Esther Newton Made Me Gay
Film Screening & Discussion with Esther Newton and Director Jean Carlomusto
PRESENTED BY THE STONEWALL NATIONAL WOMEN’S FUND
In Celebration of International Women’s Day
Sunday, March 8th | 4:00 PM
Stonewall, 1300 East Sunrise Blvd., Fort Lauderdale
Free event. Refreshments will be served.
RSVP Monique@stonewall-museum.org
About the Film Esther Newton Made Me Gay
Esther Newton Made Me Gay explores the life and times of cultural anthropologist Esther Newton. The film tells her story of awakening to gay life in the 1950’s, the women’s liberation movement and lesbian-feminism, drag culture, and forging a butch identity that for her is in conversation with trans-masculinity. Keenly attuned to the societal forces that shaped her life, Esther guides us through an anthropology of herself, a study influenced by her love for competitive dog agility, which pairs her aging butch body with her beloved dog teammate on an obstacle course that is constantly changing.
In her persistent efforts to train her body back into shape after numerous health setbacks, we see the intense drive that helped Esther navigate a lifetime of obstacles she faced in her quest to become who she wanted to be: a butch lesbian, scholar, and athlete.
Throughout her career, Esther was a pioneer – questioning and challenging status quo assumptions on gender, sexuality, and anthropological methods. Her work inspired generations of scholars to pursue research in what would eventually become the field of LGBTQ & Gender Studies.
About Esther Newton — Pioneering Cultural Anthropologist & Founding Scholar of LGBTQ Studies
Esther Newton is a trailblazing American cultural anthropologist whose work helped establish LGBTQ studies as a recognized academic field. After earning her BA from the University of Michigan and her MA and PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago, Newton produced one of the first ethnographies of queer life in the United States. Her 1968 dissertation on drag performers became the landmark book Mother Camp, a foundational text in the study of gender performance and queer community life.
Over the decades, Newton has continued to shape the field through influential works including Cherry Grove, Fire Island and Margaret Mead Made Me Gay, both recipients of the Ruth Benedict Award. Her scholarship spans drag culture, lesbian and gay communities, queer history, and the politics of identity, blending rigorous research with personal insight and cultural critique.
A founder of LGBTQ anthropology, Newton has taught at SUNY Purchase, the University of Michigan, and the University of Paris VII, and has been active in Second Wave Feminism, Gay Liberation, and lesbian‑feminist movements. Her life and legacy are also the subject of the 2022 documentary Esther Newton Made Me Gay, which highlights her profound impact on generations of scholars, activists, and queer communities.
About Jean Carlomusto — Filmmaker, Activist & Pioneer of AIDS Media
Jean Carlomusto is a filmmaker, activist, and interactive media artist whose work explores the unique lives and powerful movements of LGBTQ+ people. Her work has been exhibited internationally in festivals, museums, and on television. Her Emmy nominated documentary, LARRY KRAMER IN LOVE & ANGER, HBO, 2015, was featured at the Sundance Film Festival. She produced and directed SEX IN AN EPIDEMIC, Showtime, 2011, a powerful retelling of the birth of the safer sex movements and HIV prevention movements.
Her personal films are often unorthodox investigative reports on subjects that have been all but erased from history. In L IS FOR THE WAY YOU LOOK, PBS/WNET, she pieced together lesbian history using whatever scraps of gossip and memory she could find into a humorous portrait of a population’s creative tussle for visibility and inclusion. Her celebrated work, SHATZI IS DYING, is a multilayered treatise exploring queer culture, AIDS politics, life and death, traced through the near-death experiences of a beloved rescue dog.
Jean was an early pioneer in the AIDS Activist video movement. In 1987, she started the media unit at Gay Men’s Health Crisis. She was a founding member of DIVA TV (a video affinity group of ACT UP) and a member of the Testing the Limits Video Collective. The numerous works that she collaborated on throughout the 1980’s and 90’s, included: DOCTORS, LIARS AND WOMEN: AIDS ACTIVISTS SAY NO TO COSMO; TARGET CITY HALL; SEIZE CONTROL OF THE FDA; TESTING THE LIMITS: NYC; and WOMEN AND AIDS. Her interactive video altar, OFFERINGS, commemorating AIDS activists, has been featured at the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles and toured South Africa as part of the Stop AIDS/Make Art project. In 2016, it was part of EVERYDAY at LaMama Galleria, NYC.
