#Stonewall riot

[scriobh-an-iontas]

And now, for your Pride enjoyment, I present to you:

"Stonewall Riot"

<Sung to the tune of "Zoot Suit Riot">

+++++

[Verse 1]

Who’s that senator standin’ tall,

It’s Joe McCarthy and he hates us all,

Commies, anarchists, leftists, and queers,

Our rights were stripped, we lived in fear.

[Pre-Chorus 1]

A ma-fi-a owned dance hall,

Is where we went to play

The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich,

They didn’t care if we were gay.

[Chorus 1]

Stonewall Riot (Riot!)

Throw back a brick and a beer!

Stonewall Riot (Riot!)

My civil rights started ri-i-ight here!

Stonewall Riot (Riot!)

Throw back a brick and a beer!

Stonewall Riot (Riot!)

My civil rights started ri-i-ight here!

Blow daddy!

[Verse 2]

A-raid gone wrong's where it began,

The N Y P D didn't understand,

We weren't just sheep, merely in a haze,

But once we came to we quickly got enraged

[Pre-Chorus 2]

The ri-ots last-ed days,

Our community unfurled,

Later, queers would say it was

“The brick thrown round the world”

[Chorus 2]

Stonewall Riot (Riot!)

Throw back a brick and a beer!

Stonewall Riot (Riot!)

My civil rights started ri-i-ight here!

[Bridge]

You're in a Stonewall Riot!

You're in a Stonewall Riot!

You're in a Stonewall Riot!

<Skat-like>

Here at Pri-ide now,

Leather daddy’s ok,

Trans folk and a-specs,

Non-binary display!

Get your kink on

Lesbians, Bi’s, and Gays,

Intersex is welcome,

But cops stay away!

[Pre-Chorus 3]

Oh, the fight, it still ain't done

But we're-through hidin' behind-closed-doors

Cause-we've stood all we can stands

And we just can't stands no more!

[Chorus 1]

Stonewall Riot (Riot!)

Throw back a brick and a beer!

Stonewall Riot (Riot!)

My civil rights started ri-i-ight here!

Stonewall Riot (Riot!)

Throw back a brick and a beer!

Stonewall Riot (Riot!)

My civil rights started ri-i-ight here!

[Outro]

You're in a Stonewall Riot!

You're in a Stonewall Riot!

You're in a Stonewall Riot!

(I think I'm about ready for Pride now)

[ivygorgon]

"No Pride for some of us without liberation for all of us." -Marsha P. Johnson

[animentality]

[commiepinkofag]

state by state our civil rights & basic human rights are stripped away.

the federal government enables, codifies & otherwise remains silent.

silence = death

no one should think they can coast through an election.

resistance without representation.

we are criminals after all.

[partly-hueman]

LGB rights

LGB Pride was started by four homosexuals: Craig Rodwell, Ellen Broidy & Linda Rhodes and Fred Sargent.

Stormé, a lesbian, started the Stonewall riots.

The LGB flag was designed by a Gay man, Gilbert.

Before you pull Marsha out of your ass. Marsha was a gay man, & was not trans. He claimed that he had nothing to do with Stonewall riots as he was not present there.

TQ+ cult keeps abusing LGBs lying that we got our rights because of a 'transwoman' Marsha who was not even trans, nor was present for any first LGB riot.

[emma-dennehy-presents]

Celebrating Black Queer Icons:

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy

Born on October 25, 1940, Major is a trans women well known as a leader in the broader trans community and an activist, with a particular focus on black and incarcerated trans women. Major grew up in Chicago's South Side and participated in the local drag scene, during her youth. Major described the experiences as glamorous, like going to the Oscars. While she did not have the contemporary language for it, Major has been out as a trans women since the late 1950s. This made her a target of criticism, mistreatment, and violence, even among her queer peers. Majors transition, especially getting her hands on hormones, was largely a black market affair. Given the lack of employment opportunities for black trans women at the time, she largely survived through sex work and other criminalized activities. At some point Major moved to New York City and established herself amongst the cities queer community, despite the prejudice against trans women. She participated in the 1969 Stonewall Uprising. Later, after getting convicted on a burglary charge, Major was imprisoned with men at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, NY. There she met Frank "Big Black" Smith, a participant in the 1971 Attica Uprising at Attica Correctional Facility. He treated Major, and her identity as a woman, with respect and the two built a friendship. Smith also taught Major a good bit about advocating for herself and other trans women being mistreated by the US Justice System. Major was released from Dannemora in 1974. Major moved to San Diego in 1978 and almost immediately began working on community efforts and participating in grassroots movements. Starting by working at a food bank, she would go on to provide services directly to incarcerated, addicted, and homeless trans women, and would provide additional services after the AIDS epidemic started. In the 1990s Major moved to the San Fransisco Bay Area, where she continued her work, alongside organizations like the Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center. In 2003 Major became the Director of the Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project, shortly after its founding by attorney and community organizer Alexander L Lee, a trans man. The group works to end human rights abuses in the California Prison System, with a focus on trans, intersex, and gender variant POC. The position has since been passed on to Janetta Johnson, a previously incarcerated trans woman who mentored under Major. She is the focus of the 2015, award winning, documentary Major!. Major has five sons, two biological and three runaways she adopted, after meeting them in a California park. Her oldest son, Christopher was born in 1978, and her youngest, Asiah (rhymes with messiah) in 2021. At 82 years old Miss Major Griffin-Gracy continues to be an active member of her community and an advocate for our rights as trans people.

