#Stormé DeLarverié

[catastrfy]

Stormé DeLarverié  and pronouns

Please do remember that Stormé DeLarverié's only preference for pronouns was that people use "whatever makes YOU the most comfortable". This is documented in print back to at least the 1960s*. And per her friends who I interviewed during my research for storme-delarverie.com, that did not change in her lifetime. Her friends who I've connected with all used "her". Other friends & neighbors have publicly used "they" or "he". Which means they all used what made them the most comfortable, which is exactly what Stormé wanted. * Avery Willard's book Female Impersonation was published in 1971, but his interview with Stormé (the only male impersonator he interviewed) was done while she was working with the Jewel Box Revue. That dates it to before 7 September 1969. The Avery Willard photos in Stormé's personal collection were taken in Central Park in late fall or early winter, which dates the interview to 1968 or earlier.

#Stormé DeLarverié #queer history #Jewel Box Revue #queer community

[caslesbo]

Stormé DeLarverié surrounded by three female impersonators at Roberts Show Club, Chicago, Illinois, 1958

#don’t think i’ve seen this one on tumblr before #storme delarverie #lgbt history #lesbian history #gender nonconformity #drag history #archive #op.txt

[genderoutlaws]

Stormé DeLarverié performing with The Jewel Box Revue

Photo by Nancy Terry | c. 1963

#op #photography #storme delarverie #nancy terry #the jewel box revue #1960s #1963 #stonewall veterans #drag #l #tgnc #butch tag

[juicyparsons]

Val and her bestie Simona’s extra credit black history month project!

1. Trinity Fatu aka Naomi Knight- WWE wrestler, first black woman to win the WWE women’s championship!

2. Trayvon Martin- high school football player. His murder was one of the catalysts for the modern day Black Lives Matter movement. RIP Trayvon.

3. Stormé DeLarverié- drag performer, bouncer, lgbtq+ activist. One of the first people to fight back at the Stonewall Riots.

4. Misty Copeland- Ballerina, first black principal dancer at the American Ballet Theater in New York.

5. Jalaiah Harmon- trained dancer, 14 years old. Creator of the Renegade, one of the most popular tik tok dances of all time.

All black history is important history! ✊🏽

Ps. Thank u to Aunties Liv and Beryl for ur help with the project, we couldn’t have done it without u!

#riot raves #parenting with ri

[queerasfact]

Stormé DeLarverie - Sources

If you’ve heard our podcast on Stormé DeLarverie - drag king, bouncer, and mother of the New York queer scene - and you want to know more, here’s some sources you can check out:

A couple of quick notes - firstly, we used they/them pronouns when talking about Stormé (you can listen to our podcast to find out why) but you will find she/her and occasionally he/him pronouns used in these sources.

Secondly, a lot of the language surrounding gender and sexuality in these sources is now considered outdated and no longer used.

Lastly, we didn’t cover Stormé’s role in the Stonewall Riots in our podcast. It will come up in some of these sources, but we’ll be doing a podcast specifically focussing on Stonewall later on this year, and be sharing more info specifically about that then.

Interviews online:

A key source on Stormé‘s life is Stormé: The Lady of the Jewel Box, a 1987 film by Michelle Parkerson which includes interviews with Stormé, talking chiefly about their role in the Jewel Box Revue drag show. This documentary also includes footage of Stormé singing, and working as a bouncer.

Avery Willard’s Female Impersonation (1971) includes the earliest interview with Stormé I’m aware of, although Willard’s writing does include facts which are contradicted in other sources.

There are also several interviews with Stormé in the last years of their life, including:

An Interview With Lesbian Stonewall Veteran Stormé DeLarverie (After Ellen, 2010)

A Stonewall Veteran, 89, Misses the Parade (New York Times, 2010)

Gay Community’s Rosa Parks Faces Death, Impoverished and Alone (Huffington Post, 2010)

You can also listen to this recorded interview conducted by Kirk Klocke in 2009, including what may be the last ever recording of Stormé singing.

This video from 2009 includes clips from an interview with Stormé, including information about their childhood

Other online info:

Stormé DeLarverie: In a Storm of Indifference, She’s Still a Jewel (Huffington Post, 2013) an article written by Robert West, who knew Stormé personally

The Stonewall Veteran’s Association website page on Stormé is not particularly well organised, and does have sections that focus more on internal conflicts within the organisation than on Stormé’s life, but it does provide some information about them, especially about their later years and involvement with the SVA.

We’ll talk about it more in a later episode on Stonewall, but this article from After Ellen (2018) talks about misogyny, racism, and the erasure of Stormé from the narrative of Stonewall

Stormé’s New York Time’s obituary is also a good source information

This article was written after Stormé’s death, but includes quotes from people who knew them later in life

You can watch a video of Stormé’s memorial service here, where many of their friends tell stories about Stormé and the impact Stormé had on them. (Be aware that it is an open casket service, and the casket is shown at points in this video.)

