Pose creator Steven Canals is exploring another pivotal chapter in LGBTQ history in his new limited series. According to Variety, Canals is writing 81 Words for FX about Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings, activists who worked with GAYPA, a group of closeted psychiatrists within the American Psychiatric Association, to change the definition of homosexuality from a mental disorder in the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In 1973, they succeeded, with the APA removing the 81-word definition that pathologized same-sex attraction.
The show is based on Alix Spiegel’s 2002 This American Life episode of the same name. In the episode, the Invisibilia podcast host approaches the story of the DSM change through her relationship with her grandfather, John Patrick Spiegel, then–president elect of the American Psychiatric Association, and himself a gay man. The series also draws from the upcoming PBS documentary Cured from Bennett Singer and Patrick Sammon. Canals will write and EP the series; Spiegel, Singer, and Sammon will also produce.