When and how exactly did the trans women of color Stonewall myth get started?

A few years ago, the gay rights orgs, their work largely done with SSM now a reality, struck a deal with transgenders.

The gays, having achieved some acceptance and also the acknowledged right to call out discrimination, would hand that authority over to the trans; the trans, meanwhile, would allow their own narrative of oppression to be used as a new raison d'être for the gay orgs.

Revising history was part of the deal (though presumably unspoken), I imagine.

It was after Harvey Milk received a lot of newfound attention in 2008.

I have no clue, and have been wondering the same thing.

I remember learning about it, doing some of my own research, and recently watching a great documentary special about it on PBS, with folks interviewed who were either there or knew folks who were there, and there really was no mention of trans anything, let alone the big names given all the credit today (who according to all accounts didn't arrive/participate until the following nights). The PBS docu primarily documented it as gay men, some lesbians, and some drag queens.

White gay men like Billy Eichner started pushing this to take attention off how much power white gay men have in the gay community. “Well, I can’t be that bad if I acknowledge the TRANS WOMEN OF COLOR.” In modern textbook bourgeois liberalism, mentioning the Transwomen of Color is like Get Out of Jail Free card, like owning a Prius.

when people began fighting for the credit of everything.... from coining terms to the first fart on an elevator.

political lesbians also made claims on it.

while shortly after the events, communist of the era also championed it as a worker's revolt, which pushed into international mythos of being the most important lgbt event in the entire world, and never before was any activism or any movement ever so important -- and so began the war between the old guard and new guard activists....

r4 so, why not share with the class why gay white males are so bad and how they're to blame for trans?

When the trans activists were allowed to start claiming every dead LGB person who'd ever cross-dressed was Transgender.

[quote]there really was no mention of trans anything

That's absolute bullshit. The Stonewall Oral History Project has witnesses who mention it, as does the Roger Goodman project. The 2004 David Carter book has extensive evidence of it. Hell, the Arthur Laurents memoir I read a couple of weeks ago has him saying the "drag queens" were a huge part of the immediate post-Stonewall movement.

I am almost positive that the PBS "Stonewall Uprising" documentary you refer to has a lengthy clip of a Vito Russo-lead event in the early or mid 1970s where trans people (along with gays, lesbians, and black members) get up and air their grievances about the movement.

There are hundreds of photos of the marches and protests from 1970 on that have tons of trans, crossdressers, drag queens etc. involved. The Queens Liberation Front was formed in 1969.

Check out Fred Sargeant’s website. He was at The Stonewall riots.

It was Stormé DeLarverie, a big black butch dyke who on being arrested and getting put in the back of a police van shouted out to the queens - when will you fight back? A very wise challenge to the apathy and God bless her.

The TRAs have tried to claim DeLarverie was trans. Utter nonsense. It’s now par for the course for TRAs to appropriate the actions of others.

[quote]It’s now par for the course for TRAs to appropriate the actions AND IDENTITIES of others.

Fixed

[quote] has a lengthy clip of a Vito Russo-lead event

Oh, dear!

[quote] I read a couple of weeks ago has him saying the "drag queens" were a huge part of the immediate [bold]post-Stonewall movement.[/bold]

A) Drag queens are not “trans.”

B) We’re not talking about the “post-Stonewall movement,” but the actual night it started.

My lover was walking past the first night, realized it was a bunch of unattractive guys and continued on to the piers to get his dick sucked.

R8 Actually, you are right. When I said "no mention of trans", what I should have specified was that a great deal of the literature, the documentaries, etc. often speak of drag queens and other "gender non-conforming" individuals, which I don't doubt were major players, mind you (and I did mention drag queens in my initial post). It seems a lot of that has since been rephrased as trans, of which some of those individuals very well may have been. But it's also been discussed by many folks that the ways individuals identified in terms of gender was quite different then. Would some of them identify as trans now? Sure. But some where also just very fem men or masc women, gender non-conforming, etc. It seems now that's attributed to all trans/transgender, whereas the history by those who have documented it in the latter 20th century, seems a bit more nuanced.

As for the PBS documentary, I do remember mentions of a lot of fem men, queens, etc...but I honestly don't remember a lot of mentions about specifically trans individuals, particularly the big names mentioned now. Perhaps they were and I just don't remember, but I do remember the focus being primarily on gay men, lesbians, and drag queens (surprisingly). Which I think is what the topic is pointing out...that somehow Stonewall, and almost all gay rights, are now attributed solely to several key trans names...and actual gay, lesbian, etc. players seem to have been pushed to the side of their own historical record (at least in the social media realm).

