June 2022 Edition V1
In this issue: History, Moments & People in Time Which Make or Are Making a Difference in the LBGTQI+ Movement.
- Interview: Interview with “Mood Photographer” Raj Bandyopadhyay: Courage for a Transgender Marriage & Courage to Change Careers
- Book of the Month: COACHING WISDOM, Editors Tim Kincaid, Thomas Keydel, Adam Robersmith with Contributors
- Part 1: Who was Harvey Milk?
- Part 2: Who is Laverne Cox?
- Part 3: Who was James Baldwin?
- Part 4: Can You Name 5 LGBTQ Figures Who Have Made a Difference in the LBGTQI+ Movement in America as Activists and/or Trailblazers?
- Part 5: What is the Pink Triangle?
- Part 6: What was The Stonewall Uprising
Listen to the full interview here: https://courage-consultant.com/93-cb-live-courage-to-leap-and-lead-with-guest-raj-bandyopadhyay/
Interview: Interview with "Mood Photographer" Raj Bandyopadhyay: Courage for a Transgender Marriage & Courage to Change Careers
In 2016, Raj was a Data Scientist at a Silicon Valley startup; with a comfortable 6-figure salary, a status that came from success in a sexy field, and only a mild sense of mid-life dissatisfaction.
Then his partner, his then-wife of 8 years, came out as transgender.
Seeing his partner find joy in his true self forced Raj to ask the question, “What do I need to change in my life to feel true to myself?”
That journey led him to train as a sex and relationship coach, pursuing his creative passion, and eventually, finding a fulfilling life as an artist and photographer in NYC.
Today, as a personal branding photographer, he helps coaches and entrepreneurs convey their full, multifaceted, vibrant stories on camera.
He believes that being true to yourself and being vulnerable with others is not only a great way to live but also the best way to build a deep, genuine, and lasting connection with your clients and audience.
Don’t forget to follow CB, comment, rate, review, and subscribe to the show on your preferred platform!
Rating/reviews: https://lovethepodcast.com/courage; Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/34Q2dcI; iHeart Radio: https://ihr.fm/3sKaUgM; Amazon: https://amzn.to/36j2DZz; Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3I6jXzc
Book of the Month: COACHING WISDOM, Editors Tim Kincaid, Thomas Keydel, Adam Robersmith with Contributors
TO BE RELEASED JULY, 2022
Who should read this book:
- Coaches (gay and non-gay) or other helping professionals who work with gay men
- Gay men who want to learn more about how coaching might benefit them
- Gay men who want to become coaches
- DEIJ practitioners
- Social Science researchers and educators
- Coaching schools and coaching trainers
“Coaching Wisdom” is an opportunity to hear from a wide range of men working on the front lines of coaching. Whether it is about gay aging, the lavender glass ceilings, or gay superheros generating even greater success, real life is examined. Here is a book that combines first-hand point of view with the methodical third-person observations found with theory and practice writing. Throughout the text, discover the voices of committed practitioners who understand that coaching is a lifetime journey, one that changes the gay practitioners while empowering the receiving client in new and unexpected ways.
The Gay Coaching Alliance (GCA) is an international association of gay male coaches working together to empower vibrant practices and creative impactful work across a wide range of specialties.
People & Events in Time Which Make or Are Making a Difference in the LBGTQI+ movement.
Who Was Harvey Milk?
Harvey Bernard Milk was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Milk was born and raised in New York where he acknowledged his homosexuality as an adolescent but chose to pursue sexual relationships with secrecy and discretion well into his adult years. His experience in the counterculture of the 1960s caused him to shed many of his conservative views about individual freedom and the expression of sexuality.
Milk moved to San Francisco in 1972 and opened a camera store. Although he had been restless, holding an assortment of jobs and moving house frequently, he settled in The Castro, a neighborhood that was experiencing mass immigration of gay men and lesbians. He was compelled to run for city supervisor in 1973, though he encountered resistance from the existing gay political establishment. His campaign was compared to the theater; he was brash, outspoken, animated, and outrageous, earning media attention and votes, although not enough to be elected. He campaigned again in the next two supervisor elections, dubbing himself the “Mayor of Castro Street”. Voters responded enough to warrant his running for the California State Assembly as well. Taking advantage of his growing popularity, he led the gay political movement in fierce battles against anti-gay initiatives. Milk was elected city supervisor in 1977 after San Francisco reorganized its election procedures to choose representatives from neighborhoods rather than through city-wide ballots.
