#ellen broidy

[lilacsupernova]

In recent years, I've seen the erasure of lesbian and gay activists. And all the work we did for gay liberation is credited to two people: Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. Even statues are planned to be elected in honor of them in New York. These two are now hailed for having organized the Stonewall Riot and the GLF [Gay Liberation Front] and even the historic gay occupation of Wernstein Hall at New York University in protest against the administration's homophobia. All of this is false. I know, because I and the women and men I worked with were there.

Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson are today widely celebrated as transgender people of color. However, Rivera identified as a transvestite male, not transgender. Malcolm, aka Marsha Johnson, was a self-proclaimed gay man, and drag queen, up until his death in 1992. Johnson deserves to be honored with respect and integrity, not rebranded as a 'trans-woman' postmortem. Johnson was probably transgender, though there was no such terminology at the time. Toward the end of his life he was considering raising funds to go abroad for what was then called a sex change surgery.

Nobody led the Stonewall Riots. It was a spontaneous uprising. Neither Rivera nor Johnson appeared on the scene until the riots were well underway. Neither Johnson nor Rivera attended any of the early meetings of GLF in July 1969. I was one of the founders, along with five other women and 13 men. Ellen Broidy and I were among those who called for the occupation of Wernstein Hall in September 1970. Johnson and Rivera were not present. They joined in after a group of us had already entered the building, and it was after the occupation that I first noticed them at GLF meetings. They were inspired by our Wernstein Hall action to start a new group, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR).

This was important work they did and how they should be remembered. Through STAR, Rivera and Johnson labored on behalf of homeless street queens who, like themselves, often had to support themselves through prostitution, often strove to overcome drug addiction, and often found themselves in trouble with the law. They provided shelter and counseling, and visited those in prison. They were heroes in their own right. But the false legends have been widely promulgated in the international press, and give them credit for the work of hundreds of others, and never ever mention what they actually accomplished. The city of New York has not built any statues to any of us lesbians or any of the gay men who were involved in GLF. Just those two are the heroes. Stormé DeLarverie who is considered responsible for starting the first Stonewall Riot on June 28, 1969, after a crowd reacted when she was arrested by police, was a woman of color and and butch lesbian. She didn't get a statue either.

These smaller fabrications are perhaps not as dangerous as the ones that lead to war. But what is dangerous is that, by depicting one or two chosen individuals as great leaders and expunging the rest of us from public memory, they strip us all of the knowledge that we ordinary human beings have made history and can do so again.

– Martha Shelley (2021), 'An Honest History' in Renate Klein & Susan Hawthorne (eds.) Not Dead Yet: Feminism, Passion and Women's Liberation, pp. 379-80.

[genderoutlaws]

Ellen Broidy and Cheryl Swannack starring in the “Role Playing” segment of A Comedy In Six Unnatural Acts (1975) dir. Jan Oxenberg

[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.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Jun 25, 2024

The impact of the riots at the Stonewall Inn in June 1969 has often been overblown. Those few summer days when the beleaguered gay community fought back against the police on the streets of New York City are rightly considered a milestone in the struggle for equal rights in the West. But endless arguments about ‘who threw the first brick?’ have obscured the truth that gay equality was achieved by the activists who persisted in the aftermath, harnessing that energy and changing the world forever.

Perhaps a more important milestone was the march organised by a handful of campaigners a year after Stonewall. Craig Rodwell’s idea had been to make this a yearly commemoration that would supersede the ‘Annual Reminder’ picket events that he had been holding every Independence Day in Philadelphia since 1965. It would be known as the ‘Christopher Street Liberation Day’ – later retrospectively rebranded as the first New York ‘Pride’ march – and it was orchestrated chiefly by Rodwell, Fred Sargeant, Linda Rhodes and Ellen Broidy.

The march took place on 28 June 1970, and it was an audacious display. Police hostility to gay people was rife, the local media were overwhelmingly unsympathetic and there were fears of violent repercussions from observers. The day passed off peacefully, perhaps because of a general sense of astonishment that thousands of gay people would assemble so openly. A reporter for the Village Voice wrote that ‘no one could quite believe it, eyes rolled back in heads, Sunday tourists traded incredulous looks, wondrous faces poked out of air-conditioned cars’. At the head of the march, Fred Sargeant carried a bullhorn and called out instructions to the marchers as they made their way from the West Village to Central Park.

