#San Francisco gay community

[100gayicons]

In September 1975, Sara Jane Moore attempted to assasination President Gerald Ford while he made a public appearance in in San Francisco. Oliver Sipple (Bill to his friends) was a member of the crowd and he saw Moore pull out a gun. Instinctively he grabbed her arm as she pulled the trigger on her gun. The bullet hit the pavement instead of the president.

Originally from Detroit, Sipple was an ex-marine who served 2 tours in Vietnam. After he was discharged, he returned to home. Sipple was Gay and felt he needed to hid his orientation in Detroit, so he moved to New York City. There he met Harvey Milk who would later become a symbol for Gay Rights.

By 1975, Sipple had migrated to San Francisco where he became active in the Gay Community, including campaigning for Harvey Milk. Although Sipple was Out in San Francisco, back home his family did not know he was Gay.

When Harvey Milk realized Sipple had saved the President, he thought this was an opportunity to champion Gay Rights. He felt Sipple’s orientation should be publicized. According to Wikipedia, Milk wanted to portray Sipple as a "gay hero" to help "break the stereotype of homosexuals [as] timid, weak and unheroic figures.”

Without consulting Sipple, Milk leaked the information to The Chronicle, a local newspaper. Soon, a columnist outed Sipple and his connection to Milk. It became national news.

Soon Sipple was inundated by reporters wanting to interviews him. His parents in Detroit were also besieged and locals hounded and teased them about their gay son.

Oliver became convinced he was outed due to anti-gay sentiment by the newspaper. He sued for invasion of privacy. The case dragging on for 5 years. He ultimately lost but the stress of his experience resulted in him drinking more heavily. He developed mental health issues, gained weight and needed a pacemaker. Sadly, Sipple died alone in his apartment at the age of 48, fifteen years after the incident.

[friday411]

🎂 Happy B-Day Gavin Newsom!! 🎂

Our ally said 20 years ago "In the city of San Francisco All lovers can marry Each Queer, Gay and Fairy" 4,000+ couples then did so!

-=<+>=-

Read them all at Archive of Our Own (AO3)

Thanks for reading, reblogging & leaving some love!!

Tags also in the comments - LMK if you want on or off this list!

@stellacartography @totallysilvergirl @calaisreno @keirgreeneyes @peanitbear

[amordelaluna]

Went to SF pride '24

[tanoraqui]

might as well fling this question to the tumblr void:

I'm trying to reach out to the general queer community of the San Francisco East Bay to invite people to sing in and/or attend concerts of an LGBTQ Pride-themed non-auditioned choir this July. Does anyone know, like, popular community centers or organizations I should connect with, publications (newsletters, magazines, etc) I should try to advertise in, etc?

(Cisheteronormative people are also, like, allowed to sing and attend, but I'm already familiar with that advertising.)

[pia-fantastic]

Big announcement- I'm making a gay vampire Comic!

A Vampire Love Story follows the strange romance between Vilda- a vampire from Fresno, who's barely keeping her shit together- and Isabella- a troubled music school dropout from Duluth- as fate brings them together on the foggy streets of San Francisco.

What shenanigans and mysteries will they stumble into, as their love story troubles the balance of the paranormal world?

Follow here, Patreon, or A Vampire Love Story's Official twitter for updates about when and where to read the upcoming first chapter!

[theflyingfeeling]

I feel like Olli is glancing at Aleksi in every picture I’ve seen of the acoustic set 🤧

That's because he is!! 🥺 He literally can't help himself 😭

Alsooooo did you see Aleksi's story on the rooftop with Niko next to him on the couch? Can we please pretend Olli is there too, curled up on Aleksi's other side 🤧 I mean, you can't prove he isn’t!! 😌

[jc-lambert]

To 4 Non-Blondes

We have space and this and that in Wichita Kansas.

My grandma died.

Her husband owned almost the whole city, most of downtown anyway. Monica Lewinsky is being kicked off her witness protection.

She's using my grandmother's name as an alias.

I just pooped.

It was perfectly dysentery.

It was perfectly bright happy smiley face yellow.

I am probably going to die like everyone else on the west coast did, due to biological weaponry employed by the Tuatha de Dannon in times of racewar against the Human Tribe.

