Esther Newton Made Me Gay
Directed by Jean Carlomusto
ESTHER NEWTON MADE ME GAY explores the life and times of cultural anthropologist Esther Newton. 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.
Keenly attuned to the cultural and societal forces that shaped her life, Esther guides us through an anthropology of herself, a study influenced by her love for a sport - competitive dog agility - that pairs her aging butch body with her beloved dog teammate on an obstacle course that is constantly changing.
Directed by Jean Carlomusto and produced with Shanti Avirgan, whose previous collaborations with Jean include the Emmy-nominated Larry Kramer in Love & Anger, Esther Newton Made Me Gay premiered as a feature-length doc in 2022.
“The Biggest Buzz [at the Provincetown Film Festival] … If you aren’t familiar with Esther Newton, you should be. Regardless of what stripe of the rainbow flag you represent, Esther is an essential part of your history.”
—Janet Prolman, Queerguru
“She’s no respecter of pieties about identity, she has a wicked sense of humor, and she’s not content to call a spade a spade, but will go on to call it a god-damned shovel.”
—Sarah Boslaugh, The Arts STL
My Butch Career A Memoir
During her difficult childhood, Esther Newton recalls that she “became an anti-girl, a girl refusenik, caught between genders,” and that her “child body was a strong and capable instrument stuffed into the word ‘girl.’” Later, in early adulthood, as she was on her way to becoming a trailblazing figure in gay and lesbian studies, she “had already chosen higher education over the strongest passion in my life, my love for women, because the two seemed incompatible.”
In My Butch Career, Newton tells the compelling, disarming, and at times sexy story of her struggle to write, teach, and find love, all while coming to terms with her identity during a particularly intense time of homophobic persecution in the twentieth century.
My Butch Career was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in 2019
Listen to the author and scholar tell her story:
“[My Butch Career] is a thoughtful examination of how personal experiences spur intellectual progress.”