Queer Music Heritage has a lot of information about the Jewel Box Revue, in which Stormé performed, including scans of newspaper clippings and interviews with the drag queens in the show.

Books:

There is no published book on Stormé’s life, but there are sections devoted to them in several books, including:

Billy J. Harbin, Kim Marra, and Robert A. Schanke’s The Gay & Lesbian Theatrical Legacy (2005), a good source of information especially about Stormé’s early career before they began performing in drag.

Penny Coleman’s Village Elders (2000) - Coleman interviewed many queer elders who are profiled in this book, including Stormé. This source includes the most information about Stormé’s partner, Diana.

Leslie Feinberg’s Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman (1996) includes a very brief interview with Stormé

Another useful background source was The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader (1992), edited by Joan Nestle - especially the chapter “The Butch as Drag Artiste: Greenwich Village in the Roaring Forties” (Lisa E. Davis)

Articles and analysis:

Elizabeth Drorbaugh’s “Sliding Scales: Notes on Stormé DeLarverié and the Jewel Box Revue, the cross-dressed woman on the contemporary stage, and the invert” in Lesley Ferris’ Crossing the Stage: Controversies on Cross-Dressing (2005) - Drorbaugh interviewed Stormé for this chapter, and provides a lot of information and analysis about the history of cross-dressing and Stormé’s place in it.

Robin Maltz’s “Real butch: The performance/performativity of male impersonation, drag kings, passing as male, and stone butch realness” in Journal of Gender Studies v.7 i.3 (1998) includes a discussion of how  Stormé’s gender presentation can be interpreted through the lens of the butch lesbian community

Jack Halberstam’s “Mackdaddy, Superfly, Rapper: Gender, Race, and Masculinity in the Drag King Scene” in Social Text, No. 52/53, Queer Transexions of Race, Nation, and Gender (1997) includes discussion where  Stormé’s presentation and where they sit within the history of drag kings.

#sources #storme delarverie #queer history #lgbt history #lgbtq #lesbian history #black history #black history month #gay history

[nitoriaiichirou-blog]

what was Stormé Delarverié sexuality? because she was traveled with the first gay drag show or something so i assume she was gay

#so was she a lesbian? #i mean #female gay ie female homosexual is other wise known as lesbian so #Stormé Delarverié

[catastrfy]

HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY, STORMÉ DELARVERIÉ!! I hope you're having fabulous adventures on the other side. This image comprises two photos of Stormé that I edited, cleaned up, and colourised. I was given scans of the originals, (which are now part of the part of the Stormé DeLarverié collection at the @schomburgcenter ) The first photo is from 1946 (her family received at least one of the photos in this set for Christmas that year). It was taken by Bloom Chicago. The 2nd is by an unknown photographer and appears to be from the 1980s or 1990s It *delights* me how decades later, Stormé chose to place her hand in such a similar position for the later photo. Yes, Stormé's actual birth year was 1923; she was 6 years old on the 1930 census and 16 on the 1940 census. To all of us, happy 100 years of Stormé DeLarverié!! To quote Stormé, "it ain't easy being green"! Let's all honour Stormé by always supporting the lgbtq+ community and shutting down what she called "ugliness", ie homophobia, transphobia, racism, etc.

#Stormé DeLarverié #Stormy Dale #Storme DeLarverie #Queer elder #Queer History #We've always been here

[catastrfy]

image is a screencap or storme-delarverie.com, the website i created in honour of stormé delarverié. Across the top are four different headshots of stormé: a handtinted shot from around the time she started working at the jewel box revue, a b&w by bloom chicago when she started working for raynell golden, a b&w headshot by avery willard in the late 60s, a b&w headshot from the 90s that was in her personal collectoin of photos with no name of photographer included. below that is text reading: "

Welcome!

This site is a celebration of Stormé DeLarverié and is a labour of love.

==============

UPDATE 6 October 2023:

It's with a heavy heart that I announce that I'm turning over storme-delarverie.com to my beloved friend Jeanne. My health is declining to a point where this is necessary.

Jeanne is every bit as passionate as I am about Stormé and importance of maintaining her legacy.

All my love to you all,

Chris Starfire

==============

#stormé delarverié

[catastrfy]

Stuff I'm Proud of: • researching Stormé DeLarverié and creating the website dedicated to her (now being run by another Stormé researcher as my body is failing). Her surviving niece finally knows what became of her beautiful Aunt Viva.

• researching Sarah A. Thomas who was buried on the Oregon Trail and finding who she was/connecting her to her family. now if her descendents ever go looking, they'll find her.