Fifty-four years later, and Pride has transformed from an important act of resistance into a month-long orgy of corporatism and virtue-signalling, full of heterosexuals desperate to identify themselves into an oppressed group with the help of trans ideology. ‘Progress Pride’ flags flutter from every high-street store. This relatively new design – a kaleidoscopic eyesore that has replaced the traditional six-stripe Pride flag – is emblazoned on schools, universities, hospitals, civic buildings. In the city of Arlington in Texas, this year’s family friendly Pride event included displays of dildos, half-naked drag queens and human dogs in bondage gear, all co-spon.sored by Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest producer of armaments. In London, numerous pedestrian crossings have been repainted with the ‘Progress Pride’ motif. Police horses find walking across the coloured stripes confusing and disturbing, so the animals have undergone special training to overcome their fears. After all, it is essential to address the rampant homophobia within the equine community.

What might the thousands who turned out on that summer day in New York in 1970 make of this distorted version of Pride? Those gay men and lesbians who risked social ostracism and physical violence to gather in public have little in common with this garish and unsettling facsimile. A poll from 2021 determined that almost 40 per cent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 now identify as LGBTQ. Given the vast majority identifying as such do so as ‘trans’, ‘nonbinary’ and ‘queer’, this means it is statistically certain that gay people are now the minority in this coalition. The early pioneers of gay rights didn’t risk so much for their movement to be usurped by fetishistic heterosexuals with a martyr complex.

It would be interesting to see polling data on how many gay people support Pride in its new ‘trans-inclusive’ incarnation. One recent poll on X asked a simple question: ‘Do you want Pride anymore?’ And although 93.5 per cent of respondents replied in the negative, social-media polls are notoriously useless and we would be unwise to draw any conclusions from them. Still, it is surely significant that this poll was reposted by Fred Sargeant, and that his answer was a resounding ‘No’. That the man who led the first Pride march, bullhorn in hand, should now reject the annual event that he co-created because of its embrace of gender ideology is far from trivial. Nor is it trivial that while handing out pamphlets critical of the trans movement at a Pride event in Vermont in 2022, Sargeant was physically attacked by trans activists.

[ A parade through New York City on Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day, 1971. ]

He is not alone. Many gay people have expressed dismay at the metamorphosis of Pride and feel that it no longer represents them. This can be confusing for those who have not been paying attention to its ongoing political evolution, but there is a very good reason why groups of gay men and lesbians are now holding alternative Pride rallies this year. In August 2022, police insisted that lesbians leave a Pride parade because their banners, proclaiming that ‘lesbians don’t like penises’ and ‘trans activism erases lesbians’, were causing consternation. When gay people are being escorted away from Pride marches by the police, we can safely say that the movement has fallen.

Some might argue that the LGBTQIA+ explosion is an example of what happens when liberalism goes unchecked, that it is the natural consequence of an excess of tolerance and the rise of identity politics. Yet while identity politics in its current intersectional form has proven to be deeply illiberal and regressive, there have been sound reasons throughout history for people with shared characteristics to organise and resist. Unlike the various campaigns for imaginary victimhood that dominate today’s ‘social justice’ causes, being openly gay in the 1970s came at a huge cost. At the time of the first Pride parade, every state in the US with the exception of Illinois criminalised gay sex. In services and employment, discrimination against gay people was permitted, and even most progressives assumed that homosexuality was a mental illness. This is a world away from the exaggerated or fabricated grievances of the diversity, equity and inclusion industry today.

Now that gay people have complete equal rights under the law, the protest element of Pride has been appropriated by those with an apparent craving for oppression. Asexual activists, for instance, have taken centre stage at certain Pride events, even though nobody in the history of humankind has ever been burned at the stake for not wanting to have sex. It isn’t the case that those who identify as asexual are facing discrimination; it’s that nobody cares about what they don’t get up to in the bedroom. But of course, for those of a narcissistic temperament, there can be nothing more devastating than being ignored.

