By C. Michael Woodward
Health and Wellness Manager
Each year the LGBT community celebrates its pride in June to mark the anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, an event considered by most as the “shot heard ‘round the world” for the gay rights movement.
I wanted to take a moment to reflect on another side of Stonewall—one you likely have not heard as much about.
While the Stonewall Rebellion galvanized the quest for gay and lesbian equality, it also sparked what has become one of the longest-running controversies in the movement: the rift between the gay and lesbian community and the transgender population.
How It All Started
In the late 1960s, it was common practice all over the United States for the police to make periodic raids on sexual minority bars to harass and arrest the patrons. One of the primary laws the New York City police department used to justify these raids was an ridiculous edict that required every person to be wearing three pieces of “gender appropriate” clothing when in public.
In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, police officers raided the Stonewall Inn. This raid was not unlike many before it. Typically, those considered the more "deviant" patrons (that is, drag queens and butch lesbians, especially if they were people of color) were arrested and taken away, while white, male, gender-conforming customers (wearing those requisite three items of clothing) looked on or quietly disappeared.
On this particular occasion, Sylvia Rivera, a transsexual woman, resisted arrest on this “appropriate clothing” charge. Her defiance is generally agreed as the critical moment that touched off the riot that continued for three nights running.
Rivera was a Venezuelan and Puerto Rican transgender youth who had lived homeless on the streets of Manhattan since she was 10 years old. In later interviews, she stressed a very important point about the rebellion that ensued. She emphasized the often forgotten role of the homeless transgender and gay street youth in the rebellion — Black, Latino, and white, and mostly gender-defiant—who could not afford the Stonewall cover charge or the overpriced, watered-down drinks.
Rivera emphasized that at the riot’s moment of ignition, “It was street people from the Village out front—homeless people who lived in the park in Sheridan Square outside the bar—and then drag queens behind them … and then everybody else behind them.”
History Erased
As the movement grew into the 1970s and 80s, the strategy was assimilation. In an effort to show the mainstream that gay and lesbian folks are no different than hetero folks, leaders of this movement specifically and emphatically excluded transgender and transsexual people because they were considered too eccentric and too controversial, and reflected poorly on the image they felt the community needed to show to the rest of the world. Or, per the pop culture of the time, “I’m OK, you’re not OK.”
The situation did not improve for quite some time. Stonewall’s 25th anniversary celebration in 1994 was marked with controversy over this same issue, when transgender people were excluded from the official ceremony and festivities.
What too many people still don’t get is that you don't have to be trans to be affected by gender stereotyping or by society’s expectations of your gender. Many gay and lesbian people who experience discrimination and violence are really attacked because of their gender expression—or how someone’s gender is perceived based on societal gender norms.
In fact, the way I see it, being gay or lesbian alone is a form of gender variance regardless of your own gender identity, because LGB folks fall outside of society’s expectations for gender normative behavior (just in a different way that T people). While many transgender and transsexual people are heterosexual, our communities should be natural allies to one another, regardless of sexual orientation.
Still, many influential gay and lesbian activists believed for many years that civil rights legislation would be stalled or effectively killed if transgender people were included, and that the choice was often between a more inclusive bill that goes nowhere and a less inclusive bill that actually becomes law. So, they insisted on pushing legislation that protected sexual orientation but excluded gender identity or gender expression.
In most cases, GLB folks have come to their senses and realized transgender folks are the ones who need anti-discrimination and hate crime laws the most. But if you’re still carrying that old belief that exclusion is the only way to achieve equality, let me tell you that in all of the legislation presented around the nation in the last decade, only one bill in one state was defeated specifically because it included the term “gender identity” along with sexual orientation.
United We Stand, Divided We Fall
These days the truly progressive LGBT organizations, such as Wingspan, are beginning to look beyond these two “simple” categories and learning to collaborate and advocate for the rights of all who are oppressed—people of color, immigrants, elders, youth, low-income people, minority faith communities, prisoners, people with disabilities, and many others. We’re learning to recognize that our similarities are more important than our differences, and that our collective strength far surpasses that which we can accomplish working alone or hoisting ourselves higher up equality food chain at the expense of others.
Tucson
Thankfully, gender identity was added to the Tucson’s anti-discrimination ordinance “way back” in 1999, thanks to the efforts of transmen Alexander John Goodrum and Geri Armsby, who came, uninvited, to a local leadership meeting and dared to ask “Why not gender identity?” The leaders admitted they had forgotten about, but were not opposed to, including transgender people, and thus Tucson became one of the first 10 cities in the nation to do so, and Alexander became the first transsexual person and first person of African descent to serve as Co-Chair of the City of Tucson Commission on LGBT Issues. Since then, Tucson has earned a reputation as one of America’s most welcoming cities for transgender people to live and thrive.
Wingspan’s Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA) envisions a society in which transgender and transsexual people are ensured of their basic rights and can be open, honest, and safe at home, at work, and in the community. We offer support, social, and discussion groups that reflect the various aspects of gender and society. We also provide educational forums and trainings for businesses, service providers, and community members to learn more about the issues facing transgender people and how our allies can be supportive and inclusive.
SAGA is the largest resource on transgender issues in Arizona and the greater Southwest region. For more information, please visit our Web site at www.sagatucson.org, call SAGA at 520-624-1779, or write to saga@wingspan.org.
