Day: January 28, 2018

In reading the collection of essays and interviews by Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson called, STAR: Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle, and especially in reading the interview with Rivera called “I’m Glad I was in the Stonewall Riot,” I understood that there were many different movements involved at Stonewall all at one time. On this, Rivera, in her interview, says, “All of us were working for so many movements at that time. Everyone was involved with the women’s movement, the peace movement, the civil-rights movement. We were all radicals.” I think this is an important piece of information to point out, not only because it demonstrates that people from different places with different primary motivations were working together, but also because with the inclusion of so many different groups, the trans community is still so frequently neglected when talking about Stonewall. Even though there were other groups there, and there is documentation proving that, the trans community is still left out of many accounts. Additionally, in the second reading called “Movements and Memory: The Making of the Stonewall Myth,” Armstrong and Crage explain that often times inaccurate accounts of involvement make activism “seem ‘inevitable or mystical’” when in fact “gay liberation…spread through the numerous, deliberate activities of individuals and groups,” like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.

Prior to the readings, I had only heard of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson in relation to Stonewall. After the readings, however, I have learned that Sylvia Rivera, with the help of Marsha P. Johnson, established STAR, what was known in 1970 as Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, but has since been changed to Street Transgender Action Revolutionaries, which was dedicated to helping trans people and homeless youth. She actively protested and was a self-proclaimed “front-liner;” she gave speeches and marched for anything she could. In the STAR reading, she explained that since she left home at age ten, Marsha P. Johnson, who was older than she, took her under her wing and helped her to find a community in New York City. In an interview she recounted the night at Stonewall, saying “you could actually feel it in the air,” which directly opposed the “pig” with whom she was speaking, who said that “there was never any reason to feel that anything of any unusual situation would occur that night,” which points to the blatant disregard for the unequal treatment of everyone at the Stonewall Inn on the night in 1969.

-MF

 

Coming into class, I had already heard about the Stonewall Riots. I knew that those riots were the staple event that helped to give rise to the Gay Rights Movement and helped to make it huge. I had heard about it from my friends that told me about the drag queens and the transgender people that were at the forefront of the actual riots. I learned that they were all pretty much people of color that were the ones leading it. I also knew that after the riots, the people that started benefiting from it were white cis gay males and lesbians. I even knew that they weren’t including drag queens or transgender people into the movement, especially people of color, which is why they formed their own groups. What I did not know was that these LGB people were throwing drag queens and transgender people under the bus and were working with other groups to attack and demean drag queens and transgender people. I also did not know that the reason that Stonewall Riots were the leading act that caused the movement, because they were easy to celebrate even though there were other riots that also happened. I also did not know the extent of why the police did raids in these bars, because of the laws that were in place that targeted drag queens and transgender people. It is really sad that they had to go through so much back then, even from their own people, but at least now people are starting to recognized drag queens and transgender people. We still have a long way to go though in order to make up for everything we had to put our own people through.

I knew a little bit of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, because many of my friends who are part of the LGBTQ+ community as well have told me some of the history regarding them. I know that they were part of the Stonewall Riots and I was told they one of them was the first one to throw the object that started the riot. They were pretty involved with the Gay Rights Movement, but after the riots, they started to focus more on bringing awareness of transgender people into the movement. I remember watching the video of Sylvia Rivera interrupting a Pride event, because she was denied the possibility to speak at the event and she wanted people to know transgender people have been in the forefront of the movement but continued to not be recognized. I also went to the Stonewall Inn in NYC and I saw pictures of both Marsha and Sylvia that were hung to be recognized for their work.