Nigger, are you alive?

Because like, your life maybe mattered: and yes I know you are part black. I've heard stories from people who have maybe actually seen your vadge and have claimed to do so. However, they where the type who would lie.

Now gimme money & drugs bitch

because I'm seriously starting to hate you for making me type this email up.

[justdavina]

Happy Pride Month 2024.

#sanfranciscogaypride2024

[justdavina]

Amazing!!

[donotdestroy]

A History of the Castro Neighborhood in San Francisco | KQED

[dorindameddler]

128 boys is crazy. Louis was out there decimating the 1970s gay community of San Francisco.

[wisdomfish]

Let’s God to San Francisco

WALKING INTO SAN FRANCISCO

In 1989, I walked into the world famous Castro District of San Francisco as a disaffected young man of almost nineteen years of age. I had grown up bullied and lonely, and I was looking to finally belong. Almost since I was a child nearing adolescence, the other boys at school instinctively rejected me. While they made the decisive testosterone fueled jump to more masculine pursuits, such as aggressive schoolyard play and sports, I was timid and unsure. While their voices deepened and sounded increasingly confident, mine remained high-pitched but strangely muted. While they grew taller and filled-out, I just became thinner and ganglier.

The pre-macho boys were typically the best at playing kick-ball and inevitably turn out to be recess and PE team captains. Focusing on my embarrassing apparent lack of skill, they were always quick to ridicule and loudly point out my utter worthlessness. No one ever wanted me on their team. After even the smaller girls got picked, I was always the default last man standing.

There were a few other unathletic boys in my class, either overweight or exceedingly short, who also got similarly passed-over. But they could turn rejection into an advantage through comical self-deprecation or by poking fun at me or someone else. I couldn’t do that. I tended to take everything to heart. I froze at the merest slight. The often cruel unthinking banter of boys seemed deliberately vicious. Yet, the more they rejected and taunted me, the more I wanted to belong. My childhood fantasies began to center around a benevolent superhero who would adopt me as his sidekick. In the afternoon, I would rush home to see after-school reruns of “Batman” and imagine myself as Burt Ward. To this day, it’s highly significant that homoerotic fantasies about Batman and Robin are pervasive in gay male culture.

When I arrived in San Francisco, I was still tall, thin, and uncoordinated, but I quickly discovered that men wanted to be with me. Here, a boyish stick frame was a distinct advantage. That first night, as I crept into my first gay bar, I was the same insecure and desperately shy kid. I didn’t know what to do. My only experience with the world of male-on-male sexuality was through watching gay porn.

And, in those images, I was fascinated.

There was a fundamental order and a ritual to everything portrayed: old with young, big over small, the experienced and the naive. The mature and supremely masculine always ushered into manhood the fresh-faced and less physically impressive youthful rookies.

From porn, I sort of knew what to expect; I had seen such ominous similarly titled films like: Daddy Dearest, Hurts So Good, and Try to Take It. I imagined my transition to masculinity as an initiation rite. And at the near height of the AIDS crisis, like male youths in tribal cultures, who had to endure some sort of physical torment or trial in order to join the community of men, I was willing to suffer anything in the process; even to die.

As an inexperienced eighteen year old, I found the aspirations of gay men to be strikingly similar. For an encounter that did not at least include the possibility of anal intercourse seemed incidental and quick. Anal sex lent male homosexuality a certain amount of intimacy. The possibility of that fusion was unbelievably alluring. But I was petrified by the ever-present likelihood of AIDS, thus I refused to risk my life even though I knew I would remain incomplete until I found the courage to submit.

A frustrated boyfriend accepted a sort of second-best when I agreed to a form of frontage through which he would thrust his penis between my closed legs. It was an elaborate form of mutual masturbation.

Years later, I would tragically discover that the longed for insertive form of this action was similarly shallow.

CARRIED OUT OF SAN FRANCISCO

I had walked into San Francisco, but I had to be carried out. The man who picked me up that dark day was unlike anyone I had ever met. He took my lifeless body back home – to my parent’s house.

There, I woke up in my old bedroom, surrounded by a few incidental memories from childhood. The same bed I once delighted in my first wet dream, I now soiled with blood.

