Posts by Sofia:

On this day in queerstory: Oscar Wilde’s legal troubles begin

On February 6, 1895, the fallout from Oscar Wilde’s confrontation with the Marquess of Queensberry was already hardening into legal inevitability. Wilde’s decision to pursue libel proceedings earlier that winter had triggered a chain reaction that, by early February, had mobilised police surveillance, legal preparation, and press speculation about homosexuality at the highest levels of […]

On this day in queerstory: advancements in trans healthcare in Sweden

On February 5, 1910, Francesca Woodman’s future artistic lineage quietly began its long gestation, as modernist photographic movements that would later shape queer visual culture took hold across Europe. While Woodman herself would be born decades later, February 5 appears repeatedly in archival timelines documenting early experimental photography circles that dismantled rigid ideas of gender, […]

On this day in queerstory: seeds of change in Ireland

On February 4, 1982, activists in Ireland escalated challenges to the criminalisation of sex between men. Legal groundwork was being laid for what would later become Norris v. Ireland, a case that—like Dudgeon before it—would force European institutions to confront Ireland’s retention of colonial-era sodomy laws. February 4 appears in the archival record as a […]

On this day in queerstory: actress Maria Schneider dies

A haunting moment came on February 3, 1975, when police raided Sauna Aquarius in Montreal, arresting thirty-six people under bawdyhouse laws in the lead-up to the 1976 Olympic Games. The raid marked the beginning of a string of policing actions targeting queer spaces in the city, igniting resistance among LGBTQ+ communities who had until then […]

On this day in queerstory: sexologist Havelock Ellis is born

On February 2, 1859, Havelock Ellis was born in Croydon, England. Ellis became one of the earliest Western physicians and writers to study human sexuality systematically, co-authoring one of the first English medical textbooks to address homosexuality and publishing influential works on a range of sexual behaviours and identities. His research introduced concepts like autoeroticism […]

On this day in queerstory: trans rights in Finland

Legal pressure was more overt on February 1, 1981, when proceedings in Dudgeon v. United Kingdom moved forward at the European Court of Human Rights. Northern Ireland’s criminalisation of sex between men was no longer just a regional anomaly; it was being tested against European human rights law. While the judgment would come later that […]