[quote] it was said the riot was started by a lesbian resisting the police and the crowd of gay man and queens rushed to protect her
Which is probably the truth, based on the few eyewitness testimonies we have.
What people fail to remember is that there were some trans in the bars that night, because the bars had slowly allowed a small number of trans and crossdressers to perform and be customers -- they'd kept them out previously because the mob and the paid-off cops were happy to be paid to look the other way for gays, not for trannies.
That night, most trans people were carted off first. They were involved but don't get credit because the cops rounded them up first, after humiliating strip searches.
In parades and protests in the following weeks, trans people were major players and organizers, but the gays were still wary because they saw the trans community, full of non-whites and sex workers, as being too classless and a liability. They didn't want these "undesirables" to ruin their chances at achieving gay rights.
That's been a huge source of the contention between the communities and anyone who has studied anything about LGBT history would know this, but DL is full of people who know nothing about the history.
Just watch "Vito," for fuck's sake. There's an extended clip of the white gays complaining about the trans bringing their movement down, the lesbians saying trans women are sexist and just mimicking real women, and the trans ignoring the women because they don't matter while screaming at the gays to acknowledge their contributions.
It's the EXACT SAME SITUATION TODAY and none of the frau hetero interlopers will admit it, but they're using that decades-long clash between the communities to divide.
And this backlash of revisionist history is happening because too many gays and lesbians wouldn't admit the real history in the first place. They wouldn't accept trans were part of the movement in the 60s or with Stonewall on any level, so now the news is telling everyone that Marsha P. Johnson -- who SAID HERSELF that she didn't start Stonewall -- "started Stonewall by throwing the first brick."
All the ignorant, resentful, churlish people on DL can do is say "Fuck Marsha Johnson for claiming this" even though they are told, time and again, year after year, that she never did.
Honestly, if the community had paid attention and not sat around bitching incessantly at each other for decades, they could have prevented this.