About this item
We Both Laughed In Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan narrates the inner life of a gay man moving through the shifting social, political, and medical mores of the second half of the 20th century. Sullivan kept comprehensive journals from age 11 until his AIDS-related death at 39. Sensual, lascivious, challenging, quotidian and poetic, the diaries complicate and disrupt normative trans narratives. Entries from twenty-four diaries reveal Sullivan's self-articulation and the complexity of a fascinating and courageous figure.
About the Author
Quoted from Wikipedia 11/25/2016:Louis Graydon Sullivan (16 June 1951 - 2 March 1991) , better known as Lou Sullivan, was an American author and activist known for his work on behalf of trans men. He founded FTM International, one of the first FTM organizations, along with SHAFT in the UK and Rupert Raj's Metamorphosis in Toronto, and is largely responsible for the modern acknowledgment that sexual orientation and gender identity are totally different concepts. Sullivan was a pioneer of the grassroots female-to-male (FTM) movement and was instrumental in helping individuals obtain peer-support, counselling, endocrinological services and reconstructive surgery outside of gender dysphoria clinics. He founded FTM International, one of the first organizations specifically for trans male individuals, and his activism and community work was a significant contributor to the rapid growth of the FTM community during the late 1980s. trans male persons, and also a biography of the San Francisco trans man, Jack Bee Garland. Sullivan was instrumental in demonstrating the existence of trans men who were themselves attracted to men. Lou Sullivan began peer counselling through the Janus Information Facility which was an organization that provided support for transgender issues. He is also credited for being the first to discuss the eroticism of men's clothing. Sullivan was a founding member and board member of the GLBT Historical Society (formerly the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society) in San Francisco. His personal and activist papers are preserved in the institution's archives as collection no. 1991-07; the papers are fully processed and available for use by researchers, and a finding aid is posted on the Online Archive of California. Sullivan lobbied the American Psychiatric Association and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health for them to recognize his existence as a gay trans man. He was determined to change people's attitudes towards trans homosexuals but also to change the medical process of transition by removing sexual orientation from the criteria of gender identity disorder so that trans men who are gay could also access hormones and surgery, essentially making the process "orientation blind".Sullivan was diagnosed as HIV positive in 1986 after his surgery, and was told he only had 10 months to live. It is likely that Sullivan was HIV- infected in 1980, just after his chest surgery. He wrote, "I took a certain pleasure in informing the gender clinic that even though their program told me I could not live as a Gay man, it looks like I'm going to die like one. " Sullivan died of AIDS-related complications on March 2, 1991.