• Autisticat

• my good omens mugs, esply the black one

• my binxy cat pride flag charms

my queer little tree with crowley the starmaker on top and aziraphale wearing my old pride rings guarding the bottom

close up of aziraphale, the queer guardian of soho, wearing pride rings (well, triangles) as a bandolier

these things all make me very happy

#queer history #good omens #good omens 2 #autisticat #storme delarverie #pride #cats #good omens diy stuff #pride rings #queer guardian of soho #starmaker crowley #rainbow tree

[catastrfy]

Stormé DeLarverié singing & telling stories!

https://ghostxgardens.bandcamp.com/album/storme-sings-jaz-the-blues and here's a 2007 post that mentions he's done recordings iwth storme: https://www.chelseahotelblog.com/living_with_legends_the_h/2007/12/pianist-and-sin.html#comments

#storme delarverie #hotel chelsea #jAz jERico

[catastrfy]

"suits me" by diane middlebrook

(the billy tipton biography from 1998)

been meaning to post this since november but hello body not working much. so,

a while back i saw a bunch of comments about "suits me", the biography of billy tipton, in which people were very angry at the author for disrespectful language. and it took me a minute to process that until i realised it's a time thing. eg sure, the language is outdated now. but that's because billy died in 1989, his ex approached middlebrook 2 years later in 1991 because she (kitty) wanted his story told and appreciated the care & respect middlebrook had used in another biography, middlebrook did years of research,and the book came out in 1998. the language that we, the trans community, use for ourselves is constantly evolving, & moreso (& faster!) online among younger people than in meatlife among older folx (ime, ymmv, etc)

i've been online since 1993. i first looked for trans spaces in the late 90s, but i found exactly ZERO that weren't specifically only for mtf or ftm people until about 10 years later. and even then, none of the spaces i found were comfortable; they were decidedly NOT supportive for either non-medicalised nor nonbinaried trans folx

hell, i only learned that other genderqueer folx were getting top surgery and taking hormones in the past decade or so! and i don't think i saw the word nonbinary until the last 5-10 years either.

even a decade ago, the loudest voices speaking about the trans community seemed to be binary voices who far too often spoke about & treated those of us outside that binary in very similar ways to how bi people were often treated durnig the biphobia surge during the aids crisis.

so yes, while the language IS outdated, i hope people do recognise that middlebrook reached out to four very well known and very well respected members of the trans community-- three trans men, at least 2 of whom are activists, and one person who had about as much use for binaries or being shoved into boxes as i do.

image description: text reading "To Stormé DeLarverié, Jamison Green, Jay Prosser, and Rupert Raj-Gauthier, I am grateful for views from inside the transgendered life."

(yes, "transgendered life" is also outdated. i know. i'm old!) to me this strongly suggests that middlebrook may have recognised that billy (a married man with kids who had a lifelong affectionate relationship with 2 of his cousins who knew all about his life and with whom he chose to be dorothy) might be a trans man or might have had more complex sense of self. and we'll never know, but middlebrook made space for possibilities while trying to not push one way or the other. or at least that's my read.

#queer history #transgender identity #transgender community #languaging changing over time #billy tipton #diane middlebook #storme delarverie #jamison green #jay prosser #rupert raj-gauthier

[genderoutlaws]

Gene Avery, Dore Orr, Tobi Marsh and MC Stormé DeLarverié of The Jewel Box Revue | circa 1960s

#op #photography #storme delarverie #gene avery #dore orr #tobi marsh #the jewel box revue #1960s #drag #kings

[genderoutlaws]

Stormé DeLarverié and an unknown member of The Jewel Box Revue, featured in the pages of Female Mimics No. 5 | 1965

#if u know who’s on the right here pls let me know! #storme delarverie #the jewel box revue #female mimics magazine #1960s #1965 #op #drag #kings #l

[genderoutlaws]

Stormé DeLarverié performing | ph: Nancy Terry | c. 1963

#op #storme delarverie #nancy terry #1960s #1963 #the jewel box revue #butch #drag #kings #l

[genderoutlaws]

Stormé DeLarverié, Lynn Carter, and Fran Novak of The Jewel Box Revue, known for being the first racially and sexually integrated drag troupe | c. early 1960s

#op #storme delarverie #lynn carter #fran novak #drag #butch #kings #1960s

[juicyparsons]

Val and her bestie Simona’s extra credit black history month project!

1. Trinity Fatu aka Naomi Knight- WWE wrestler, first black woman to win the WWE women’s championship!

2. Trayvon Martin- high school football player. His murder was one of the catalysts for the modern day Black Lives Matter movement. RIP Trayvon.

3. Stormé DeLarverié- drag performer, bouncer, lgbtq+ activist. One of the first people to fight back at the Stonewall Riots.

4. Misty Copeland- Ballerina, first black principal dancer at the American Ballet Theater in New York.

5. Jalaiah Harmon- trained dancer, 14 years old. Creator of the Renegade, one of the most popular tik tok dances of all time.

All black history is important history! ✊🏽

Ps. Thank u to Aunties @paladinbutch and @heliodor.butch for ur help with the project, we couldn’t have done it without u!

#riot raves #parenting with ri