"The Stonewall Bar Did Not Allow Non-White Patrons or Drag Queens Into It, So They Couldn't Have Bee

[queerbychoice]

*ahem* Technically speaking, same-gender sex itself wasn't allowed anywhere in the U.S. at that time, so the Stonewall Bar couldn't very well have officially announced in its charter that anything "of a homosexual nature" was allowed to take place there at all. So, homosexuals couldn't have been there! Attention, everyone:

THE STONEWALL RIOT WAS CARRIED OUT BY STRAIGHTS!
No Queers Showed Up Until the Next Day When They Wandered in to Claim All the Credit!
Revisionist Stonewal History gets more disturbing every day.

Comments

[jwitchbaby.livejournal.com]

that whole article is strange. first, it isn't very well-organized. second, that guy has his head up his ass.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

It's not an article, it's an extract from a book. That probably explains the structure. I think he writes well and makes some good points - I particularly liked: Let the young ones be queer the way they want to be queer, as long as they are queer, as long as they find among themselves each other to love. I've given up the dream of the Queer Nation. Race, class, gender, ideologies, and values will always divide us. It is ludicrous to think that since we share a common passion, we should all want the same things out of this life. We are each other's angels, and we are each other's demons.

[jwitchbaby.livejournal.com]

true, it doesn't read well because it's an excerpt.

but that particular quote was one i nearly cited as being irritating when i posted that comment. he has such a simplistic analysis. "Race, class, gender, ideologies, and values" should not "always divide us." Our "common passion" should not be merely to fuck same-sex folks, but to have a liberation that transcends all of these categories.

grr.

[cd332.livejournal.com]

i had mentioned in a very old version of my website that we were in the pride parade in nyc one year when we noticed a caddy of drag queens holding stonewall signs behind us. when it stopped, we walked back and asked if we could have our pictures taken with them. they said, "uh-uh, WE are responsible for stonewall NOT you. WE started the ruckus, and WE are going to get credit for it. NOT you."

i remembered thinking, "364 days of sh*t from the outside world, and this one day we have together and you have to pull the same exact sh*t."

they want stonewall. they can have it.


cd332

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I would have thought that you, as a non-heterosexual crossdresser, would qualify as one of the "drag queens" whose predecessors started Stonewall. I didn't know it was necessary to spell out "drag queens and crossdressers" in order to give anyone the notion that a variety of people might have been involved. I mean, Stonewall was a pretty big riot. It wasn't just three people or anything.

THEY were responsible.

[cd332.livejournal.com]

if i had been in my dress, it would have been 10 times worst. drag queens don't seem to get along too well with crossdressers, since the popular perception is that crossdressers are people who don't want to be identified as gay. i have come across many militant straight crossdressers who vouch to "beat the sh*t out of fags" if they ever met one, wagging their lee press-ons nails. it shouldn't matter if i was a cd or not. i was marching in the middle of 5th avenue. we were holding signs that openly stated we were gay. we wanted to go take a picture with the drag queens. we supported them.


apparently that wasn't enough. most of them were in their 30s, which meant their parents had to push their carriages and cribs close enough to stonewall for them to throw that first brick.


these are violent toddlers in pink pampers.