Author: RF

While watching the film Major! directed by Annalise Ophelian, I learned about the work of Miss Major Griffin-Gracy.  Before viewing this film, I had never heard of the work of Miss Major or the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP).  Hearing about the conditions that many transgender men and women are subjected to in prison was jarring and appalling.  They are commonly sexually assaulted and forced to say in solitary confinement for extended periods of time.  The personal help that Miss Major extended to trans individuals who were recently released from prison was especially touching.  She is truly selfless and she deserves so much more recognition.  She was present at Stonewall, she organized the creation of an AIDS garden in honor of veterans with AIDS, and contributed greatly to the campaign for HIV prevention and treatment with the Tenderloin Aids Resource Center.  This film left me wondering about which other amazing LGBTQ activists I haven’t learned about and who haven’t received the widespread recognition that they deserve.

-RF

On May 21st, 1990, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, aka ACT UP, led a “die-in” as part of their Storm the NIH demonstration.  By lying on the ground, protestors provided a powerful visual representation of the over 120,000 lives that had already been lost to AIDS.  Organizers also sounded horns five times each hour to signify that one person was dying of AIDS every 12 minutes in the U.S.  ACT UP demanded that the government take action to combat the AIDS crisis.  They pleaded for the NIH and the FDA to conduct and authorize more research on treatments, and urged them to make medications available to patients throughout the country.  After years of inaction under the Reagan administration, the government finally began to take measures to combat AIDS.  Many Americans today maintain that Reagan was responsible for the deaths of thousands. 

It is estimated that over 700,000 Americans have died from AIDS-related illness since the beginning of the epidemic in 1981.

Image courtesy of the NIH History Office.

#lgbtqexperiencesusa

-RF

This poster is relevant to our class because the HIV/AIDS crisis was originally thought to only infect gay men, and during that time the LGBTQ+ community endured many injustices and buried many of our own.  When HIV/AIDS first emerged, it was called GRID: Gay-Related Immune Deficiency.  To examine the history of the LGBTQ+ community in the United States, I think it is important to do research and learn about the HIV/AIDS crisis and the death and pain that this disease caused.  Also, the U.S. government, particularly President Ronald Reagan, has long been criticized for their reluctance to provide any funds or resources to research this disease until it eventually became apparent that “GRID” affected the white heterosexual population, and not just the gay population.

I find this poster interesting because of the irony of the playful words above, in comparison to the morbid second meaning brought forth by the text underneath.  This poster sends the message that HIV/AIDS is not something to be taken lightly, and that if you do not use a condom, you are risking death.

-RF

-RF

I think the diary that I read from the gay male graduate student (whose name I wish I had written down) who attended U of R in the 1970s stood out to me because the entries were so personal yet so relatable.  I loved the anecdotes that were written in about the early days of the Gay Liberation club, and how people would give them flack but often they were able to laugh it off.  I loved hearing the stories of the first few trans information panels on which trans people would share their experiences and educate people about trans issues.  I think this diary would be incredibly important to include in an exhibition about queerness at the University of Rochester because it provides a first hand account of what life was like for the queer people here during the early days of the Gay Liberation Movement.

One example of inclusion I encountered that left me feeling unsatisfied was the depiction of a queer couple on the TV show Grey’s Anatomy.  The couple is a female-female couple, one of them lesbian and one of them bisexual.  In the scenes with this couple, the chemistry was abhorrently non-existent I felt like I was watching people kiss as if it the other had terrible breath or something.  Their expressions didn’t change, they looked bored, and it was very disappointing.  I find it very important to represent queer intimacy on television because most drama and comedy shows on today include tons of heterosexual intimacy or passion, and yet often queer couples kiss as if their grandmother is watching.  Perhaps this was just a case of bad acting, but I really thought that perhaps the scene could have been written and directed better as well.

-RF

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

Shoulders to Stand On

One thing that I learned from viewing the Shoulders to Stand On documentary was how hostile the environment was for queer people even in what one might consider “liberal” spaces, such as the University of Rochester.  I wonder how long it took for many university campuses such as ours to shift from hostile environments to more open-minded places with many queer people out and open about their queer identity.  I also really liked learning about the queer radio shows and how many queer people remember them as their only source of queer media.  I feel extremely lucky to have so much queer media at my fingertips.

From Perversity to Diversity

“From Perversity to Diversity” was an exhibit made up of art created by lesbian and gay students at the University of Rochester.  Much of the art was objects and posters that were relevant to the LGB community at that time, such as sex toys, condoms, posters, badges, and items from the AIDS awareness movement.  I decided to google the “university of rochester from perversity to diversity” and was able to find some citations of an article about the exhibit dated 1991.  After learning about The Empty Closet in the documentary last class, I figured that said publication may have covered this exhibit.  I googled “Empty Closet 1991” and up came The Empty Closet website with a database of all past issues.  I looked through the issues from 1991 and after some browsing, I found the article “Perversity to Diversity’ Exhibit Causes Controversy at University of Rochester” on the first page of an issue from April of 1991.

-RF