Haven't settled on which yet, but Willmer "Little Ax" Broadnax or Victor J Mukasa will be next!

[starjunkyard]

"Im not even sure anymore if we get to choose who our friends are" There is a part of me that resents you for making me a worse person than i want to be but i am inexplicably uncontrollably drawn to you. You make me a worse person which is the last thing i want yet i want you in every way. If i could leave i would. Maybe i can but i dont want to. I have fun with you. You challenge me and you captivate me and you push me and pull and run circles around me and it makes me feel like a younger man. For the price of being a worse person i get to feel truly, wholly alive. You are the blood that runs through my veins; vital, inseparable. I was reborn when i met you and you are the womb that haunts me. You are the one person on planet earth who knows me. I wish i could leave, move on and be the man im supposed to be but my heart is tied to yours in a gordian knot. There is a part of my soul that rests in yours, magnetic. For as long as i love you i cannot be better than i am. But maybe thats something i can learn to live with. Gregory House-- I think you're worth it.

[ro-ro-bbbi]

Can we talk about how if hobie is from the '70...

He defintly saw Stonewall riots

maybe in his universe they could even started in england, maybe because he strated them.

And how cool is that? He would just casually mention that he saw, or maybe even fucking started the most well known lgbt riot in the world.

And, if gwen is anything like me, as a futuristic queer kid, she would scream, ask him about it, if he is fine, how it went ecc.

Bc she been told about this big riot and how brave it was bc no fucking body would give a shit about gay rights at the time and how all the rights that she has now are possible thanks to the fight and the sacrifices that queer people did for creating the whole damn lgbt+ movement... and now she has a friend who might have been the one who started it.

Hobie ofc is always ready to rant about his riots so he tells her everything and if hobie was cool before now he is gwen's idol.

(This doesnt last forever, especially when she realizes that he is a dumb teen who makes dumb jokes just like every other spider-teen, but the respect and admiration for him would never leave, dont tell him though ((he already knows)))

Im projecting but it just has such a strong impact for me listening about queer histrory and i'll never stop complaining about the fact that in my country it isnt taught at school, and yeah... just another reason why i want to be hobie's friend (or more)... As if there werent enough reasons already.

[genderfcker]

just saw the insane take on that aphobic post that's traveling around that lesbians and bisexuals are the ones that built the queer community which is INSANE. anyone who's spent any time reading anything about stonewall and the queer community here in the us knows that its transwomen.

women like marsha p. johnson and sylvia rivera are the reason we can publicly call ourselves lgbtq+ today. and women like them truly understood community and intersectional feminism in a way terfs could only dream of.

on that note: any asexual or aromantic person is automatically queer, and fuck you if you think people like us are a burden on our community—because, in all honesty, it's the other way around.

[blackbackedjackal]

ITS CALLED STRAWBERRY MOON BECAUSE HER NAME IS JUNE… I can’t believe I didn’t get that sooner ;-;

Yep <33

[transsexualfiend]

WOOOO HERE’S MY PRIDE MERCH!!!

[riotkittiesarchive]

please; don’t let the cops in or the cats out.

[flyin-shark]

Happy pride! remember your roots lil gay people in my phone

[butchb0nez]

i was at a queer bookstore and there were these old ladies there who where giving out bookmarks of their mugshots from the stone wall riots .

[glasswaters]

on slurs. on pride.

"it is quite important", he says, his lips stretched over dull teeth, "to show gay characters on screen. We are honoured to do you justice."

i think i have long since pulled my mouth into a scowl. i think, by the time i reach you, that i could tear the world from where it sits in your palms. on screen, the moment has passed. unnamed and unimportant, everything remains the same.

a neat cut is all it takes, see. they might as well not be there at all.

the first gay character. the first gay scene. the first gay kiss. and nothing queer about them at all. is this not a riot? is this not a beating, bleeding heart? is this not-

*

i check my notes. i clench my teeth.

