Voting Station

Elizabeth Windsor

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Advocate

The Resume

    (June 20, 1929-September 12, 2017)
    Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
    Birth name was Edith Schain
    Systems programmer at IBM
    Resigned to focus on LGBT activism (1975)
    Entered into a domestic partnership with psychologist Thea Spyer after living together for three decades (1993)
    Married Spyer in Canada (2007)
    After Spyer’s death (2009), filed suit against the federal government to claim the federal estate tax exemption for surviving spouses
    Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act defining marriage as between a man a woman to be unconstitutional ‘as a deprivation of the liberty of the person protected by the Fifth Amendment’ (2013)

Why she might be annoying:

    Her marriage to college classmate Saul Windsor ended in less than a year over her attraction to women.
    When she first began dating Spyer, she hid the relationship from her IBM co-workers by claiming to be dating Spyer’s non-existent brother Willie.
    She admitted that prior to the 1969 Stonewall Riots, ‘I’d always had the feeling, ‘I don’t want to be identified with the queens.’’
    Her second wife, Judith Kasen, was 36 years her junior.

Why she might not be annoying:

    She occasionally was subjected to anti-semitic taunting in school. (About which her mother counseled, ‘If someone calls you a dirty Jew, pull their hair and run home.’)
    She was honored by the National Computing Conference as a ‘pioneer in operating systems.’
    She became a full-time caregiver after Spyer developed multiple sclerosis.
    She was Grand Marshall of the New York City Pride March (2013).
    She said, ‘’Married’ is a magic word, and it is magic throughout the world. It has to do with our dignity as human beings, to be who we are openly.’

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 22 Votes: 77.27% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 9 Votes: 77.78% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 43 Votes: 48.84% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 31 Votes: 61.29% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 75 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 117 Votes: 59.83% Annoying