Sally ride must be worth a lot of praise for her work in flash track for women in the space program and encourage young women to join science.
But before we rush to canonize her as a queer saint, let us first pay tribute to all the women who blazed trails so that Ride could be an out lesbian posthumously. Ride lost a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer, but gained herself a permanent place in queer history. Too bad she couldn’t talk about being lesbian while she was still alive.
I understand that some people prefer to be quiet about their private lives, but imagine all the good she could have done as a living role model rather than a dead one? Especially for all those girls struggling with their sexual identities in hostile environments (and there are a lot of them) throughout this still very homophobic country. She wanted to teach them science, but what about accepting themselves for who they are?Ironic, isn’t it, that now she will become a hero to the LGBT community, simply by virtue of the fact she was a famous person who happened to be a lesbian. That alone gives her a special status that the countless women who marched and organized and actually helped change the homophobic attitudes in this country will never ever have.
But before we rush to canonize her as a queer saint, let us first pay tribute to all the women who blazed trails so that Ride could be an out lesbian posthumously. Ride lost a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer, but gained herself a permanent place in queer history. Too bad she couldn’t talk about being lesbian while she was still alive.