Milk served almost eleven months in office, during which he sponsored a bill banning discrimination in public accommodations, housing, and employment on the basis of sexual orientation. The Supervisors passed the bill by a vote of 11–1, and it was signed into law by Mayor George Moscone. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, a disgruntled former city supervisor who cast the sole vote against Milk’s bill.
Despite his short career in politics, Milk became an icon in San Francisco and a martyr in the gay community. In 2002, Milk was called “the most famous and most significant openly LGBT official ever elected in the United States”. Anne Kronenberg, his final campaign manager, wrote of him: “What set Harvey apart from you or me was that he was a visionary. He imagined a righteous world inside his head and then he set about to create it for real, for all of us.” Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Milk
Who Was James Baldwin?
James Arthur Baldwin was an American writer and activist. As a writer, he garnered acclaim across various mediums, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, was published in 1953; decades later, Time magazine included the novel on its list of the 100 best English-language novels released from 1923 to 2005. His first essay collection, Notes of a Native Son, was published in 1955.
Baldwin’s work fictionalizes fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures. Themes of masculinity, sexuality, race, and class intertwine to create intricate narratives that run parallel with some of the major political movements toward social change in mid-twentieth-century America, such as the civil rights movement and the gay liberation movement. Baldwin’s protagonists are often but not exclusively African American, and gay and bisexual men frequently feature prominently in his literature. These characters often face internal and external obstacles in their search for social and self-acceptance. Such dynamics are prominent in Baldwin’s second novel, Giovanni’s Room, which was written in 1956, well before the gay liberation movement.
His reputation has endured since his death and his work has been adapted for the screen to great acclaim. An unfinished manuscript, Remember This House, was expanded and adapted for cinema as the documentary film I Am Not Your Negro (2016), which was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 89th Academy Awards. One of his novels, If Beale Street Could Talk, was adapted into the Academy Award-winning film of the same name in 2018, directed and produced by Barry Jenkins.
In addition to writing, Baldwin was also a well-known, and controversial, public figure and orator, especially during the civil rights movement in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Baldwin
Who is Laverne Cox?
Laverne Cox is an American actress and LGBT advocate. She rose to prominence with her role as Sophia Burset on the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, becoming the first transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category, and the first to be nominated for an Emmy Award since composer Angela Morley in 1990. In 2015, she won a Daytime Emmy Award in Outstanding Special Class Special as executive producer for Laverne Cox Presents The T Word, making her the first transgender woman to win the award. In 2017, she became the first transgender person to play a transgender series regular on U.S. broadcast TV as Cameron Wirth on CBS’s Doubt.
In April 2014, Cox was honored by GLAAD* with its Stephen F. Kolzak Award for her work as an advocate for the transgender community. In June 2014, Cox became the first transgender person to appear on the cover of Time magazine. Cox is the first transgender person to appear on the cover of a Cosmopolitan magazine, with her February 2018 cover on the South African edition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laverne_Cox
*GLAAD is an American non-governmental media monitoring organization, founded as a protest against defamatory coverage of gay and lesbian people. Its agenda has since extended to LGBT and the entertainment industry and its portrayal of these groups. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLAAD
Can You Name Five LGBTQ Figures Who Have Made a Difference in the LBGTQI+ Movement as Activists and/ or Trailblazers? … Here are just a few who helped changed the course of history:
Harvey Milk, Sally Ride, Leonardo da Vinci, Hatshepsut, Laverne Cox, James Baldwin, RuPaul, Janet Mock, Elliot Page, Alan Turing, Christine Jorgensen, Bayard Rustin, Barbara Gittings, Billie Jean King, Gilbert Baker, Larry Kramer, RuPaul, Rachel Maddow, Edith Windsor, Anderson Cooper, Michael Sam, Lena Waithe, Janet Mock, Elliot Page, Tammy Baldwin, Troy Perry, Barney Frank, Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, Dan Savage, Del Martin, and Phyllis Lyon, Edie Windsor, Evan Wolfson, Frank Kameny, Harry Hay, Jeanne Manford, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Leonard Matlovich, Magnus Hirschfeld, Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Peter Tatchell, Peter Tatchell, Steve Endean, and many more.
The Stonewall Uprising, What Was It?
What is The Pink Triangle?
What is The Pink Triangle?
A Pink Triangle has been a symbol for various LGBTQ identities, initially intended as a badge of shame, but later reclaimed as a positive symbol of self-identity.
In Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, it began as one of the Nazi concentration camp badges, distinguishing those imprisoned because they had been identified by authorities as gay men.
In the 1970s, it was revived as a symbol of protest against homophobia and has since been adopted by the larger LGBTQ community as a popular symbol of LGBTQ pride and the LGBTQ rights movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_triangle