October 15th

10-15-1926 – 06-25-1984 Michael Foucault – Born in Poitiers, France. He was a French philosopher, historian, and literary critic. He was active in a number of left-wing groups involved in anti-racist campaigns, human rights movements, and penal reform. In Octobe651980, Foucault became a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He also lectured at the Humanities Institute at the New York University, UCLA in 1981, the University of Vermont in 1982, and Berkeley again in 1983. While in California, Foucault spent many evenings in the San Francisco gay scene, including the bathhouses. It was there that he contracted HIV. On June 25, 1984, he died in Paris of neurological problems compounded by HIV/AIDS. He was the first public figure in France to have died from AIDS. His partner Daniel Defert founded the AIDES charity in his memory.

10-15-1947 – 02-09-1994   Walta Borawski – Born in Patchogue, New York. He was an American poet. He was the life partner of activist and educator Michael Bronski (05-12-1949). They met on June 23, 1975, and remained together until Borawski’s death due to complications from AIDS. His poem Some of us wear pink triangles and Power of One are included in The Columbia anthology of gay literature: readings from Western antiquity to the present.

10-15-1974   Roxane Gay – Born in Omaha, Nebraska. She is an American writer, professor, editor, and social commentator. Gay is the author of The New York Times best-selling essay collection Bad Feminist (2014), as well as the short story collection Ayiti (2011), the novel An Untamed State (2014), the short story collection Difficult Women (2017), and the memoir Hunger (2017). Much of Gay’s writing deals with feminist and racial issues through the lens of her personal experiences with race, gender identity, and sexuality. Gay is bisexual. In January 2018, she underwent surgery that removed 85% of her stomach. She is 6 feet 3 inches tall. In October 2019, she became engaged to artist and writer, Debbie Millman. The couple married in August, 2020.

10-15-1982 Charline Labonté – Born in Greenfield Park, Longueuil, Canada. She was a women’s Olympic ice hockey player for Canada and was part of Canada’s gold medal team in Turin (2006), Vancouver (2010), and Sochi (2014). Labonté came out as a lesbian and is in a relationship with Canadian Olympic speed skater, Anastasia Bucsis. She stated, “I could always be myself with my team. I am fortunate to have been a part of the Canadian women’s national hockey team for twelve years, and I never felt I couldn’t be free. Everyone on my team has known I’m gay since I can remember and I never felt degraded for it. On the contrary, my sport and my team are the two environments where I feel most comfortable.”