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).