Stella Rush

Stella Rush (born April 30, 1925), also known by her pen name Sten Russell, is a retired American journalist and LGBT rights activist. She was a regular reporter for the gay rights magazine ONE (1954–1961) and the lesbian rights magazine The Ladder (1957–1968).

Rush was born on April 30, 1925, in Los Angeles. Her father died when she was two years old, and she spent her childhood moving repeatedly between Los Angeles and Kentucky with her mother. After graduating from Dorsey High School in 1943, she worked as an aircraft draftsman for North American Aviation until 1945. She attended the University of California, Berkeley for two years and transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles for her third year; she left without graduating and took up a job at the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company.

Rush's career as a gay rights activist began as a writer for ONE magazine. She wrote her first article, a first-person account of the Los Angeles gay scene, in 1954 under the pseudonym "Sten Russell". She was a regular reporter for ONE until 1961. She became involved with the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), a lesbian rights organization, in 1957, and was a co-founder and treasurer of the organization's Los Angeles chapter. She served as the Los Angeles reporter for its official publication, The Ladder. She mainly reported on conferences, seminars, and new research into homosexuality, and also published poems in the magazine. She ceased working with the DOB in 1968, following the organization's merger with the National Organization for Women, because she disagreed with the rhetoric of the feminist movement and felt that the campaign for women's rights victimized men.

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