#q slur

some people don't like it, see. so fit yourself into their mould. come, let me pull all the teeth from your mouth. give me that brick. it will do you no good.

don't call yourself queer, child. file down your teeth. all this anger will do you no good.

*

i am a slur, frothing at the mouth. if i closed my eyes and sleepwalked into their world, i would wake up screaming. white picket fence. two children. where have you been? where is your phone?

(in a bar, i sit in someone’s lap. she buys me a drink and a lipstick, and when her lashes come undone, she laughs. her cheek bones are contoured, and her lips are overlined. when she looks at me, i see the world in her eyes.)

*

her mouth curls. his eyes are cold. those people, after all, are nothing like us.

*

i am queer.

where is the riot we were born in? where is your grief, pressed in between old photographs? where is your rage, filling queer lungs and trembling papers? where is the queerness in the unnamed? give me one word that was not spit back at us, blooming rot.

how long have you spent ironing out your wrinkles until you sat, smooth and palatable, neat against their shoulders? are you not, still, under that needle, fraying at the edges?

your seams are still jagged to them. your world still tilts wrong, and no matter the fences you put yourself in, they won't sit clean enough. you will always be bent.

to the boots you grovel to, we are all the same gay plague.

*

come. look at me.

i will tear their tongues from their mouths. i will smash windows and bite flesh until i taste blood. fence posts make good weapons once uprooted.

i am queer. i am a slur. i am spitting bile.

i am a riot, see. and this is mine alone to wield.

[emma-dennehy-presents]

Celebrating Black Queer Icons:

Tourmaline

Tourmaline (formerly known/credited as Reian Gossett)is a trans woman that actively identifies as queer, and is best known for her work in trans activism and economic justice. Tourmaline was born July 20, 1983, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Tourmaline's mother was a feminist and union organizer, her father a self defense instructor and anti-imprisonment advocate. Growing up in this atmosphere allowed Tourmaline to explore her identity and encouraged her to fight in what she believes in. Tourmaline has earned a BA in Comparative Ethnic Studies, from Colombia University. During her time at Colombia U, Tourmaline taught creative writing courses to inmates at Riker's Island Correctional Institute, through a school program known as Island Academy. Tourmaline has worked with many groups and organizations in her pursuit of justice. She served as the Membership Coordinator for Queers For Economic Justice, Director of Membership at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and as a Featured Speaker for GLAAD. Tourmaline also works as a historian and archivist for drag queens and trans people associated with the 1969 Stonewall Inn Uprising. She started doing this after noticing how little trans material was being archived, saying that what little did get archived was done so accidentally. In 2010 Tourmaline began her work in film by gathering oral histories from queer New Yorkers for Kagendo Murungi's Taking Freedom Home. In 2016 Tourmaline directed her first film The Personal Things, which featured trans elder Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. For the film Tourmaline was awarded the 2017 Queer Art Prize. Tourmaline served as the Assistant Director to Dee Rees on the Golden Globe nominated historical drama, Mudbound. Tourmaline has co produced two projects with fellow filmmaker and activist Sasha Wortzel. The first was STAR People Are Beautiful, about the work of Sylvia Rivera and Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. The second was Happy Birthday, Marsha, about Marsha P Johnson. Happy Birthday, Marsha had all trans roles played by trans actors. Tourmaline's work is featured or archived in several major museums and galleries. In 2017 her work was featured in New Museum's exhibit Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon. In 2020 the Museum of Modern Art acquired Tourmaline's 2019 film Salacia, a project about Mary Jones. In 2021 the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired two of Tourmaline's works for display in Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room. Tourmaline is also the sibling of:

Che Gossett

Che Gossett is a nonbinary, trans femme writer and archivist. Gossett specializes in queer/trans studies, aesthetic theory, abolitionist thought and black study. Gossett received a Doctorate in Women's and Gender Studies, from Rutgers University, in 2021. They have also received a BA in African American Studies from Morehouse college, a MAT in Social Studios from Brown University, and a MA in History from the University of Pennsylvania. Gossett has held a fellowship at Yale, and currently holds fellowships at Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge. Gossett's writing has been published in a number of anthologies and they have lectured and performed at several museums and galleries of note, including the Museum of Modern Art and A.I.R. Gallery. Gossett is currently working on finishing a political biography of queer Japanese-American AIDS activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya.

I originally intended to do separate profiles for Che Gossett Tourmaline, but could not find sufficient information about Che Gossett, beyond their credentials and current academic activity. That means that this will be the last of these write ups for a bit. I plan on picking it back up in October for the US's LGBT History Month and UK's Black History month. With time to plan ahead and research more I hope to diversify my list geographically and improve formatting. I plan on starting to include cis icons as well, like Rustin Bayard. If you come across this or any other of these posts Ive made this month I would love feedback and suggestions for figures you would like to see covered.