The LGB rights movement was infiltrated by the Trans cult, and now our community is nothing but a host to a voracious parasite.

"It was Stormé DeLarverie, a big black butch dyke who on being arrested and getting put in the back of a police van shouted out to the queens - when will you fight back? A very wise challenge to the apathy and God bless her."

Storme Was a true King. She was the fucking mayor of 7th ave when I waited tables at the Chelesa Lobster company, just around the corner from McManus bar. She drank Smirnoff vodka on the rocks, in a wine glass, double pour. She lived out here golden years in the Chelsea hotel teaching "baby dykes" how to socialize, via getting drunk and playing pool with them. Later, when I became the head bartender of the restaurant, Storme let me in on a few secrets. Firstly, her broad smile was false teeth. She made false teeth jokes just like my grandpa did. She also flashed a gun at me a few times, when I was settling disputes, but I always told her I could handle it. I could. One of her favorite phrases was, "Darlin' you'll all get where you're going'." She would be considered trans-masculine now, but there wasn't a language for that, then. What's more, she knew that every single color and creed of gays worked with the rest of the LBTQ to fight for independence, for freedom, for the dignity to live and die unmolested by political identity games.

Before she was "a bull dyke" she was a Drag King in Harlem. She made good money singing and dancing and impersonating a man, on the King circuit. She was kind, and if she got a whiff that you weren't, gay or trans or whatever, she started growling and barking and fuming until you went away.

She thought gender politics were stupid, and always went by she, even though she never looked like a woman. She liked to have fun and laugh, and she would not like this thread at all. "You're missing the point," she would have said. It's true that Marsha and Storme led the charge at Stonewall. It doesn't fucking matter what gender or orientation threw a brick when. Let it be the people who need power. Find your power and you'll worry less about other folks' magic.

[quote] It's true that Marsha and Storme led the charge at Stonewall.

JFC.

LIke, literally, instead of just letting everyone tell the story, we're grousing about who gets to. Does ANYONE remember 20 years ago when only like five actors even admitting to being gay? What's wrong with us?

[quote]It doesn't fucking matter what gender or orientation threw a brick when. Let it be the people who need power.

Facts no longer matter.

As long as we all make sure to keep Trans people happy in their delusion, everything will be wonderful. Just deny reality, deny biology, lie to them, lie to yourselves, and then let them change history to further cement their delusion.

r7 is that much different from claiming many dead people were LGB? It seems like practically every group makes claims on the dead when there's little evidence, like a passing phrase that means something different today vs back then.

r15 you know before "trans" became widely known political lesbians (those that even to this day believe being a lesbian is more about resisting male supremacy than sexual attraction.) pointed the finger at gay men as the fault of everything, in particular, ruining the gay liberation movement. So, how is this different?

misdirect

derailment

R20 LGB are sexual orientations. T is a delusion.

modern social justice

r23 That isn't an answer to my questions. And, it makes you seem nutty to answer those questions in that way.

[quote]It seems like practically every group makes claims on the dead when there's little evidence, like a passing phrase that means something different today vs back then.

You're right, but I find it silly most of the time, unless there's real evidence.

R23 answers your second question, R25. If you think about it, maybe it'll make sense.

R20, if someone is having sex with someone of the same sex, or explicitly expressing a desire to do so, then it's safe to say that there's a level of same-sex attraction. Admittedly, people who don't meet these criteria are sometimes included as "LGBT history" figures and I'm not thrilled about that.

The point is, though, that we do have some open-and-shut cases for LGB historical figures, whereas there are VERY few historical figures whose self-description maps easily onto modern trans narratives of the self.

It was a combination of gay men, lesbians, and transgendered (drag queens) who fought the cops. It worked! The environment, at that time, was ripe for a rebellion.

r27 No, they don't. They don't declare how the arguments are different especially given the rhetoric is largely unchanged. You may disagree with the T in LGBT but there is an active present movement to remove the L from lgbt based on said rhetoric from the past (and present). The conflict I have in how this topic is approached, especially by the emotionally unhinged, manipulative and hysterical, is that the vast majority of them are attached to the opposing radical extreme... We also frequently find them racing for any spotlight to raise their platform.. including those among the homophobic far right or towards those figures of the far left with pro-sharia feminism. Let alone the constant decry of gay men in general or more as now more politically correct "white gay men" and this criticism of "toxic masculinity" - so, after decades of pushing that masculinity is toxic, do you feel any responsiblity for the trans+ explosion?

Quit with the doubling down. R29. Transvestites and Transsexuals are two different things, and you know it, too.