[ Furries march on Congress Street during the annual Pride Portland parade, 2017. ]

Many of those who call themselves ‘nonbinary’ are similarly vocal, but there is no serious comparison to be made between the historical persecution of homosexuals and experiencing some pushback when you demand that others refer to you as ‘they’ or ‘them’. Coming out as gay in 1970 increased the risk of being violently assaulted; coming out as ‘nonbinary’ today only increases one’s chances of being employed at the BBC.

Of course, all of this must be symptomatic of the developing cult of victimhood in the Western world. Ironically, there is now power in being the victim. Those who claim to be ‘marginalised’ are able to get people fired, drive them from public life, and harass and bully them in the name of ‘progress’. Who would have thought there was so much clout in being oppressed?

Far from being a collective gesture of unity, Pride is now widely interpreted as a celebration of homophobia. This is because it has become infected with gender ideology, which seeks to eliminate gay people from their own history. Although trans-identified individuals were rarely seen at activist meetings and events in the early decades of the gay movement, revisionists are now insisting that gay people owe their rights to the hard work of trans campaigners. We are told that a black trans woman, Marsha P Johnson, was the key figure at the Stonewall riots. This is wrong on many counts. The riots were overwhelmingly dominated by young gay men. Although Johnson took part in the demonstrations, he wasn’t present when the rioting began. Most significantly, by his own admission, he was a transvestite who didn’t identify as female.

Fred Sargeant has been much vilified for exposing the truth of what took place in these early years of the gay rights’ movement, and he is now a thorn in the side of activists whose worldview depends on a narrative that runs contrary to the truth. Recently he posted a link to the Digital Transgender Archive on the Third International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy, which explicitly outlines how gay and trans movements in the 20th century were completely separate. The conflation of the LGB and T is an invention as recent as 2015. As the document explains, while the gay-rights movement in the US began in the 1920s, ‘the existence of a transgendered community that seeks reforms did not come into existence until the 1990s’.

The historical revisionism doesn’t end at Stonewall. Activists have attempted to claim that certain gay historical figures were mistaking their true trans identity for homosexuality. Just as Mormon priests have been known to baptise the dead and thereby convert them unwillingly to their cause, trans activists have been busy harvesting the annals of history for potential recruits. Those falsely claimed as trans include George Eliot, Dr James Barry, Radclyffe Hall and Joan of Arc. People who were gay and gender nonconforming are particularly vulnerable to this kind of retrospective ‘transing’. It’s very convenient for activists that the dead can’t complain.

While many trans campaigners consider themselves supportive of gay rights, overt homophobia is nonetheless often tolerated and encouraged within their circles. There are innumerable examples online of trans activists claiming that homosexuality is a form of transphobia and that only bigots have ‘genital preferences’. ‘If you’re a cis gay man’, writes one, ‘and your sexuality revolves around you not liking female genitalia I hope you die and I will spit on your grave’. A video recently went viral featuring an activist explaining to gay men why they should transition to female and that ‘maybe being gay is an outdated concept’. An online influencer called Davey Wavey uploaded his attempt at gay conversion therapy in a video entitled ‘How To Eat Pussy – For Gay Men’. One can imagine it being shown to young men at an evangelical Christian retreat for those who wish to find a ‘cure’ for their immoral urges.

This isn’t simply a case of a handful of lunatics on the fringe – this idea has also been normalised in mainstream gay culture. Australia’s Human Rights Commission prohibits lesbians from holding female-only events on the grounds that it discriminates against men who identify as female. Sall Grover, the founder of women’s app Giggle, is currently in a legal battle in Australia because she refused to allow a man to join. Stonewall has even redefined ‘homosexuality’ on its website as ‘same-gender attracted’. Its former CEO, Nancy Kelley, once suggested that women who don’t wish to date trans people are ‘sexual racists’. No, Nancy, they’re just gay.

We have seen all this before. In the 1980s, it was a common trope for gay men to be told that they ‘just haven’t found the right girl yet’ and to suggest to lesbians that they ‘just need the right dick’. The rights of homosexuals depend upon a recognition that a minority of people are attracted to their own sex. Once sex is eliminated from the equation, gay rights are no longer tenable.

