Robin Lowey

The passage of the FAIR Education Act in California, which requires California’s public schools to teach LGBTQ history, opened the door for educators to pass on our history to the youth. The only trouble was, there was a shortage of content. Robin Lowey, founder of the online magazine Epochalips: Smart Lesbian Commentary, saw it as an opportunity. She wrote and designed “Game Changers: 20 Lesbians You Should Know About,” a graphic-novel-style resource that introduces students to some of the significant contributors to LGBTQ history over the past three decades. Lowey didn’t just profile the usual suspects with pop-culture clout. Instead, she gave ink to a broad cross-section of activists and artists, like Crystal Jang, who founded Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women & Transgender Community (APIQWTC); Kate Kendell, who headed the National Center for Lesbian Rights for 22 years; and award-winning comedian and playwright Marga Gomez. “They are true American heroes,” Lowey says, “well known in the LGBTQ community but not necessarily in the world at large.” Lowey crowdfunded $20,000 to support the project and to gift a copy to every public high school in the San Francisco Bay Area. Next step: every school in California. If only something like that had been around when she was in school! “Growing up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, I didn’t have any positive role models to help guide me through my struggle of coming out,” Lowey says. “Years later, after moving to San Francisco and raising two boys with another woman, I began to realize the importance of what some of the women in my generation had done to create queer culture, and I was inspired to write the book.” —SEJ