The following months were dominated by a series of appointments with various physicians, specialists, and surgeons. The embarrassment and pain that I long evaded was unavoidable. Before surgery, I was required to almost mockingly relive every cleansing routine I endlessly practiced.

During the procedure, a section of my rectum was removed due to the existence of severe internal scarring. Like an imprisoned victim of the Marques de Sade, my sphincter had been sewn shut with thick cording. The doctor and nurse gave me a long list of stool softeners and laxatives to take with copious quantities of water in order to make it possible that I could have a bowel movement through an inconceivably narrow orifice. The precautions didn’t work, and I busted the stitches.

To stop the bleeding, I stuck a hand towel down my shorts and went to the emergency room. With my back to the waiting room wall, amongst the coughing children and light-headed elderly patients, the blood began to seep through my pants.

For what seemed like hours, I laid on the hard hospital gurney. I rang for the nurse, but the place was a flurry of activity; next to me, separated by a thin privacy screen, were a pair of teenagers: one suffering from an overdose of prescription pills and the other with a severe pelvic infection due to an untreated STD. This was purgatory. I had to use the toilet, so I shuffled across the freshly waxed floors towards the restroom. On the way back to my bed, I left a trail of little red dots behind me. This wasn’t an intermediate state between heaven and earth – it was hell. I had died and been sent to suffer an eternity as a character in a perverse fairy-tale – the boy with a broken bottom. To the great consternation of the attending doctor and nurses, I checked myself out of the hospital and went home.

For the next few days, I ate nothing but a grainy powdered fiber substance mixed with water and prune juice. I stood in the shower and defecated on my feet. I couldn’t sit, nor strain. More than once, I didn’t quite make it to the bathroom from my bed.

Only a few feet from the toilet, I slipped and fell on the tile floor made slippery by the mess.

Slowly, my body healed. However, I kept soiling myself. Another surgery would follow; then another. Years later, I remain semi-incontinent.

Despite the inconvenience, occasional pain, and embarrassment, I consider myself blessed because I escaped homosexuality relatively unscathed when compared to many of my friends. Some of the scars will remain as long as I am alive, but I can live with them.

In a sense, they are a constant reminder of who I was and what God saved me from!

Others bear the marks on an indelible scale where the HIV virus hides in every part of their body. But as the years pass by, my health problems are compounded; I feel old.

The few friends that survived our previous existence are all similarly plagued. We accompany each other to doctor visits and continually send get well cards and have healing prayers said for one another. Our quest for love came to an end in unrealized dreams, damaged bodies, and the graves of the dead. In our overwhelming desire to understand the world and ourselves, we were willing to go against Nature and God Himself.

We disregarded the fundamentals of physiology and for that violation, we paid dearly on an unbelievably devastating collective and individual basis. In the process, we threw our bodies and the surrounding culture into chaos; in a feeble attempt to right ourselves, we demanded that society recognize our rebellion. But a law instituted by men hasn’t changed our physical structure.

[Sciambra, Joseph. josephsciambra.com]

[persephone-has-fallen]

I don't have a certain era, but a specific photograph. This is the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus in 1993, 12 years after the AIDS Epidemic first gained attention in the U.S. The chorus members in white are those who survived AIDS at the time of the photo. The members in black represent those who perished of the disease.

I'm a historian, and a lot of the things I study make my stomach turn. This picture is a reminder that I need to keep going, so I can tell the stories of those who were silenced.

Photo credit to Eric Luse

due to a statistical overrepresentation of the Roman Empire i am instituting a new tag game

reblog and tell me in the notes what time period/place(s) in history you think about multiple times a week to daily

i think about medieval western europe (~1250-1400, deeply approximately) and/or late renaissance (~1580-1620) around the mediterranean (also deeply approximately) all the time

[omgthatdress]

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence started when three friends banded together to dress as nuns and recite a loving and forgiving liturgy to drive homophobic evangelists off of Castro Street in San Francisco. It worked. The organization quickly expanded as an advocacy group for gay rights.

When asked why they are dressed as nuns, the answer was, "We do all that traditional nuns have done for centuries. Our look might be unique, but our ministry is common. We serve our community. We have raised lots of money for AIDS and other social causes. We visit the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and sometimes disrobe the clothed! We are 21st Century queer nuns."

