To confirm: Confirm Grace’s permission to republish her photo and her paper, and that she wants her name and picture on the site.
When a student writes your life story, you listen. Grace Shields was a second-year student in Dr. Anne Steinert’s Queer History class. Dr. Steinert’s final assignment was a paper on queer activism in Cincinnati. Dr. Steinert and the volunteers at the Ohio Lesbian Archives gave Grace Michael’s name as someone who might be interested in discussing his activism.
For her midterm, Grace had researched Marsha P. Johnson, a transgender activist in New York in the mid-to-late 20th century. Afterward she wondered about activists in Cincinnati. “Michael Chanak Jr.” kept coming up, so she asked to learn more about his impact on the city. Michael agreed to a Zoom interview on March 31, 2022, and this paper is the result.
What the paper covers
It follows Michael from the 1986 Pride kiss that outed him at work, through five years of advocacy, to the September 15, 1992 policy change. Its central argument, in Michael’s words, is that Peridex, a prescription mouth rinse P&G marketed to people with HIV, “was the currency that allowed the discussion to go on,” because a data-driven company needed a business case for change.
It also records his view that change comes “a millimeter at a time,” his advice to get involved in person rather than only online, and why he believes in being out in every part of life.