Upon doing this week’s reading, I learned that most of the raids that took place on LGBT bars such as the Stonewall Inn were carried out as a way of “enforcing” the laws against cross-dressing, which means that the targets of the raids were, most directly, transgender people. This is important because in historical accounts of the Stonewall riot, the activists leading the riot are often whitewashed or thought to be made up of mostly gays and lesbians, when in fact trans people of color such as Sylvia Rivera and Marsha Johnson were leaders of the riot. The Stonewall riot sparked in many areas a gay liberation movement, and after reading this article I know that I can attribute a large responsibility for the beginning of this movement to trans women of color.
Prior to this class, I did not know much about Marsha Johnson other than that she was a black trans woman who worked as an activist around the time of the Stonewall riot.
I learned by reading the Sweet Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (START) magazine issue entitled “Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle” that Marsha P. Johnson was not a “respectable queer” in that she was a sex worker who worked on the streets, and whose focus was to help the queer populations who were in the most desperate need of immediate help (mostly homeless queer populations). Her agenda for revolutionary change shocked many of the members of the more homo-normative Gay Liberation movement, whose goals were to become integrated into normative straight society. She was often called “the Queen of the Village” and an icon within the queer community. She died in 1992 under suspicious circumstances. The police ruled her death a suicide but many believe her death was the result of a hate crime.
Sources:
Brink, Rebecca V. The Soapbox: On The Stonewall Rebellion’s Trans History. The Frisky, 6 June 2014, www.thefrisky.com/2014-06-06/the-soapbox-on-the-stonewall-rebellions-trans-history/.
The Life and Death of Marsha P. Johnson, Netflix, 6 Oct. 2017, www.netflix.com/watch/80189623?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C0%2C1a65f18e0b1afcffadb7926ce67db025f9ff1aec%3A143844772b6612d2a5246f8175b9057a4b09a593.
Nothing, Ehn. “Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle.” Sweet Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, untorellipress.noblogs.org/files/2011/12/STAR-imposed.pdf.
-RF