{"id":158,"date":"2018-01-31T22:52:29","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T03:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lzigelyte.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/LGBTQexperiences\/?p=158"},"modified":"2018-01-31T22:52:29","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T03:52:29","slug":"stonewall-sylvia-rivera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lzigelyte.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/LGBTQexperiences\/uncategorized\/stonewall-sylvia-rivera\/","title":{"rendered":"Stonewall; Sylvia Rivera"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had known that the police raids leading up to the Stonewall rebellion had been going on repeatedly at all sorts of queer venues before the actual rebellion, but I was surprised to hear that during the raids, the police separated people into three separate groups of \u201cFaggots here, dykes here, and freaks over there\u201d (\u201cBitch on Wheels,\u201d 32, in STAR<\/i>). My surprise was not because I didn\u2019t expect such a separation, but that I didn\u2019t expect this perception to have gone back that far. It is still a current issue that people try to group trans people (more specifically binary trans people) away from (cis) men and women, even when they\u2019re trying to be inclusive of trans people in general. I remember, for example, hearing about Joel Seligman using the phrase \u201cmen, women, and trans people\u201d at one town hall, and he was fiercely criticized for it since it implied that binary trans people were somehow \u201cother than\u201d men or women. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if this structuring somehow relates back to the mindsets of the police back then.<\/span><\/p>\n

Prior to this class, most of what I had known about Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera was that they considered themselves drag queens (although they were more likely trans women of color in today\u2019s language), that they played a significant role in leading the Stonewall rebellion, and that they have been consistently written out of the picture in favor of stories of non-existent cis white homonormative men. I had also heard that there was a third usually grouped with them, but I cannot remember their name.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sylvia Rivera was born into a troubled household. At the age of three, her mother committed suicide and tried to kill her as well to escape her drug-dealer husband, and Sylvia was sent off to live with her unloving grandmother. At the age of 10, she left her home and went to 42nd Street, already having gotten involved in sex work. Like most of the drag queens there, she was accustomed to the police harassment, but she managed to avoid actual prostitution charges (\u201cQueens in Exile,\u201d in STAR<\/i>). It is often believed that at the Stonewall, she threw the first bottle sparking the riots (\u201cThe Soapbox\u201d), but she says she only threw the second, and said, \u201cOh my god, the revolution is finally here!\u201d after it was thrown (\u201cEvery Destructive Thing,\u201d \u201cBitch on Wheels,\u201d in STAR<\/i>). After that, she continued participating in riots and other activist work, and she and Marsha P. Johnson soon founded STAR<\/i>, and organization which sought to provide housing, food, bail money, and legal help for trans and other queer people who needed it.<\/span><\/p>\n

SB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had known that the police raids leading up to the Stonewall rebellion had been going on repeatedly at all sorts of queer venues before the actual rebellion, but I was surprised to hear that during the raids, the police separated people into three separate groups of \u201cFaggots here, dykes here, and freaks over there\u201d … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Stonewall; Sylvia Rivera”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lzigelyte.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/LGBTQexperiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lzigelyte.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/LGBTQexperiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lzigelyte.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/LGBTQexperiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lzigelyte.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/LGBTQexperiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lzigelyte.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/LGBTQexperiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lzigelyte.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/LGBTQexperiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159,"href":"https:\/\/lzigelyte.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/LGBTQexperiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions\/159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lzigelyte.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/LGBTQexperiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lzigelyte.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/LGBTQexperiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lzigelyte.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/LGBTQexperiences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}