"I was uptown and I didn’t get downtown until about two o’clock, because when I got downtown the place was already on fire. And it was a raid already. The riots had already started. And they said the police went in there and set the place on fire. They said the police set it on fire because they originally wanted the Stonewall to close, so they had several raids.” – Marsha P. Johnson

In this rare and informative audio the details of that fateful night on June 28, 1969 come from Johnson’s own mouth and puts many of the rumors and folklore of the Stonewall Riots to rest once and for all.

History matters.

Accurate history matters even more.

[quote] It's true that Marsha and Storme led the charge at Stonewall.

By Marsha/Malcolm’s own admission he wasn’t even there when it started but arrived either later that night or on night 2.

r28 Quibbling, isn't it? Like when others get offended at recognizing LGB figures of the past and then claim they weren't because they were called something else back then or attempting mental gymnastics on sociocultural discrepancies in the understanding of sexuality, then.

Since you disagree with T in it's entirity, then your pronounced bias doesn't make you a reliable source for objective information or even opinion.

^ I should have gone with Billy Tipton.

I still want to know when “queer” became so horrifically offensive. Back in the Act Up! day, the chant was “We’re here! We’re queer! Get used to it!”

When it became captured by "queer theory" and stopped meaning same-sex attracted, r36. But even in the Act Up days it was just a funny, ironic slogan that rhymed with "here", it was never how gay people referred to ourselves or "identified". It was ironic and funny because queer was otherwise a slur used against gay people. It's like how black people use the N-word.

I think it started on Twitter around the same time the term TERF was commonly used.

It wasn’t a thing back when it was just the fear of “men” going into women's restroom aka the NC bathroom law.

I think young trans and queer activists saw that the tide was turning against them and had to make shit up and rewrite history to somehow justify their demands.

[quote]It was Stormé DeLarverie, a big black butch dyke who on being arrested and getting put in the back of a police van shouted out to the queens - when will you fight back?

Stormé DeLarverie wasn't black.

Stormé was multi-racial but was regarded as black.

[quote] It's true that Marsha and Storme led the charge at Stonewall.

This is how this nonsense gets perpetuated. Oh, yeah. Marsha led the charge — even though she wasn’t there until hours after it started. 🙄🙄🙄

By her own admission, Marsha wasn't present when the riots broke out, and neither was Sylvia. She was even corrected by Marsha when she tried to claim responsibility for Stonewall.

[...]

RuPaul pushed this lie to a young stupid generation on Drag Race.

What is not a myth is that the same tired old sad anti-trans poster starts all of these threads, then replies to themselves with sock puppet accounts with the same comments time after time. I'm not sure what so many clearly right leaning eldergays fear so much from trans people, it just feels like some kind of phobia.

All the photos from Stonewall show that the majority of people were white and not even in drag.

Gay men pushed the trans cult the hardest when you thought it was only going to impact "fish" (women). Now it's gone full circle and starting to impact gay men. You get what you fucking deserve.

And as if on cue, R45 comes in to blame “transphobia” for correcting a misconception about history. OUR history, no less.

[quote]All the photos from Stonewall show that the majority of people were white and not even in drag.

Same with the first Pride March, held in June 1970 to commemorate the first anniversary of Stonewall. A sea of white faces. But according to recent liberal/Hollywood revisionism, it was a multiracial/multicultural event with a few whites in the mix.

Bisexuals are the biggest percentage of the LGBT community with bisexual women being at the top. Their acceptance of dick or vagina and assuming no one can tell the difference between the two led to them backing a new generation of trans women into asserting themselves politically. Tumblr generation became popular through social media and spread lies that Marsha P was the one throwing the brick at Stonewall and that we owed our rights to "her". Meanwhile, Marsha themselves stated they were recovering from a drug binge and wasn't near Stonewall when it kicked off. A butch lesbian is alleged to have been the one who threw the brick, but it was gay men, lesbians and the identity formerly known as crossdresser/transsexuals that got the ball rolling. Newage queers want to use their modern day politically charged labels for men that enjoyed dressing and living as women for some parts of the day, but who never identified as women entirely.

[...]

This is very reminiscent of the black revisionist history of the 80s snd 90s - you know, Cleopatra was black and so on. It’s done for political reasons, not getting the facts straight. There’s an agenda at play.

The same reasoning has been applied to other historical figures, such as Newton being described by modern day writers as autistic or on the spectrum, so you can see how it’s not such a leap to reason all the drag queens were trans and butch lesbians were really FTM by today’s standards.

