Season 4: Episode 6: Stella Rush ("Sten Russell")

Making Gay History | LGBTQ Oral Histories from the Archive

Making Gay History

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4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2018

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“I’m a bisexual ki-ki s.o.b butch-femme.” Stella Rush railed against rules and binaries: butch/femme, gay/straight. Fighting for social survival, and wielding a pen, Stella (aka Sten Russell) carved out a place for herself on ONE magazine’s mostly-male 1950s masthead and on the pages of The Ladder. Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I history
0:02.0	Eric here
0:03.0	A few months ago we launched Making Gay History's Patreon channel
0:06.0	a place where we're sharing new video interviews
0:09.0	Never Before Heard Clips from my archive
0:11.0	that didn't make it into the episodes and more.
0:14.0	If you're not a member of our Patreon community yet, I hope you'll join today.
0:18.4	Just $5 a month gets you access to these Making Gay History extras, and you'll support us as we work to bring LGBTQ history to life
0:26.1	through the voices of the people who lived it.
0:28.8	Find out more at Patreon.com slash Making Gay History. or go to making gay history
0:34.0	and click on the link in our home page banner and thank you so much.
0:41.0	I'm Eric Marcus and this is making gay history. In our last episode, you heard from some of the men who started One,
1:00.0	a trailblazing organization that published the first National gay magazine, but one was made up of more than just the men.
1:06.0	Unlike the Manishing Society, which focused on gay men,
1:10.0	and the daughters of Belitis, which was the first lesbian organization,
1:13.4	once it out to include both men and women from the start.
1:16.5	Stella Rush was one of the women who wrote for one,
1:19.5	but you wouldn't find her name in the magazine.
1:21.6	Instead, you'd need to look for Sten Russell.
1:25.3	Stella and Sten were two sides of the same coin. Sten was Stella's pen name, a byline that appeared
1:31.4	regularly in one magazine beginning in the mid-150s.
1:35.0	Stella was a woman caught between categories in search of acceptance.
	...

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