jazz world, Tipton’s marriage to a woman and his family life perhaps indicate a deeper desire to live his life perceived as a man (shocking concept: perhaps because he IS a man?). He died of a bleeding ulcer after he refused medical attention afraid that his secret would be revealed.

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Q:        This Native American two-spirit woman was the cultural ambassador for her people and was greeted by U.S. President Grover Cleveland (most likely unaware of her two-spirit identity)?

 A:        We’wha (1849-1896)

             We'wha (various spellings) was a Zuni Native American lhamana, which is the Zuni term for what now may be called a male-bodied Two-spirit. She was described in the book The Zuni Man-Woman, by Will Roscoe. The anthropologist Matilda Coxe Stevenson wrote a great deal about We'wha, and even hosted her to visit Washington D.C. in 1886, where she met President Grover Cleveland and was generally mistaken for a biological woman. She was a cultural ambassador for her people, and performed the role of Kolhamana, the lhamana kachina of the Zuni. She died in 1896.

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Q:        This bisexual British economist’s ideas had, and continue to have, a major impact on modern economic and political theory as well as on many government’s fiscal policies.  He is considered to be the father of modern theoretical macroeconomics.

 A:        John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)

 Keynes was a British economist whose ideas have had a major impact on modern economic and political theory as well as on many governments' fiscal policies. He advocated interventionist government policy, by which the government would use fiscal and monetary measures to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions, depressions and booms. His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics.

Time Magazine named Keynes one of 100 most influential people of the 20th century.  During the 50’s and 60’s, the success of Keynesian economics was so resounding that almost all capitalist governments around the world adopted its policies. President Nixon went as far as to declare 'We are all Keynesians now'. Keynes's idea's became less influential in the 1970s but in 2008 Keynes's ideas enjoyed a revival, with Keynesian thinking being behind the plans of President Barack Obama and other global leaders to rescue the economy.

Keynes's early romantic and sexual relationships were almost exclusively with men. Attitudes in the Bloomsbury Group, in which Keynes was avidly involved, were relaxed about homosexuality. One of his great loves was the artist Duncan Grant, whom he met in 1908, and he was also involved with the writer Lytton Strachey.

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Q:        This gay African-American civil rights activist was integral to the organizing of the 1963 March on Washington and counselled Martin Luther King  Jr. on the techniques of non-violent resistance. He was also targeted in anti-gay attacks by government officials

 A:        Bayard Rustin (1912-1987)

Rustin was an American civil rights activist, important largely behind the scenes in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and earlier, and one of the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He counseled Martin Luther King, Jr. on the techniques of nonviolent resistance. For much of his career, Rustin lived in New York from 1978 with his partner Walter Naegle. He became an advocate on behalf of gay and lesbian causes in the latter part of his career; however, his homosexuality was the reason for attacks from many governmental as well as interest groups.

Rustin organized the Journey of Reconciliation in 1947. And in 1948 traveled to India to learn nonviolence techniques directly from the leaders of the Gandhian movement at a conference that was organized by Gandhi himself before he was assassinated earlier that year.  In 1953, Rustin was arrested in Pasadena, California; originally charged with vagrancy and lewd conduct, he eventually pleaded guilty to a single, lesser charge of "sex perversion" (as consensual sodomy  was referred to) and served 60 days in jail. This was the first time that his homosexuality had come to public attention, yet he remained candid about his sexuality, which was still criminalized throughout the United States.

A year before his death in 1987, Rustin said: "Twenty-five, thirty years ago, the barometer of human rights in the United States were black people. That is no longer true. The barometer for judging the character of people in regard to human rights is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, or lesbian."

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Q:        This British military surgeon performed the first successful C-section in Africa by a British physician and lived as man, though his biological sex is disputed. He rose in ranks to the Inspector General of Military Hospitals and was commissioned in Canada for a period of time.

 A:        Dr. James Barry (~1794-1865)

 Barry was a military surgeon in the British Army. After graduation from the University of Edinburgh, Barry served in India and Cape Town, South Africa. By the end of his career, he had risen to the rank of Inspector General in charge of military hospitals. In his travels he not only improved conditions for wounded soldiers, but also the conditions of the native inhabitants. Among his accomplishments was the first successful caesarean section in Africa by a British surgeon, in which both the mother and child survived the operation.

Although Barry lived his adult life as a man, his biological sex is disputed. It is widely believed that Barry was born female as Margaret Ann Bulkley, and chose to live as a man so that he might be accepted as a university student and be able to pursue his chosen career as a surgeon. If so, Barry was the first female Briton to become a qualified medical doctor.  It has also been theorized that Barry was intersex.

A film based on Barry's life, entitled Heaven and Earth  which is set to begin shooting in Cape Town South Africa on February 10th 2009. Set in 1825 in the Cape, the film tells of a secret love affair between Barry (played by Natascha McElhone) and Lord Charles Somerset (Pierce Brosnan). He was also a vegetarian. His dogs and a black manservant named John were his constant companions.