The most obvious example of how gay rights have been threatened by trans ideology is that young gay people are disproportionately at risk of surgical ‘correction’. Given that between 80 and 90 per cent of adolescents referred to the NHS Tavistock Clinic were orientated towards their own sex, it is clear that in many cases homosexuality was being treated as gender dysphoria. I am usually mistrustful of accusations of various ‘phobias’ which can be used as a rhetorical technique to discourage disagreement. But if medicalising people for being same-sex attracted doesn’t qualify as homophobic, I’m not sure that anything does.

And so Pride and its accoutrements have come to represent an ideology that seeks not only to erase the foundations of gay rights, but also to re-conceptualise same-sex attraction as a condition that requires medical treatment. When police officers decorate their cars with the Pride colours, when NHS workers display the rainbow lanyard, when schools decorate their halls with bunting in solidarity, they are almost certainly doing so with the noble intention of promoting equal rights. But they are inadvertently promoting a movement whose end goal is the eradication of homosexuality.

This is not to deny that the ‘Progress Pride’ flag and all it represents have been embraced by many gay people. It is clearly the case that a majority have not realised the extent to which the flag has been hijacked for a cause that actively works against their interests. The situation has hardly been helped by prominent celebrities, often now referred to as ‘Vichy gays’, who have cheered on this sinister development. Homosexuals are not immune to the condition of useful idiocy.

Given that Pride has become so divisive, and given that so many lesbians, bisexuals and gay men now consider it to be an essentially hostile enterprise, it would be prudent for corporations and government bodies to stop pretending that there is a consensus on this issue. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. By flying the ‘Progress Pride’ flag, they are taking a side in a highly contentious cultural debate, one that alienates as many gay people as it attracts. Those who are serious about gay rights need to distance themselves from Pride once and for all.

==

When the demand for 'oppression' outstrips the supply.

Time to resist again.

[the-rainbow-lesbian]

I feel like the gay community needs to be more strongly interactive with education on our gay history. we're at a toxic point of revisionist history that won't help younger generations of gays at all in the community. our true gay history needs to be told more

I agree. I don’t know what can be done at this point, the gay and lesbian communities currently fighting the TRA movement is too small and is focusing on immediate damage control.

I know an older lesbian couple (in their 70s) and one of them used to work as a librarian, so I asked her if she knows any books about Stormé DeLarverie, she said no and haven’t even heard of her or her involvement in stonewall, even though they have a rich library of lesbian books so I thought maybe they would know something. it feels like our history in the US has been intentionally suppressed or no proper efforts have been made to preserve it, that’s why it was so easy to perpetuate the Marsha P Johnson myth, it’s almost a fictional character cause Malcom was a gay man and never identified as trans. it’s not like these events happened a century ago or anything some gay activists who were involved or present are still alive like Fred Sargeant, I watched some of his interviews and he refused to take all the credit for co-founding pride, he pointed out that many lesbians were involved in gay rights history and establishing pride but hardly anyone asks or interviews them, no one cares. these are their names btw: Ellen Broidy and Linda Rhodes.

[tubularfem]

>honoring a man who was at Stonewall and the first Pride >Doesn't recognize that those men were literally massively pedophilic and were pederasty advocates and continued to be until feminist lesbians (which you claim to be) began critiquing it. Lol retard your other shit makes sense but you really find yourself defending a MAN LIKE THAT??? The fucking libertarian acid-hitting Beatles listening brains? My nigga, love you, but you need to kys. Like put some respect on the dykes who made people recognize and scorn an abusive oppressive misogynist phenomena (misogynist in a sense that pedophilia is one of the grandest expressions of patriarchal hierarchy) or maybe I just have no idea what i'm talking about anyways the point is gay men are eeeeeeeeevvvvvvvvviiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiillllllllllllllll

are you for real? Lol

Super brave demonizing gay men and using slurs. 10/10.

I literally have LG solidarity in my bio, if you don’t like that just don’t follow me! Easy! (Btw the founding of pride was by two gay men and two lesbians - Fred Sargeant, Craig Rodwell, Linda Rhodes, and Ellen Broidy) I was talking specifically about Fred because he’s the most active online and gets shit every day by homophobes.

