nemesis-star:

therichestkids:

royaltymlm:

Pride month is coming up, so here’s a reminder that the Stonewall riots (in which trans women of color fought for us to have rights) wasn’t about marriage equality, it was about police brutality.

and that the fight for marriage equality wasn’t about being heteronormative it was about lgbt couples being able to have the same legal rights as straight couples regarding their relationship especially during the aids epidemic. it was so that lgbt people could be with their partners while they died.

while i believe OP’s intentions are good, this is what i mean about tumblr really not doing a minute’s worth of research on the Stonewall Uprising.

trans women of color did not fight for gay people; twoc fought alongside gay people. the Stonewall Inn was not a trans bar (maybe you’re thinking of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, which did take place in a gathering place for trans women, and also happened several years before and on the other side of the country from Stonewall). 

it was the call to action from a butch lesbian – most people say she was Stormé DeLarverie, a black and biracial butch lesbian – that galvanized the crowd into action that night. 

the only photograph we have of the first night of the riots is of the homeless gay youth who slept in the nearby Christopher Park fighting with police.

even Marsha P. Johnson (most likely one of the women OP references) corrected anyone who claimed she started the Uprising – she didn’t even arrive at Stonewall until nearly forty minutes after the beginning of the raid.

the Stonewall Inn wasn’t a trans women’s bar; it was a mafia-owned bar of questionable repute that was known for not being exclusive like many gay social gatherings were at the time; because of this, its clientele came from many walks of life: trans women of color, yes, but also gay men and lesbians and drag kings and queens and the street kids from the park. 

there were upwards of 150 people when the Uprising began, and hundreds and hundreds of participants over the course of the next several nights. many of them were people who wouldn’t have normally been found in the Stonewall Inn but who lived in Greenwich Village.

to act as though the Stonewall Uprising was the sole work of a small number of TWOC is ahistorical at best, and is at worst a lie that’s been sold to you by people on tumblr who want you to hate gay men and lesbians for never fighting for their rights and making other groups do the dirty work for them.

this pride season i encourage everyone to read Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution by David Carter (and if you can’t afford it, here’s the ebook). it’s a well-researched, comprehensive account of the Uprising.

i think my issue is that this post leaves out part of the equation. yes, during the Stonewall Uprising trans women fought for gay men and lesbians. they also fought alongside gay men and lesbians. and gay men and lesbians fought for and alongside trans women. the participants of the Uprising didn’t come from one single group, and to act as if they did does a disservice to everyone involved.