• Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
  • Search Site

Polari Magazine

  • Home
  • Up Front
    • Editorial
    • Clementine: The Living Fashion Doll
    • Polari Safari
    • WTF? Friday
    • Bulletin Board
    • Polari Facts
  • Features
    • Interviews
    • Features
    • Gallery
    • Opinion
    • Heroes & Villains
  • Community
    • Oral Histories
    • Coming Out Stories
    • Relationships
    • IDAHO
    • LGBT History Month
    • Blogs
  • Reviews
    • Books
    • Film and Television
    • Music
    • Stage
    • Visual Arts
    • Classics: Books
    • Classics: Film and Television
    • Classics: Music
  • About
    • About Polari Magazine
    • Contributors
    • Contact

You are here: Polari Magazine / LGBT History Month / LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 3

LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 3

03 Feb 2013 / Comments Off / in LGBT History Month/by Christopher Bryant

To celebrate LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari is publishing a daily series of LGBT Heroes, selected by the magazine’s team of writers and special contributors.

Sally Ride, LGBT History Month 2013

Sally Ride – Physicist, Astronaut, Author
by Christopher Bryant
………………………………………………………………………………………….

In his pioneering essay ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History,’ Frederick Jackson Turner described the Western border of the expanding United States in the 19th century as the great realm of possibility, an imaginative space in which social developments “has been continually beginning over again”. The two great frontiers of 20th century science turned out to be outer space, the realm of the astronaut, and inner space, the realm of the physicist. Sally Ride trained as a physicist, and graduated with a PhD from Stanford University. In 1978 she joined NASA after responding to a newspaper ad calling for applicants to the space program. There were 8000 write-ins. In 1983, at the age of 32, she became the first American woman to enter into low Earth orbit.

Ride was intensely private. It was only upon her death in 2012 that it was made known that the chief operating officer and executive vice president of Sally Ride Science, Tam O’Shaughnessy, had been her partner for 27 years. The two women co-authored five science books for children, and were committed educators.

Sally Ride Science was founded in 2001, with the aim of developing science, technology, engineering and maths education for elementary and middle school students. Two elementary schools in the United States have in fact been named in her honour: Sally K. Ride Elementary School in The Woodlands, Texas; and Sally K. Ride Elementary School in Germantown, Maryland.

In 1983, the space program was, a male domain, and overwrought with frontier imagery and masculine hyperbole. “This is the hero factory,” began a 1983 article in People, which reported on Ride’s first press conference at NASA:

No other astronaut was ever asked questions like these: Will the flight affect your reproductive organs? The answer, delivered with some asperity: “There’s no evidence of that.” Do you weep when things go wrong on the job? Retort: “How come nobody ever asks Rick those questions?” Will you become a mother? First an attempt at evasion, then a firm smile: “You notice I’m not answering.” In an hour of interrogation that is by turns intelligent, inane and almost insulting, Ride remains calm, unrattled and as laconic as the lean, tough fighter jockeys who surround her. “It may be too bad that our society isn’t further along and that this is such a big deal,” she reflects.

At the time she was married to fellow astronaut Steven Hawley. It’s perhaps no wonder she kept her relationship with Tam, which began in 1985, private, if this is the sort of questioning to which she was submitted.

Ride was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2011, died on July 23, 2012, at the age 61. In April 2013, the Space Foundation will award its highest honour, the General James E. Hill Lifetime Space Achievement Award, to Sally Ride and Neil Armstrong. To this day, the inspirational, brilliant Ride remains the youngest American astronaut to be launched into space. Her work pushed the boundaries of the frontier, which Ralph Waldo Emerson described in the 1844 essay ‘The Young American’, “the appointed remedy for whatever is fantastic or false in our country”. That is what makes her a hero.

Click here to read LGBT Heroes Day 2 – Pedro Almodóvar.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Pinterest
Tags: frederick jackson turner, frontier, general james e. hill lifetime space achievement award, lgbt history month 2013, nasa, sally ride, sally ride science

Related Posts

Did you like this entry?
Here are a few more posts that might be interesting for you.
Related Posts
Our LGBT Histories: Music – Day 7
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 13
Our LGBT Histories: Music – Day 17
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 28
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 24
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 16
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 2
Our LGBT Histories: Music – Day 16
Our LGBT Histories: Music – Day 21
LGBT History Month Heroes – Day 7

Search Polari

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

About Polari Magazine

Polari Magazine is an LGBT arts and culture magazine that explores the subculture by looking at what is important to the people who are in it. It’s about the lives we lead, not the lifestyles we’re supposed to lead.

Its content is informed & insightful, and features a diverse range of writers from every section of the community. Its intent is to help LGBT readers learn about their own heritage and to sustain a link between the present and the past.

Polari is designed to nurture the idea of community, whether that be social and political, or artistic and creative. It is your magazine, whether you want to read it, or whether you want to get involved in it, if you're gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, or queer.

Polari Magazine is all these: it's a gay online magazine; it's a gay and lesbian online magazine; it's an LGBT arts and culture magazine. Ultimately, it is a queer magazine.

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

Twitter

Tweets by @PolariMagazine

Archive

  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • July 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • May 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
© Copyright - Polari Magazine - Wordpress Theme by Kriesi.at
  • scroll to top
  • Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Website Privacy & Cookies