[Know Your Bisexual History]: Photos from joint Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) + Gay Liberation Front (GLF) protest for an end of oppressive treatment of LGBTQ Patients at NYC’s Bellevue Hospital (Fall 1970 credit Richard C. Wandel).

At that time, NYC’s Bellevue Hospital followed prevailing thought that sexuality and gender identity that did not correspond to a narrow and binary view of normative behaviors was a sign of mental illness. Like many institutions they practiced Electroshock Therapy to “cure” bisexual as well as gay/lesbian people and mistreated LGBTQ patients who were simply there for routine medical complaints.

But all LGBTQ people, including large numbers of bisexual activists, began fighting back and by 1973 the American Psychiatric Association (APA) declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder.