Longtime social justice and HIV/AIDS activist, filmmaker, public speaker and writer Amber Hollibaugh died Oct. 20 due to complications from type one diabetes in her Brooklyn, New York home. She was 77.
A self-described “lesbian sex radical, ex-hooker, incest survivor, gypsy child, poor-white-trash, high femme dyke,” Hollibaugh’s lifelong work was primarily focused on feminism and sexuality. Her perspective was always informed by her attention to social class. Before her retirement seven years ago, Hollibaugh was the Barnard Center for Research on Women (BCRW) Senior Activist Fellow Emerita Queer Survival Economies (QSE) director.
Among Hollibaugh’s other career accomplishments were as Howard Brown Health’s elder and LBTI women’s services chief officer in Chicago; National LGBTQ Task Force senior strategist; Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE) national initiatives director and education, advocacy and community-building director; Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) Lesbian AIDS Project founding director and women’s services national director; New York-based Queers for Economic Justice founding member and executive director; and New York City Commission on Human Rights, AIDS Division education director.
Additionally, Hollibaugh worked at Modern Times Bookstore when she lived in San Francisco. She was also the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project co-founder alongside Allan Bérubé in 1978. During the now infamous 1982 Barnard Conference on Sexuality—a key moment during the Feminist Sex Wars of the mid-to-late ’70s and early ’80s—Hollibaugh gave a talk entitled “Desire for the Future: Radical Hope in Passion and Danger.” […]
Click here to read the full piece. This story was originally published by Windy City Times on October 27, 2023.