The Sisters primarily made a name for themselves through their AIDS activism. In 1982, The Sisters published Play Fair! which was the first humorous and easy-to-understand sexual health and safety pamphlet specifically intended for gay men.

The Sisters also used their presence to shame homophobic public figures, performing "exorcisms" on Phyllis Schlaffey, Jerry Fallwell, and Pope John Paul II, as well as on the steps of the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 2023, The Los Angeles Dodgers caused a huge controversy by selecting the Sisters to receive a "community hero award" on their Pride Night game (again, the Sisters are a legendary charity group that has literally saved lives), but then they gave in to right-wing pressure and cancelled it. Eventually, they realized how badly they had fucked up and re-invited the Sisters to their game.

The sisters remain active today with many chapters across the U.S. and Canada. Membership is open to all genders and sexualities.

[imkeepinit]

Randy Kikukawa and friends protest the Castro Station Bar for denying Asian men entrance, 1980.

Castro Bars The Midnight Sun and Castro Station both had anti-Asian discriminatory policies, and when confronted claimed that it was difficult to determine whether Asian men were under-age. The Asian Lesbian and Gay Alliance (ALGA)  picketed the Midnight Sun, attracting media coverage with placards such as “Discrimination in the Gay Community Demeans Us All.” During a KPFA radio debate,one participant recalled a bar owner claiming, “Your people don’t drink,” and “It’s a cruise bar; we would lose other clientele because they don’t want to cruise your type.”

Racism and Reaction in the Castro: A Brief, Incomplete History

[genderkoolaid]

Tranny. Many people don’t know the history of the word, they assume it was an assigned hate term or slur along the lines of the “n” word. That’s not how it happened. Tranny was invented by us in Sydney, Australia in the 1970s where drag was a big deal, and still the best drag shows ever are in Sydney, Australia – they’re amazing. So a lot of trans-identified women who were assigned male at birth did drag, that’s how you made your living. And so they were transsexuals, transvestites, drag queens, and they were all doing drag to make money. They all bickered amongst each other who is better than who, “Well the drag queens are better,” “No, the transsexuals are better.” “You are all freaks, we’re better.” And on and on and on. But they worked together and they were family together, so they came up with a word that would say family and that was tranny. In Australia they do the diminutive, that’s how they come up with words. So tranny. I learned the word in the mid-1980s, late 1980s from my drag mom in San Francisco, Doris Fish, who was the city’s preeminent drag queen and she’d come from Sydney. And she schooled me in this word tranny, she said, “This way it means we’re family, darling.” “Thank you mama.” [...] So we used it and we were trannies together. And F to M was just beginning to start, the trans men were just beginning to become visible, Lou Sullivan was a neighbor of mine around the corner, and he was the first big out trans man, wrote his book. So trans men and cross dressers . . . cross dressers were also family. Transsexuals, we were all trannies and that felt good. That got into the sex industry and became a genre – there was tranny porn, there were tranny sex workers – chicks with dicks, she-males. [...] And, my only guess is that people who . . . because the only way they would have found out about the word is if they were watching tranny porn or having been with a tranny sex worker and then hated themselves so much that they turned it into a curse word. So it’s not really technically correct to say we’re reclaiming a word – it was always ours. So, many people mistake the word for the hatred behind the word and, in my generation, and I’m sure in future generations of trans people, tranny is going to be a radicalized, sexualized identity of trans in the same way that faggot is a prideful identity in the gay male community – not all gay men are faggots, but those who are are proudly fags and those who are dykes are proudly dykes within the lesbian community, trannies are proudly tranny within the transgender community. Does that mean we can’t call ourselves that because some trans woman does not want to be called a tranny? No. I’m going to keep calling myself a tranny. To the trans woman who gets called tranny, I’m sorry – as soon as . . . you’ve got to look at why you’re getting called tranny and if you don’t pass, you’re going to be read as a transgender person and then you fall back on the cultural view of trans folk which is freak, disgusting, not worth living, we can hurt you. It has nothing to do with the word, it has everything to do with the cultural attitude. So the word has stirred up a shit storm, but it’s not the word.

— Kate Bornstein on the word "tranny" in this oral history from the Digital Transgender Archive