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Marsha%20and%20Sylvia%2C%20Diana%20Davie
Marsha%20and%20Sylvia%2C%20Diana%20Davie

tHE

STONEWALL

REBELLION

June 6, 1969—The Stonewall Inn, an hour between midnight and dawn.

 

A routine vice raid on a bar. Bloody teeth and liquor sweat.

Red lipstick and rage lashing out against a machine of institutional, taxpayer funded trauma and surveillance.

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The sound and fury of trans femmes, drag queens, and other gays and lesbians standing up against a predatory culture of grope searches, entrapment, police sanctioned brutality, and sexual violence designed to strong-arm queer people from existing safely in public space. 

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The shattered shot glass heard around the world.

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A riot. A rebellion. An explosion of righteous indignation, civil disobedience sparking the modern queer liberation movement into life. 

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These are the stories of the veterans of that night who dedicated the rest of their lives to that mission—to creating a safer world for the most vulnerable members of our community, from the bottom up. 

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Stonewall.jpeg

why

stonewall?

The Stonewall Inn was one of the few places for low income queer and gender variant people to congregate safely in 1960's New York Cit. As such, it was singled out often for vice raids and easy arrests to boost police booking numbers. More affluent queer people could find some safety in private parties or Fire Island Country Clubs, but these clandestine events were not so accessible to Stonewall’s crowd of largely black and Puerto Rican drag queens and street workers.

 

This was all coming on the heels of an increasingly public discussion of homosexuality in the media. The relatively laissez-faire public attitude towards queerness of the pre-War era evolved into an increasingly more paranoid and nefarious smear campaign during the more conservative, family focused 1950's. 'Homosexuals' became the newest scapegoat on which to pin social ills, an anti-queer panic revving up in tandem with the Red Scare.

 

This level of scrutiny made being visible more dangerous for queer people in the second half of the century, and any attack on a space where people could relax with folks of common experiences and live openly and honestly felt like a home invasion

OTHER FACTORS OF QUEER OPPRESSION LEADING UP TO THE STONEWALL REBELLION:

anti-MASQUERADING

dress code LAWS

 

This was an 1865 law which made it illegal for people to "masquerade" by wearing clothing not sufficiently approved for wear by social and legal ideas of what one could wear in subordination with their assigned gender. One had to be wearing at least 3 items govt approved to fit their assigned gender. If you were suspected of breaking this law, you could be grope and strip searched and potentially fined or arrested on top of being violated or demonized for how you dress. This caused many trans people to stay in the closet, or to work hard on 'passing' to avoid harassment. 

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ANTI-SODOMY LAWS

 

Anti-sodomy laws make it illegal for consenting adults to engage in sexual contact or to be suspicious of engaging in sexual intimacy with a partner of the same sex. 

This often manifested as undercover cops patrolling cruising areas, hitting people up, then arresting them if they show interest, stereotype profiling effeminate men or masculine women, or even coming into a private home and arresting citizens who are found sleeping together. Persons found out could be charged on record as sex offenders for engaging in consensual sex with their partners in the privacy of their own homes, which then creates another blockade towards employment.

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HOMOSEXUALITY CLASSIFIED AS A MENTAL DISORDER

 

Until the 1980s, homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder which could be treated with vicious psychological re-conditioning, psychological warfare, and electric shock therapy in order to reverse one's orientation and turn them straight.

There were many people who voluntarily checked themselves in for treatment in order to be 'normal', as well as people being forced into treatment centers post-arrest, or forcibly checked in against their will. 

Government Purges 

of Queer Employees


The Lavender Scare of the 1950's

was a McCarthy Era purge of queer or suspected queer people from holding any state employment position,

from public school teachers to astronomers to secretaries.

Employees were routinely interrogated, blacklisted, and potentially arrested. Possible "security risks", but also in lower clearance areas.

An estimated 10,000 people were smoked out of their living wages or work in their fields.

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The four activists pictured here were fighters on the front lines, who walked the walk and talked the talk. They came up out of the Stonewall Rebellion and dedicated their lives to promoting the health and safety of the most marginalized members of the queer community.

