I have a theory, and it’s a big one. Bear with me here.
Last week, we discussed the theory that the legendary actor Katharine Hepburn might have identified as trans or nonbinary if those labels were more widely available when Kate was alive. This week, we’re diving into a deeper theory concerning Amelia Earhart and their mysterious disappearance in the 1930s.
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We begin our story with—who else?—Gore Vidal. For those not aware, Vidal had a closer than usual relationship with Earhart in the 1930s, when he was still just a teen. This was due to the fact that Vidal’s father Eugene was the head of what would eventually become TWA in the 1950s. As an early aviation worker who paved the way for commercial flight, Vidal Sr. worked with Earhart on many projects, and the two grew close. According to Gore, Earhart was deeply in love with his father, who had divorced Gore’s mother Nina in 1935.
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Eugene Vidal and Amelia Earhart’s relationship—whether platonic or not—began in 1930, when Vidal hired Earhart vice president of the Ludington Line (later TWA) in charge of public relations and traffic management.
“She and my father were lovers,” Gore Vidal recalled to his biographer Jay Parini. “Nobody thought much about this dalliance, although she apparently cared a great deal about my father.”
Here’s where things get interesting: in 1976, Vidal was working on his novel Kalki, an apocalyptic tale whose first-person narrator—much like the main character of his 1968 bestseller Myra Breckinridge—started out trans. Unlike Myra, Kalki’s hero, Teddy Ottinger, was first written as a trans man, until publishers convinced Vidal to change Teddy into a woman. And who did he draw on, potentially, for inspiration for this transmasc character? Amelia Earhart.
Parini himself writes that “Gore’s makeover of Teddy as a female…seems like a refraction of Amelia Earhart, the iron-willed aviatrix whom Gore knew well as a boy.”
Yes, this is an Amelia Earhart thirst trap.
byu/Mossy_Bear_6 inlgbt
At this point you might be thinking, okay that’s a stretch. And sure, yes, admittedly so. But here’s where I insert another theory of mine: that’s Vidal’s mother was also a trans man. From what little he tells us of her, she referred to herself as a “guy” and wanted to take credit for her husband Eugene’s accomplishments. She also married her second husband, Hugh Auchincloss, expecting (according to Gore) that the relationship wouldn’t be consummated. What if Eugene Vidal had a type, and what if the reason for Vidal writing several trans characters wasn’t a mere accident?
I don’t know—obviously you can draw your own conclusions here. But wouldn’t it make more sense for Earhart to have “disappeared” in order to live their life as their true gender? Perhaps it’s not the most probably conclusion, but for the tomboyish Earhart, it’s certainly possible…
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