I don’t care about a homophobe’s opinion just block me at this point 🤷🏼‍♀️

[womensarts-blog]

Linda Rhodes & Ellen Broidy (R), 1970 by photographer Diana Davies. Lesbian activists, along with gay men-Fred Sargeant & Craig Rodwell, who organised the1st US Pride March, commemorating the Stonewall Uprising, known as "Christopher Street Liberation Day." ♀️🏳️‍🌈

[listening2lesbians]

A Chat with Pride Founder Ellen Broidy — Protest, Life Lessons and Historical Revisionism

A Chat with Pride Founder Ellen Broidy — Protest, Life Lessons and Historical Revisionism

By JD Robertson The Velvet Chronicle “Every now and again, as you’re marching forward, turn around and wave back at us. We’re still here… Much the same way as I needed to acknowledge the shoulders that I stood on, I would like others to acknowledge us. We did a lot of work. And it wasn’t easy.”Last year, Stonewall vet, Fred Sargeant, told me all about his dear friend Ellen Broidy, one of the…

[amphibious-thing]

The Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop

In 1967 Craig Rodwell opened America’s first gay and lesbian bookstore, at 291 Mercer St, NYC. In 1973 He moved the bookshop to 15 Christopher St.

Image details:

1. Craig Rodwell at the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, October 14, 1969, photo by Fred W. McDarrah.

2. Map showing the location of the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop from the invitation to the grand opening weekend, 1967, via the NYPL Digital Collections.

3. Craig Rodwell standing in front of the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, 1969, via NYC LGBT Historical Sites Project.

4. Craig Rodwell and Mei-Mei Sanford at the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, 1970, photo by Diana Davies, via NYC LGBT Historical Sites Project.

5. Jonathan Ned Katz at Gay American History book signing at the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, 1976, via NYC LGBT Historical Sites Project.

6. Craig Rodwel and his mother at the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, 1970s, via NYC LGBT Historical Sites Project.

7. Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop ad in the 1991-1992 Lesbian & Gay Community Services Center Annual Report, via NYC LGBT Historical Sites Project.

8. Graffiti on restroom wall at the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, 1969,  photo by Diana Davies, via the NYPL Digital Collections.

9. Gay Liberation Front member Martha Shelly at the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, 1969, photo by Diana Davies, via NYC LGBT Historical Sites Project.

[sighing-is-a-song]

Happy Pride! Let’s get some things str8

Trans people had nothing to do with the first pride 😁

Black Butch Cis lesbian Stormé DeLarverie started threw the first punch that started the stonewall rebellion. I say rebellion and not riot because that is how Stormé herself referred to it:

“It was a rebellion, it was an uprising, it was a civil rights disobedience – it wasn't no damn riot.”

Two cis gays and two cis lesbians, Craig Rodwell. Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy, and Linda Rhodes, proposed Pride. And then Cis bisexual Brenda Howard organized it. She is even called “the mother of Pride.”

Furthermore Marsha P Johnson was NOT trans.

And Sylvia Rivera doesn’t like being called trans.

Erasing the accomplishments of gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals to fit your narrative is not cute or “woke.” It’s disrespectful and downright homophobic. All of you spreading misinformation should be ashamed.

[coochiequeens]

“We want you to understand what it is to be our kind of outcast—but also to understand our kind of love, to hunger for your own sex. Because unless you understand this, you will continue to look at us with uncomprehending eyes, fake liberal smiles; you will be incapable of loving us.”

– Martha Shelley, “Gay Is Good,” Rat (February 24, 1970), reprinted in Out of the Closets: Voices of Gay Liberation, edited by Karla Jay and Allen Young (1972/1992)

Women Are Human shares with our readers the following excerpt from Martha Shelley’s essay “An Honest History” on the historical negationism around lesbian and gay history since the Stonewall uprising. Her essay appears in the anthology Not Dead Yet: Feminism, Passion, and Women’s Liberation, published this past year by Spinifex Press. Martha Shelley was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1943. She organized the first gay protest march that took place one month after Stonewall, and was a founder of the Gay Liberation Front. She wrote for the GLF’s newspaper, Come Out! and RAT newspaper after the women’s takeover, as well as producing the first lesbian radio show in NYC, Lesbian Nation. In 1974, she moved to California and worked with the Women’s Press Collective until it dissolved. After that she devoted herself to research and writing, and co-parented two sets of children. Currently she lives with her wife Sylvia Allen in Portland, OR, where they run a small urban farm. She is the author of four poetry collections, numerous essays and short stories, and a trilogy of historical fiction about the life of Jezebel, Queen of Israel. Her most recent work can be found at https://ebisupublications.com. For other helpful resources on Shelley’s life and work, see the following:

Sara Toce, “Martha Shelley Reflects on Stonewall, Writing, and Activism,” Windy City Times, May 23, 2012.

