TIME Magazine released its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world on Thursday, and a whopping 14 are openly LGBTQ+ by our count, including Janet Mock, Lena Waithe, and Adam Rippon. If this list is any indication, then the ‘90s Lesbian Avengers chant, “Ten percent is not enough — recruit, recruit, recruit!” has finally come to fruition.
For comparison, the 2015 list featured four LGBTQ+ individuals, and last year’s list featured three — Drag Race host RuPaul, actress Sarah Paulson, and Gavin Grimm, the transgender student who sued his high school for its discriminatory anti-trans bathroom policy. Such a high number of LGBTQ+ people on the list this year suggests an upswing in visibility for the community in general. LGBTQ+ people are also represented in a much wider scope than in years prior. The honorees include an Olympic figure skater (Adam Rippon), a prime minister (Leo Varadkar), an astronaut (Peggy Whitson), and a painter (Kehinde Wiley), among others.
On the list is Parkland teen Emma González, a Cuban-American bisexual activist who has been speaking out on gun control; Ronan Farrow, a journalist who recently came out and whose reporting helped add momentum to the #MeToo movement; Daniela Vega, a transgender Chilean actress whose film A Fantastic Woman won the 2018 Oscar for best foreign language film; Lena Waithe, an Emmy award-winning Black lesbian actress and screenwriter known for Netflix’s Master of None; Peggy Whitson, a NASA astronaut who holds the record for most time spent in space by a U.S. astronaut; and Kehinde Wiley, a Black gay artist who painted Barack Obama’s official portrait.
The 100 honorees were separated into categories of pioneers, artists, leaders, icons, and titans, and each were profiled in a feature for TIME — in most cases by another influential person. Barack Obama wrote the profile for the Parkland teens, writing that the teens “have the power so often inherent in youth: to see the world anew; to reject the old constraints, outdated conventions and cowardice too often dressed up as wisdom.”
Christian Siriano, who was also honored on this year’s list, wrote the profile for transgender activist and writer Janet Mock, as “one of the most visible and important voices in activism — not just for the trans community, but for women, people of color, LGBTQ people and marginalized communities everywhere.” Cher wrote the feature for U.S. figure skater Adam Rippon, saying he “isn’t just a beautiful skater. He has humility, grace and an incredible sense of humor.” She also threw in a compliment for the leather harness suit Rippon wore to the Academy Awards. “I thought it was fabulous, of course.”
To see so many LGBTQ+ people honored in this way could serve as a comforting bellwether for our embattled community, which in the current political climate is often targeted not just in the United States by the Trump administration, but also around the world in brutal crackdowns, as we’ve seen in Egypt, where LGBTQ+ people have been jailed, and Chechnya, where an anti-gay purge inspired protests from advocates.
Still, it should be noted that inclusion on TIME’s list is not necessarily an endorsement. Also on the list are President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, two figures with anti-LGBTQ+ track records and who, given current events, don’t inspire respect from a decent swath of the population.
But one thing that can be gleaned from this list is that queer people have heavily impacted the world around us in 2018, just as we always have and always will. Scrolling down the list of names and seeing everyone from Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, to Jan Rader, a fire chief in West Virginia, is a reminder that LGBTQ+ people exist everywhere.
Perhaps that, in and of itself, is cause for celebration.
John Paul Brammer is a New York-based writer and advice columnist from Oklahoma whose work has appeared in The Guardian, Slate, NBC, BuzzFeed and more. He is currently in the process of writing his first novel.
