LGBTQ Experiences in US History

One of the most interesting points addressed in the article was the significance of who (in the queer community) was present for the Stonewall rebellion. Armstrong and Crage write, “In contrast to Compton’s, those on the scene included both marginalized and more privileged elements of the homosexual community” (737). This is significant because it was these more privileged activists that had the capacity to draw media attention and resources needed to ensure the commemoration of the event. In contrast, the queer activists in San Francisco – who comprised “white, middle-class, gender-normative older men” (Armstrong & Crage, 733) – were hardly a part of the Compton’s Cafeteria rebellion and refused to support the patrons because their behavior “threatened homophile accommodation with the police” (Armstrong & Crage, 733). This is important to keep in mind in contemporary LGBTQ+ activism and organizing: Privilege has a long history of confounding and hindering progress – even within the LGBTQ+ community – and we should be sure to use whatever privilege we have to support marginalized groups within our broader community.

Prior to these readings, I shamefully knew nothing about Marsha Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. Sylvia Rivera was raised by her grandmother from an early age after her mother committed suicide and tried to kill her as well (Rivera, 40). The prejudice she experienced in these early years contributed to her choice to move out on her own at the age of ten. Later that decade, she came out as a drag queen (Rivera, 12). She’s received credit for escalating the Stonewall protest into a riot by throwing the first beer bottle on the night of June 28, 1969 (Brink), a riot she was excited to be a part of because it distinctly gave her the notion that “the revolution is here” (Rivera, 14). She continued to have significant influence in transgender activism and was crucial in the formation of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) (Rivera, 13). She continued to address the lack of transgender representation and rights throughout her life, notably in her critique of the Gay Liberation Front’s choices to ignore transgender people in her speech, “Y’all Better Quiet Down” (Rivera, 30).

Being a Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies major I was already introduced to some of the history of the infamous Stonewall Riots. I remember taking Queer Theory a couple semesters back and we talked about this event and its significance to the Gay Rights Movement. Although I don’t have a first-hand account of what actually took place I do have a pretty good overview. I knew that the riots took place at a popular Gay bar and that the crowd was majority transgender and people of color. Although this movement was made so popular by the efforts of people of color, it was mostly white cisgender males and lesbians that took advantage of this movement as recognition of the suffrage. This exclusion of specific minority groups drastically effected the progression of the movement as a whole because it placed people into categories against one another. Turning a movement of progression into a movement of segregation.

I feel like one of the biggest shocks to me was learning that other riots took place before Stonewall. I always pegged this movement as the first one because it is the most popular. Looking back on it now, I can see how that notion is completely flawed. Just because something become famous doesn’t mean that it was the first of its kind. Learning that distinction made me question how many other riots took place before this and why were they concealed so heavily within mass media. Considering this as well, it makes sense to consider that the reasoning behind these policies raids was to dissipate the collective gathers of drag queens, gay, and transgender people from public domains. Its a sad moment when you have to consider the level of scrutiny that these people faced on an everyday basis. If you were a person of color in addition to being one of the other types of people, I would imagine it being even harder. On one hand, people that were white and gay or trans didn’t seemed to be pegged harder than individuals of color. Now that may be just a theory with no evidence to support it but I think overall that race is a huge element to this discussion in particular due to Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera being such significant contributors.

I personally didn’t know much about Marsh P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera before now.  I had a conversation with Raul in regards to this issue and he told me a lot. I definitely feel that trans representation within the Gay Rights Movement and it shouldn’t be that way. I feel that as a society, we are so fixated on placing every little thing into categories and because of that certain people get forgotten or pushed out. If the movement was set in motion by self-identified trans individuals, then they should be represented.

Despite Stonewall being credited as one of the most influential and significant gay movement events it was hardly the first rebellion. While it is the most well known there were a number of significant raids, disturbances, and rebellions before Stonewall. To name a few there was San Francisco’s New Year’s Ball Raid in 1965, Compton’s Cafeteria Disturbance in 1966, and the Los Angeles Black Cat Raid in 1967 (Armstrong). Even for someone who may be aware of LGBTQ history, these events are rarely talked about. However, these events are excellent examples of how the LGBTQ community came together during the 60s and 70s in social situations like bars. These bars gave way to increased gender and sexual expression. Additionally, these social gatherings gave way to the gay liberation movement. It led to people coming together to talk about the injustices they faced and fight back against the humiliation they faced through police raids and laws.

All I really knew about Sylvia Rivera prior to this class was that she was a LGBTQ activist. Sylvia Rivera is known for throwing the first beer bottle that escalated the Stonewall riots (Brink). Sylvia was not known for being a “respectable queer.” She was poor, a transgender woman of color, a sex worker and she was hardly conventional. Sylvia herself faced rejection from the lesbian feminist movement which further displays how necessary it is for the feminist movement to be intersectional and include everyone, not just white cisgender women. Rather than focusing on issues like gay marriage, Sylvia focused on oppressed gay populations that were given even less of a voice at the time such as gay street workers. Even at the time, the gay movement predominantly focused on gay white cis man issues. People of different races, ethnicities, socioeconomic status’, and genders were often left out of the equation. Sylvia fought to give those marginalized groups more of a voice. (Untorelli Press).

• Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Suzanna M. Crage, “Movements and Memory: The Making of the Stonewall Myth,” American Sociological Review 71, no. 5 (October 2006): 724-751.
• Rebecca Vipond Brink, “The Soapbox: On the Stonewall Rebellions’ Trans History,” TheFrisky.com , June 6, 2014. http://www.thefrisky.com/2014-06-06/the-soapbox-on-thestonewall-rebellions-trans-history/?utm_source=share-fb&utm_medium=button .
• Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle, https://untorellipress.noblogs.org/files/2011/12/STAR-imposed.pdf .