Julia Diana Robertson, “Remembering Stormé—The Black Butch Lesbian Who Started the Stonewall Revolution,” The Velvet Chronicle, June 4, 2017.

Julia Diana Robertson, “Honoring a Queen—The Marsha Johnson Story,” The Velvet Chronicle, March 22, 2019.

Martha Shelley, “Lies, Myths, and Stonewall,” Ebisu Publications, July 21, 2019.

Julia Diana Robertson, “Martha Shelley—The Lesbian Who Proposed a Unified Front After Stonewall,” The Velvet Chronicle, August 31, 2020.

An honest history—truth about the past, whether distant or recent—is essential.

[…]

In recent years, I’ve seen the erasure of lesbian and gay activists. And all the work we did for gay liberation is credited to two people: Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson. Even statues are planned to be erected in honor of them in New York. These two are now hailed for having organized the Stonewall Riot and the GLF and even the historic gay occupation of Weinstein Hall at New York University in protest against the administration’s homophobia. All of this is false. I know, because I and the women and men I worked with were there. Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson are today widely celebrated as transgender people of color. However, Rivera identified as a transvestite male, not as transgender. Malcolm, a.k.a. Marsha Johnson, was a self-proclaimed gay man, and drag queen, up until his death in 1992. Johnson deserves to be honored with respect and integrity, not rebranded as a ‘trans-woman’ postmortem. Johnson was probably transgender, though there was no such terminology at the time. Toward the end of his life he was considering raising funds to go abroad for what was then called a sex-change surgery. Nobody led the Stonewall Riots. It was a spontaneous uprising. Neither Rivera nor Johnson appeared on the scene until the riots were well underway. Neither Johnson nor Rivera attended any of the early meetings of GLF in July 1969. I was one of the founders, along with five other women and 13 men. Ellen Broidy and I were among those who called for the occupation of Weinstein Hall in September 1970. Johnson and Rivera were not present. They joined in after a group of us had already entered the building, and it was after the occupation that I first noticed them at GLF meetings. They were inspired by our Weinstein Hall action to start a new group, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR). This was the important work they did and how they should be remembered. Through STAR, Rivera and Johnson labored on behalf of homeless street queens who, like themselves, often had to support themselves through prostitution, often strove to overcome drug addiction, and often found themselves in trouble with the law. They provided shelter and counseling, and visited those in prison. They were heroes in their own right. But the false legends have been widely promulgated in the international press, and give them credit for the work of hundreds of others, and never even mention what they actually accomplished. The city of New York has not built any statues to any of us lesbians or any of the gay men who were involved in GLF. Just those two are the heroes. Stormé DeLarverie, who is considered responsible for starting the first Stonewall Riot on June 28, 1969, after the crowd reacted when she was arrested by police, was a woman of color and a butch lesbian. She doesn’t get a statue either.

These smaller fabrications are perhaps not as dangerous as the ones that lead us into war. But what is dangerous is that, by depicting one or two chosen individuals as great leaders and expunging the rest of us from public memory, they strip us all of the knowledge that we ordinary human beings have made history and can do so again. Excerpted from “An Honest History” by Martha Shelley, from Not Dead Yet: Feminism, Passion, and Women’s Liberation, edited by Renate Klein and Susan Hawthorne, pp. 378-380. Copyright © 2021 by Martha Shelley. Reprinted by permission of Spinifex Press.

