LGBTQ Experiences in US History

This picture was taken by a friend of mine and is of me at Pride in NYC in 2016.  Pride is one of the most important events for the LGBTQ+ community. I found this image to be interesting because it shows a topic/an event that has directly impacted my life. Being able to attend pride has made me so much more proud of who I am and of my community.

Throughout our course we have touched on the two-spirit identity in native American culture. The video that we watched, “Chrystos speaks at Creating Change 2011,” provided an interesting outlook on how two-spirits have been treated by the native American people. Contrary to the colonial ideas brought in from Europe, Native Americans embraced two-spirits. Chrystos said that in native American culture, two-spirits were held in high esteem and used as moderators between men and women. I chose this image for my final instagram post because I felt as though we did not spend too much time in class talking about two-spirits and LGBTQ experiences in native American culture.

 

“Squaw Jim / Osh-Tish (Finds Them and Kills Them), Crow Tribe. On the Left Is Squaw Jim, a Biological Male in Woman’s Attire, His Wife to the Right. Afforded Distinctive Social and Ceremonial Status within the Tribe. Squaw Jim Served as a Scout at Fort Keogh and Earned a Reputation for Bravery after Saving the Life of a Fellow Tribesman in the Battle of the Rosebud, June 17, 1876.” Indian Country Today, 7 Sept. 2017, indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/opinions/two-spirits-one-heart-five-genders/.

For my exhibition piece I am displaying the manifesto “The Woman Identified Woman” because I feel as though it offers an interesting insight into lesbian feminism in the 1970’s. In the manifesto, Radicalesbians describes how women should be defined separately from men. One of the main reasons why I chose this text for both this instagram post and for my exhibition piece is because I read a text called “Le Deuxieme Sexe” by Simone de Beauvoir in my French class last semester which discussed a very similar topic. I was curious about how the topic of the definition of women had been discussed on many different platforms as well as across the world. Although it was written significantly earlier than “The Woman Identified Woman,” the text talks about similar aspects about the definition of women needing to be separate from the definition of men

Woman Identified Woman: Radical Lesbians. n.d. TS Lesbian Herstory Archives: Subject Files: Part 6: Spinsters- Youth Folder No.:15230. Lesbian Herstory Archives. Archives of Sexuality & Gender, http://tinyurl.galegroup.com/tinyurl/63tTY2. Accessed 28 Feb. 2018.

Lavender Magazine is a publication started in 1995 in Minnesota. It is a regional LGBT magazine that covers a variety of topics. The website for the magazine features news articles, film and theatre reviews, and columns like “Big Gay Food” (where I found a recipe for red velvet waffles, among other things).  This is definitely more of a “lifestyle” magazine than an activist zine, and while the site covers a wider range of stories than the magazine itself, the latest issue’s coverage of LGBT weddings and a local fashion designer was still noteworthy. While Lavender Magazine seems to cater to a more upscale crowd, there is still something to be said for a publication that puts LGBT+ Minnesotans in the spotlight.

#LGBTQexperiencesUSA #magazines #LGBTQnews #minnesota

Gay City News is a weekly LGBTQ+ newspaper founded in 1994, and is one of the most widely popular queer news sources in the country at approximately 47000 copies distributed per day. This particularly newspaper was actually available for free in large quantities in the Brooklyn neighborhood I grew up in: Park Slope. I feel that the free distribution of queer media is significant, both because it shows that queer news is public information and not some sort of adult entertainment, and because it allows everyone, including those without easy access to the internet, to find the news.

–AG

#News #NewYorkCity #freeNewspaper #LBGTQExperiencesUSHistory

This week I decided to focus on the police raid that occurred in the Ariston Hotel Baths on February 21, 1903. This was the first ever recorded raid in a bathhouse that occurred in the United States. About 60 men were detained, 26 were arrested, 12 were brought to trial on sodomy laws, and 7 received sentences ranging from 4-20 years in prison. The Ariston Hotel Baths was located in the basement of the Ariston Hotel which was at the corner Broadway and 55th Street in New York City and was in operation as early as 1897. This event is important, because it was the catalyst the motivated people to start recording all of the raids that were occurring in places that were centered around LGBTQ+ people such as Stonewall. #LGBTQExperiencesUSA #LGBTQRaidsinHistory #LGBTQIssueswithPolice

I took this picture when I went to the Women’s March on Raleigh, the day after the inauguration of Donald Trump. There was a crowd of thousands of people in downtown Raleigh, with many people holding signs such as the one in the picture advocating for gay rights. I chose this image because it captured part of a historical event that was close to my home, and made me aware of the apparent lack of inclusivity and intersectionality of the movement.

#LGBTQexperiencesUSA #WomensMarch #HumanRights #LGBTQrights

-ML

For my fourth instagram post, I used an image of George W. Bush from Queer Zines 2 in which he is photoshopped onto a body receiving BDSM type actions.  I find this image to be interesting because it goes against everything Bush thinks about marriage and sexuality, as is described in the quote I used in the post.

These images are from photographer Nan Goldin’s (born 1953) most well known exhibition, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. The pictures above are captured from MoMA’s instillation of Goldin’s slideshow. This almost 700 portrait slideshow is Goldin’s distinct and personal narrative crafted from her experiences during the 1970s and 80s.  Her subjects were friends of hers captured in intimate moments spanning from drug use to sex. In describing her work Goldin claims that “people commonly think of the photographer as the voyeur, but this is my party, I’m not crashing.” In stating this, Goldin identifies herself along with the subjects of her artwork, blurring the relationship between outside photographer and inside subject. She gains more explicit permission to photograph and publicize her subjects simply because she knows them more intimately than many other photographers would know their subjects. Of The Ballad of Sexual Dependency Goldin states that this, “is the diary I let people read. The diary is my form of control over my life . . . it enables me to remember.” Her very raw and very personal images are part of her own constructed narrative and she chooses to share that narrative with the world.

images & info courtesy of MoMA website:  https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1651?#installation-images

#NanGoldin #MoMA #photography #GoldinsBallad #lgbtqexperiencesusa

-MF