27/05/2025
Philadelphia Gay News reports on the life and contributions of VIctoria A Brownworth, who has passed on to the realm of our LGBTQIA+ ancestors at an undisclosed age (her Wikipedia entry is not correct, according to journalistic insiders). Brownworth was a great survivor, of anti-lesbian conversion therapy in the seventies, of various illnesses and disabilities including multiple sclerosis, cancer and congestive heart failure and she linked the LGBTQIA+ and disability movements. She challenged her readers to recognize the intersections of disability rights and health care access with other movements. As a college student, she co-founded Amazon Country — a radio program that celebrates lesbian and feminist music, the first of its kind in the United States — with Roberta Hacker in 1974. Her writing has been featured in LGBTQ+ specific spaces — such as The Advocate, OUT Magazine, Curve and more — as well as top-tier mainstream newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer which published many of her op-eds and essays. She analyzed media and reviewed entertainment for the Bay Area Reporter, often through a political lens. Much of her writing was both crucial and timely — including breaking news and investigative stories, social justice and political commentary, and research impacting marginalized groups of people. Lauren Rowello for PGN writes "Throughout almost 50 years of reporting, she remained committed to sharing the stories of vulnerable and marginalized people even when mainstream newspapers weren’t interested. She collaborated with lesbian nuns, camped on concourses and in parks to meet unhoused LGBTQ+ youth, laid on the streets with ACT UP organizers during die-ins, and took whatever steps were necessary to ensure her reporting was accurate and empathetic. But she did more than champion LGBTQ+ rights. Her work challenged readers to think more deeply about other justice topics — including health care issues, voting, the impact of economic policy, immigration rights, religion, addiction, sex work and other important issues." In an age of misreporting by fake news outlets, the extremist web and the heterosexual fundamentalists of right and far left, far feminist and other forms of prejudicial narrative, Brownworth cared about accuracy and impact. Her contribution to progressive movements will be missed.