MARSHA P. JOHNSON

Marsha “Pay It No Mind” Johnson is regarded by many people as the queen mother of the modern queer liberation movement. She was a strikingly unique, radical street queen who made it her business to look after other young queer and trans folks who had migrated to the Lower East Side’s queer hustle and performance scene, presiding over disputes and abuses with her flower-laden head held high, a glimmering tiara of repurposed beer-can rollers or other ephemera woven into her wigs.

 

In 1970, she co-founded S.T.A.R. (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) with Sylvia Rivera, a support organization for homeless queers and runaways. They maintained a S.T.A.R. house for a while as a physical shelter for ‘their kids’ and contemporaries, but were unable to get much of any help funding it for long periods of time. Mostly they hustled to provide rooms and food for the kids they cared for, in attempts to shield them from having to do much of the same to survive. In the 1980s, Marsha went on to work with ACT UP! (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) to advocate against exorbitant prices on life stabilizing medication, gain public awareness of the realities of HIV and AIDS, and push legislation to help relief efforts and curve the scope of the epidemic.

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She dedicated her life to the ruthless, tangible pursuit of safety and acceptance for queer people, even as clean cut white gay men began evolving into the public poster children of the very marches which she helped create. Today, it is imperative that the broader cisgender gay population honor her legacy by showing up and standing out for trans and gender non conforming people of color, just as she did for you.

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Reina Gosset posted this interview with Marsha here, which does a much better job of communicating her views and experience than I ever could.

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Photograph by John Doe

SYLVIA RIVERA

Sylvia Rivera left her grandmother's abusive home at the age of ten after being abandoned by her violent father and then witnessing her mother’s suicide at the age of three. Like many others, she migrated down to 42nd street to find community, hustle, and survive off of sex work and the protection of older drag queens and displaced queer youth.

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Syliva's activism centered making space and resources in the gay liberation movement accessible for Latinx people, immigrants, and trans women of color. She co-founded S.T.A.R. with Marsha, was fiercly protective of her people, and was always very vocal about the hypocrisy of white, middle class gay activists excluding vulnerable trans people, queers struggling with substance abuse, and queer people of color from liberation initiatives in order to make the movement more publicly palatable.  

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She was a firebrand of courageous compassion and radical empathy who refused to let anyone be forgotten or left behind, and our movement would not be where it is today without her invaluable and tireless contributions.

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Read more about her herehereand here​.

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Photograph by Diana Davies, 1970.

Special thanks to Reina Gosset for getting this footage online.

She's such an incredible archivist and investigative queer historian we are so lucky to have her.

miss major

griffin-gracy

Miss Major is a veteran of the Stonewall Riots whose activism focuses primarily on prison reform and supporting trans women who have served time in men’s prisons. Like many other trans women coming up in this time (and today), Miss Major turned to sex work as a means of survival, after being repeatedly denied jobs and housing by renters and employers who were prejudiced against working wither her, or otherwise unsafe for her to interact openly with. She was arrested and abused at different points throughout her life, and dedicated her time and energy to trying to reform a system to protect women like herself from suffering the same humiliation and trauma. 

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(Photograph is a desaturated still from the new, vibrant, and poignant documentary film about her life, MAJOR!)

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“It’s not a choice to be a transgender person. You are or you aren’t! And if you are, the shit that you have to go through to maintain that, you wouldn’t just decide to do out of the clear blue sky!

 

It has to be because it’s a part of who you are and it will help your survival. So I just try to make sure that we get treated fairly.

 

That government people and police let us be who we are and don’t arrest us for things like how we dress or what we do to survive. Because we can’t get jobs, we’re not allowed to go to school, we’re unemployable, so how do you pay rent? Buy food? Get clean clothes – new clothes? We have to live outside the law! So we’ve adjusted to that and we’re doing it. Don’t persecute us because you forced us to do this, you know? Back up off of us and change these laws and work with us.”

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Stormé was a Southern-born drag king, performer, and weathered butch with a soft heart for their community and compatriots credited with throwing the first punch at the Stonewall Rebellion. They were a renowned street protector and bodyguard of young lesbians across the spectrum, and were also ready to show up and show out for the cause of queer liberation. Some sources refer to Stormé as a butch lesbian, others refer to them as a trans man, so I’m using neutral pronouns for the time being.