“ I am still perplexed about the transsexual issue. On the one hand, it is clearly subsumed under the right to control your own body. On the other, the essence of GLF thought (and where it intersected with feminist thought) was that we had the right to be anything we wanted with the bodies we had. That we could reclaim our bodies from a society that denigrated them, and learn to love them. That the whole gamut of human expression—clothing, gesture, emotion, sexuality—was permitted to anyone. Now it seems that there is considerable social pressure for young lesbians who would have been butch in the old days to alter their bodies, chemically and surgically, and become men. (I don’t know whether effeminate men feel the same pressure.) Nobody knows what the long-term consequences of these medical interventions will be”. – Martha Shelley, “Our Passion Shook the World,” Smash the Church, Smash the State! The Early Years of Gay Liberation, edited by Tommi Avicolli Mecca (2009)

[lgbfightback]

The Christopher Street Liberation Day March was the first pride parade, held in NYC on June 28, 1970, the first anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. It was organized by lesbians Ellen Broidy and Linda Rhodes, gay men Craig Rodwell and Fred Sargeant, and bisexual woman Brenda Howard.

Happy LGB Day of Visibility! Share your favorite LGB icons with us here and on Twitter, using the hashtags #LGBDayofVisibility #LGBIcon

[thingsifeelicantsayhere]

About Kink at Pride

One: Thanks SO Much to the person who decided to @ me about 6 different times after I already mentioned how I can’t reply. Edit: Just read them! Thank you for linking me to the same article twice. I saw that one to, and at least 7 others! I closed out of all of them. Read on to see why!! And I call everyone hon, hon - sorry if I offended you!

Two: Kink at Pride thoughts, below the cut. TL;DR: Yes, I was wrong on certain things. Does that change my opinion? Nope! Still think Kink shouldn’t be at Pride.

Note: an entire history of gay Pride is listed below, starting with the Reminder marches. I started there because it felt like the logical place to start, given the organizers of Pride participating in those as well. It’s a LONG one guys, so strap in.

So, starting out: Gay Rights Timeline (it’s brief, because I don’t have an entire night of getting triggered and showing I can research things)

July 4, 1965: “Gay rights activists gathered outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia carrying picket signs and demanding legislation that would secure the rights of LGBT Americans. Referencing the self-evident truth mentioned in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” the activists called for legislative changes that would improve the lives of American homosexuals. Activist Craig Rodwell conceived of the event following an April 17, 1965 picket at the White House led by Frank Kameny and members of the New York City and Washington, D.C. chapters of the Mattachine Society, Philadelphia’s Janus Society and the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitus. The groups operated under the collective name East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO). It was called the “Annual Reminder” to remind the American people that a substantial number of American citizens were denied the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

June 28, 1969: A police raid on Stonewall [a mafia run gay bar] occurs, leading to the Stonewall Riots. Marsha P. Johnson, a “transexual drag queen” and known sex worker, frequented the Stonewall Bar, being the first drag queen to go to what had previously been a bar only for gay men. Police raided the bar to check for unlicensed liquor sales, but also to arrest those who were in violation of the state’s “gender-appropriate clothing statute” (which meant that any female-presenting people in the bar who passed as female had their genitals checked by female police officers, and female-presenting people who did not pass were arrested). Fed up with harassment from the police, the community around the bar became agitated. After a policeman hit Stormé DeLarverie, a “dyke” lesbian on the head while pushing her into his police van, the crowd grew violent. Police barricaded themselves inside the Stonewall Inn for safety, which was soon set on fire. It is still debated whether police or the rioters began a fire in the building, but most sources claim the rioters began the fire. Marsha P. Johnson became well known as the one who “Threw the first brick at Stonewall” (though she herself has stated that she came late to the riots).

That night, while returning home, Craig Rodwell passed Stonewall, and alerted the press in order for there to be news coverage of the historic event. Rodwell was a well known activist at the time, one of the organizers of ECHO, sitting in on protests, opening the first Gay Bookstore (dedicated to Oscar Wilde), and of course, helping to organize the first Gay Pride Parade in the bookstore.

Five Months after the Riots: Among those who proposed the Gay Pride parades were Craig Rodwell and his partner Fred Sargeant (who later tried to claim transgender people and POC did nothing in the riots), Ellen Broidy (former member of the Gay Liberation Front, Lavender Menace, and Radicalesbians), and Linda Rhodes (genuinely having trouble finding information on her; I just know she was friends with Ellen and Craig). Together, they made a proposal for an annual march on the last Saturday in June where there were “no dress or age regulations.” Their proposal was given at the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO) in Philadelphia.

