What was the precipitating event for gay and lesbian unity

Labels: Gay history drag queens. I was out, openly, and actively gay for ten years in before I heard of Stonewall, and only because mythical tales by none other than Scott Smith, one of Harvey Milk's many widows, told me the narrative. I have no doubt the Stonewall event was a significant event -- to New Yorkers, but the homophile liberation movement on the West Coast was largely unaware and indifferent to the event, such as myself, and many of us consider the White Night Riots a far more significant "date" than Stonewall.

Whatever Stonewall was, it is over-hyped and ethnocentric exaggeration by a few drama queens who assume everything west of the Hudson River is irrevelant.

2. Contesting Homosexuality’s Imagination, 1945– 2015

No chauvinism there, girls? Honestly, I expected more out of your short essay than a systematic devaluing of not only trans contributions to the beginnings of the gay rights movement, but the legitimacy of their identities and actions themselves. Unless you were to write an entire book with a chapter on trans people, half of what you brought up was wholly irrelevant other than to paint a normative picture of the transsexual and drag queen.

Even while you acknowledge some contributions and clear and obvious trans involvement, you paint with a broad brush over it as either being not of importance, or insignificant. Perhaps it is a 'post-modern' sentiment, but all queer activities that stand up against a system that discriminates is important and should be valued for what it is within its context and the context of wider movements.

Your first few paragraphs were spent establishing your credibility, which you rely on to create a veneer of authoritative knowledge about anything involving Stonewall. However, the remainder of what you wrote came off as not only horribly biased, but an entirely unsourced collection of sociological imaginings of the gay rights movement nearly being entirely a gay male thing, giving bare mention to lesbian and trans contributions.

I don't speak for any trans activist, but their scholarship is less an attempt to subvert and claim ownership of the gay rights movement than it is an attempt to dig out all the trans involvement that was swept under the carpet due to prejudice within queer communities.

No, I don't believe the gay rights movement was driven by or started with trans involvement, but trans people were often the targets of police brutality and spoke out loudly with their gay and lesbian peers. Just because they never formed a cadre that became a center of power for the gay rights movement doesn't mean it remains okay for them to be devalued in gay male discourses.

I would also like to correct you on your blanket statement about transsexuals remaining controversial in the 'lesbian movement'. It is less lesbians themselves or any discernible 'lesbian movement' that remains cold to transsexual involvement; it is radical lesbian separatist feminists and some of their second-wave allies who remain unwelcoming of trans women in women's spaces, mostly because they're believed to be fundamentally men in women's clothing.

Female-to-males are in turn considered misguided women who succumbed to the temptation of male privilege, rather than delusional, and willfully invasive like male-to-females are generally considered to be. You may be correct about the past, but you're sorely misinformed about the present.

There is no longer a gay-only movement in the What was the precipitating event for gay and lesbian unity. You're either going to have to recognize the existence of bisexual and transgender people or be shot down. And "transgender" is not an anachronism. Transgender people have existed as long as people have existed - we just weren't always called transgender.

The stone butches and drag queens of the 50's transgressed gender norms, just like the genderqueers and transsexuals of today. What an incredibly biased anti-trans piece from a clearly gay author. Amazing that you actually took the time to sit down and write out how you feel the horrible trannies are taking away 'your' history.

More and more I get the feeling some GnLs are becoming upset they are no longer the 'in' thing. The history was quite interesting if not baised towards the "gay" side of things. However, I did notice the glaring omission of one 'big" event; the gay pride event in NY city.

It explains why there was little involvement in the "gay civil rights movement from until At the event a radical lesbian feminist spoke and demanded the exclusion of drag queens from the movement. By association all cds and ts folk were also excluded. This demand which was acted upon is all documented in a little known film titled "A Queer Blue Light".

Lee Brewster was present at the event. She strenuously objected to the exclusion.