Louis Graydon Sullivan
1951-1991
Louis Graydon Sullivan was an American author and activist known for his work on behalf of trans men. He was perhaps the first transgender man to publicly identify as a gay man and is largely responsible for the modern understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity as distinct, unrelated 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 FTM individuals, and his activism and community work was a significant contributor to the rapid growth of the FTM community during the late 1980s.
Sullivan grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Sullivan was born the third child of six in a very religious Catholic family and attended Catholic primary and secondary school. Sullivan started keeping a journal at the age of 10, describing his early childhood thoughts of being a boy. Sullivan was attracted to the idea of playing different gender roles, and his attraction for male roles was outlined in his writings, specifically in his short stories, poems and diaries; he often explored the ideas of male homosexuality and gender identity.
In 1973, Sullivan identified himself as a “female transvestite” and by 1975 he identified himself as a “female-to-male transsexual.” In 1975, he decided to move to San Francisco. Sullivan lived as an out gay man, but he was repeatedly denied sex reassignment surgery because of his sexual orientation and the expectation of the time that transgender people should adopt stereotypical heterosexual opposite-sex gender roles. This rejection led Sullivan to start a campaign to remove homosexuality from the list of contraindications for sex reassignment surgery.
In 1979, Sullivan was finally able to find doctors and therapists who would accept his sexuality and began taking testosterone. Sullivan was diagnosed as HIV positive. 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.
Sullivan was a founding member and board member of the GLBT Historical Society (formerly the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society) in San Francisco. Sullivan was one of the inaugural fifty American “pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes” inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument in New York City’s Stonewall Inn.