Though I grew up in New York City, am a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and have attended many pride parades right near the Stonewall Inn, I knew absolutely nothing about the Stonewall rebellion before today. However, what surprised me the most is that the Stonewall rebellion is considered to be a divisive event. According to Rebecca Vipond Brink, Stonewall has a “very divisive legacy […] in the LGBT community” because the “drag queens and transpeople […] on the front lines of the rebellion” are often forgotten about (Brink 2014). I didn’t even know that the events that occurred at Stonewall involved trans people, let alone that Stonewall is a divisive event for the lack of representation of these people. The significance of this fact for contemporary LGBTQ organizing is that it has likely caused the continued repression and lack of inclusion of trans people. In modern America, it seems to be that more progress is being made for gay rights than for trans rights- which is probably partially a result of the treatment of trans people in regards to Stonewall.

Prior to this class, I knew nothing about Marsha Johnson or Sylvia Rivera. Marsha Johnson has always been a familiar name, but I am unsure why. Marsha P. Johnson was a drag-queen and activist for the American LGBTQ+ movement. Johnson worked as an activist through a group called STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), which was “a multi-racial group of revolutionary street queens” (Nothing 5). According to author Ehn Nothing, Johnson, along with Rivera, “were not respectable queers” and were “poor, gender-variant women of color, street-based sex workers” (Nothing 6). Throughout her work with STAR, Johnson worked to provide housing, food, protection from police, and basic human rights to people living on the street. Johnson was sent to prison for her actions, where “A lot of transvestites were fighting amongst each other” (Johnson 21). After a pride parade in 1992, Marsha was found dead. Her “death was ruled a suicide by the police, while a vigilante campaign found that it was likelier murder” (Brink 2014).

One concept I’ve learned from these readings is the degree to which Stonewall (and other riots that mark the beginning of the LGBTQ rights movement) involved transgender people rioting alongside gay and lesbian people. Despite the shared struggle, trans people are often forgotten as having been involved in the initial movement at all. As Sylvia Rivera hollered in her emotional speech, Y’all Better Quiet Down, “They’ve been beaten up and raped, after they had to spend much of their money in jail to get their self home and try to get their sex change … But do you do anything for them? No!” (Rivera, qtd. STAR). The movement was in no way fought by white cisgender people alone, yet the stories are both whitewashed, and neglect to mention transgender people. Even if the intent of the LGBTQ movement as a whole was not to exclude any particular subgroups, over time, “trans brothers and sisters [were thrown] under the bus in an effort to win over the hetero mainstream” (Brink). The history of the LGBTQ movement has involved people of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and races since its inception; to neglect the existence of this diversity ignores a huge part of the battle for LGBTQ rights.

Prior to this class, I had never heard about Marsha Johnson or Sylvia Rivera. Even though my prior education made an attempt to teach us to respect and understand people with different lives than our own, LGBTQ history was (sadly) often neglected as a topic worth exploring.

Sylvia Rivera was raised by her strict, Catholic grandmother after her mother committed suicide when Rivera was just 3 years old. Rivera, a drag queen by her own assessment, is credited with being the first person at the Stonewall Riot to throw a bottle at the police, sparking the now famous event in LGBTQ history (Johnson). Rivera’s life was filled with homelessness, drug addiction, and poverty, yet she had quite a bit of influence as an transgender activist (Gilligan). In particular, Rivera is known for her speech, Y’all Better Quiet Down, in which she criticizes the gay liberation movement for neglecting to include transgender people (Reyes). Despite her incredible influence over the movement, her name is often skipped over entirely. For instance, the 2015 movie Stonewall, a story based on the events at the Stonewall Riots, neglected to include Rivera, and “drew protests for ‘whitewashing’ Rivera out of the story in favor of a fictional white character” (Reyes). Rivera lived to the age of 50, when she died of cancer in Manhattan (Dunlap).

–AG

Works Cited:

Gilligan, Heather. “Sylvia Rivera Threw One of the First Bottles in the Stonewall Riots, but Her Activism Went Much…” Timeline, 16 Mar. 2017, timeline.com/sylvia- rivera-threw-one-of-the-first-bottles-in-the-stonewall-riots-but-her-activism-went-much- 4bb0d33b9a2c.

Reyes, Raul A. “A Forgotten Latina Trailblazer: LGBT Activist Sylvia  Rivera.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 6 Oct. 2015,  www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/forgotten-latina-trailblazer-lgbt-activist-sylvia-rivera-n438586.

Dunlap, David W. “Sylvia Rivera, 50, Figure in Birth of the Gay Liberation  Movement.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Feb. 2002,  www.nytimes.com/2002/02/20/nyregion/sylvia-rivera-50-figure-in-birth-of-the-gay-liberation-movement.html.

Johnson, Marsha P. “Rapping with a Street Transvestite Revolutionary.” Untorelli Press, 2011, untorellipress.noblogs.org/files/2011/12/STAR-imposed.pdf. Accessed 29 Jan. 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.

This image is of a gay couple from the University of Rochester drinking milkshakes after the launch of the Empty Closet newspaper. This image is interesting for me because it not only portrays topics covered in class, but also takes place at our school. I love that I can see people who represent the Shoulders to Stand On documentary and further that I can see how my school has played a role in the Gay Right’s movement.

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