I think the ultra-liberals want to rewrite Stonewall, because at its core it is a white savior story. Today's LGBT+ youth (including many POC) owe lot to these 'gay white saviors.' Most of the early gay activists were white, too. But it doesn't sit well with the far-left, who have an anathema toward white people despite many of them being white themselves. And since trans WOC seem to be their cause célèbre that is who they want to be face of Stonewall, facts be damned!

Even if there is a video evidence of him moving, talking and "identifying" as nothing but a man, facts don't matter at all to these loons.

They can just scream "back then, she didn't have the word/concept/tool to express who she really was - trans. If she were alive, she would have definitely identified as trans".

If "TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN!!!" and Marsha and Sylvia were prostitutes for men, does that mean that Gay Pride was founded by straight women?????

Lmao trans women of stonewall I don’t fucking think so.

Marsha and Sylvia were gay men.

One of weren't both of them drag queens. I read that the bar didn't really even encourage drag at that particular bar.

He wasn't "trans," and he didn't "start the Stonewall riots."

The blanket reclassifying of all transvestites, crossdressers, and anyone who ever donned a feather boa as "transgender" is just creepy as fuck.

It's just like the way the Mormons baptize dead Jews, Catholics, Muslims, atheists, etc into the Mormon church. Once you're dead, you're fair game to be made a retroactive Mormon. Or a retroactive Trans.

[quote]Since you disagree with T in it's entirity, then your pronounced bias doesn't make you a reliable source for objective information or even opinion.

Pot meet kettle. This person's history of homophobia and disdain for women on this site "doesn't make [them] a reliable source for objective information or even opinion."

I hear a loud buzzer sound whenever I read the word trans.

Sylvia’s interview debunks everything

[quote] It's just like the way the Mormons baptize dead Jews, Catholics, Muslims, atheists, etc into the Mormon church. Once you're dead, you're fair game to be made a retroactive Mormon.

Doesn’t that mess up St. Peter’s logbook? How does he keep track?

Likely trans wasn't mentioned because trans wasn't of the journalistic vocabulary at the time.

Trans did hang around that area, especially at Stonewall, so I totally believe they were part of the riots.

[quote] Same with the first Pride March, held in June 1970 to commemorate the first anniversary of Stonewall. A sea of white faces. But according to recent liberal/Hollywood revisionism, it was a multiracial/multicultural event with a few whites in the mix.

Where? What Hollywood production even shows the first march?

Just like when the bisexuals whine about "Bi erasure" when celebrities that they claim are "mis-categorized" as gay, with their mantras "Bisexuality is real" and "Bisexuality is a thing," why don't we gay men slam back on Marsha and Sylvia being mislabelled as "trans?"

"Drag Queens are a thing!"

"Drag ERASURE!!!"

Long before Twitter "activism" and the word TERF, the Ts went after Jim Fouratt (who was there) for correctly pointing out that the Stonewall wasn't a hangout for drag queens, transvestites, or transsexuals, so of course they weren't there.

We don't care. Move on, elders.

R70 Not all of us are doormats to homophobic trans politics.

Just out of interest, this video came out in 2019 and talks about the myth, so whenever it started it was prior to 2019:

It really kicked into high gear when the film by Roland Emmerich came out in 2015, and seven years later, shows no sign of abating. June is just a few months away, where we'll be reminded once again that we owe all our rights to Marsha.

Why the hell would anyone want to be a transsexual? Even in the best scenarios they look like a repugnant freak of nature.

"We don't care. Move on, elders. "

It probably happened around the time that white men were declared evil. Even white men whose families arrived in the US long after slavery ended are evil and must pay the price for actions we never directly benefitted from. We must all pay for the actions of a few white men who owned slaves 200 years ago. It doesn’t matter that African, Asian and Latino immigrants benefit from the country they slavery helped build as much as European immigrants do, it doesn’t matter the women benefit as much as men. Even African Americans, the descendants of slaves, benefit from it. None of that is important. White men must pay for what we didn’t do. We must know that we are evil. History must be rewritten to remove all of the good that white men have done.

Sort of piggybacking on what I said at R4 about the white gay power structure being responsible for Peak Trans

But I just noticed that the IG account for The Abbey (if ever there was a totem for the white gay privilege) has “Trans is beautiful “ in its bio for no apparent reason.

And the designer of the ghastly “Progress” Pride Flag from which he profits off of? White gay man.

Oh I’m sorry “queer non-binary” who looks exactly like a white gay man.

Good lord the attacks on Jim Fouratt. I mean, he was only using the language and mentality of the time.

Remember when Trannyshack was most fun bar in SF? And loved by drag queens and Trsnmoes?

God forbid you even mention that now. People were okay with it and then they weren’t. But blaming people after fact is just insane.