 

Though they were not involved in direct guerrilla activism the way the previous three were, they served multiple positions in the Stonewall Veterans’ Association and the Imperial Queens and Kings of NYC, which both worked with educating the public and remaining visible through public outreach and pride events, as well as used their platform as an entertainer to support that message. They served as the Master of Ceremonies and sole drag king of the Jewel Box Revue, a jazzy variety troupe of drag queens who traveled and performed around the U.S. in the 1950’s and 60’s.

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Read more about them herehere, and here.

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Photograph by Joan L. Biren

STORME DELAVERIE

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"It was a rebellion, it was an uprising, it was a civil rights disobedience -- it wasn't no damn riot. The cops were parading patrons out of the front door of The Stonewall at about two o' clock in the morning. I saw this one boy being taken out by three cops, only one in uniform. Three to one! I told my pals, 'I know him! That's Williamson, my friend Sonia Jane's friend.' 

 

He briefly broke loose but they grabbed the back of his jacket and pulled him right down on the cement street. One of them did a drop kick on him. Another cop senselessly hit him from the back.

 

Right after that, a cop said to me: 'Move faggot', thinking that I was a Gay guy. I said, 'I will not! And, don't you dare touch me." With that, the cop shoved me and I instinctively punched him right in his face. He bled! He was then dropping to the ground -- not me!"

RESOURCES

I'm not an expert. I'm a passionate research gremlin with a lot of personal stake in this history, sure, but I haven't conducted any personal interviews with Stonewall survivors, and I don't own any of these images or direct quotes. If you wan't to read or watch more about this, I'd redirect you to some people who are much smarter than me, who I will link right now below:
 

Reina Gosset. She's a black trans archivist and activist who has spent a huge amount of time pursuing first hand accounts and primary source documents in reference to Stonewall and what came after. She has done specifically incredible work in uplifting Marsha P Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Miss Major's work out of the shadows and out of the margins of history, breathing a new life into those legacies and making work invigorated with the authenticity and empathy of their shared experiences as black trans women. 

 

J.M. Ellison Is a writer, activist, and queer historian who maintains an awesome blog brimming with all sorts of historical context and analysis for these events and other, lesser known triumphs and altercations from across the last century.

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The ONE Media Archives have been doing phenomenal work for a very long time in cataloging primary source materials, interviews, and ephemera from our history, from the pre-Stonewall era up through today.  

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Making Queer History is another great blog, they cover such a wide range of figures from around the world in addition to covering Stonewall vets. 

 

If you can get to a screening of MAJOR!, that's another amazing resource. You can check them out and see the trailer and such here.

 

I'll add some book recs on here soon as well.

Get active

So, you've read through this, and now you want to know how you can help move forward this legacy of public safety and judicial respect for trans people, great. Now, how do you do that? For starters:​

 

1) Some trans resources and activist groups you can donate money or time to:

 

2) Show up not just at the voting booth, but also come to town halls and open hearings in support of trans issues. We need cis people in good standing to put their reputations on the line/stamp of approval on our behalf when it comes to trying to convince a panel of old cis people why we deserve basic human rights and access to public spaces and healthcare and non discriminatory hiring and housing policies. I've seen measures fail after the only people who came to lobby in our favor were other trans people or parents of trans people, and if the panel fundamentally disrespects our existence, they're not going to be swayed too far by what we have to say. 

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3) For my trans siblings - keep being you. Though public speaking, political organizing, and her work at the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project have all been a big part of Miss Major’s activism over the years, she repeatedly lifts up taking person steps towards what feels like empowerment on your terms. The radical bravery of simply going about your day and running errands and having the ecstatic audacity to be happy or visible or thriving while trans. To find people who care about you without changing who you are to suit their needs. The fact that you have intrinsic value without having to hide parts of yourself from anybody in our constant fight to forge a higher level of public safety out in this world. “You don’t have to be a part of an organization. Just going about your daily life living your truth and doing it on your own to challenge the status quo.” She says in The Personal Things, an animated short directed by trans historian and archivist Reina Gosset. “This group stuff is nice, and yeah we have to get together and work on abolishing what’s going on, but the personal stuff is what gives you the strength to go forward.

SPECIAL THANKS

A special thanks to my sister in transition and all around ass-kicker Dany Gonzalez for blowing my mind that I could just make a zine site and print a QR code for this onto the tags for the Torch Passer Tee Project's Stonewall shirts rather than trying to print one for each thread. Getchu a right hand girl to tell you no and make you smarter. 

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