Jan Gay

Who is this?

Jan Gay (born Helen Reitman, 1902–1960) was a German-born American journalist, author, activist, and researcher. She is known for her pioneering research on the realities of gays and lesbians in 1930s Europe and the US, conducted as part of the Committee for the Study of Sex Variants. Previously, she had visited Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science. Gay was also a relevant early figure of nudism in the US, a topic on which she wrote the essay On Going Naked (1932) and the script of the documentary This Naked Age (1932). She also wrote several children's books, some of them in collaboration with her partner Zhenya Gay. Her story gained prominence after the publication of the investigative novel Blackouts (2023) by Justin Torres, the winner of the 2023 National Book Award.

Career

1. 1902
   Born
2. 1960
   Passed away

Trivia

• •Place of birth: Leipzig
• •Citizenship: United States
• •Known as: journalist, translator, sexologist, writer