After the proposal was made, Brenda Howard (a life-long bisexual and openly sex-positive activist, as well as anti-war feminist “radical” by some sources) helped plan it. Making use of the Oscar Wilde mailing list, word got out. It was Howard’s idea to turn this march into a week-long celebration. Also on this committee was L. Craig Schoonmaker, who had been arrested the previous year for talking to another male. He coined the term “Pride” for the slogan of the parade. (Note: L. Craig Schoonmaker was an INCREDIBLY problematic person, and discussing just how stupid that story is really deserves its own post – needless to say, I’m a little sad he’s the one who coined “Gay Pride” as the slogan.) This was the one and only contribution he had to the parade.

June 28, 1970: The first Parade, organized by Chicago Gay Liberation. The first parade was originally called the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, named after the street where Stonewall Inn was. These were different from the Annual Reminder marches, where those in the gay community “walk in an even line, wear professional clothing, and do not display affection for a partner of the same gender” (Waters, 1). “The march was 51 blocks long from west of Sixth Avenue at Waverly Place, in Greenwich Village, all the way to Sheep’s Meadow in Central Park, where activists held a “Gay-in.” Borrowing a technique that had been popularized by the Civil Rights Movement, the “Gay-in” was both a protest and a celebration.”

From there, there were more parades of course. But as promised, here’s all my research on Kink at Pride.

….

I would provide sources. I would share what I tried to look at for multiple hours tonight. But the fact of the matter is, this is the part where I got triggered, nearly threw up, and had to exit most tabs.

What I managed to find out: Yes, Kink has been a thing at Pride for a long time. I do not know the extent of this, but I do know at the very least (due to some image sourcing) that the 1980s saw men in leather that covered most of their skin (it was not inredibly revealing). I was incorrect about this fact, so shit on me I guess. Now, what all I saw was just… men in leather sometimes. I did NOT in fact see people on leashes, naked with only a bandana around their legs to hide genitals, or muzzles (as I have seen in modern-day prides). I saw people who took pride in being leather gays without doing strict sexual acts – costumes, not whipping their partners in broad daylight or walking them like dogs, which is sexually gratifying for the sub (which I have also seen at modern day prides).

Note: I have not personally been to a Pride parade, but I have seen pictures and videos of modern day prides showing these acts. For obvious reasons, I am not including them here.

The reason for the previous inclusion of kink in pride seems to have grown from the fact that, for many LGBT+ people, they are both kinky and LGBT+ in some way. I saw numerous sources talking about how being Kinky is just part of being LGBT, and how pride in being LGBT+ also means pride in being Kinky.

I deadass could not look at anymore sources because I am so physically nauseated by it, and reading about this (as I mentioned numerous times to every single person who DMed me tonight telling me to “Read fucking sources”) triggers me. But can’t stop getting screamed at unless I “do my research” right?? Joy of all joys.

So what do I think about getting rid of kink at Pride?

I still think we should move to phase it out.

Reasoning:

1.      The original people who thought up Pride were not the best. They thought up Pride through transphobic, sexist, radial feminist, insert-other-dated-views here. And I don’t blame them – it was the 1970s. But I feel that, by the 2020s, the idea of “Pride” should have changed. And it has! I saw that Ellen B. discussed how Pride had changed “Far” from what was originally intended in the interview with her (raising the entirely valid concerns that I agree with that Capitalism has too strong of a foothold in current pride). I just think that it should change more, to fit with what is currently needed.

2.      This leads to my next point: what is currently needed? Back in the 1970s, Gay Pride was about having pride in, well, sex. Pride was based so strongly in having sex with the same-sex, being deviant, being different. But that isn’t what Gay Pride is anymore, or at least, Gay Pride includes much more than just sex now. Pride is meant to be an inclusive place for all LGBT+ communities – including fucking asexuals. Like me. See, when researching all of this, I had a hell of a time, because I’m “damaged goods” so to speak. I’ve been hurt through sexual stuff in the past, and yes, that has probably influenced my asexuality. Am I against sex? No! I enjoy it! With my partner. And that’s basically it. Am I okay seeing sex stuff? Yes! Most of the time. On a consentual basis. Would I probably be okay seeing it at Pride? IDK Maybe? But it would spark bad memories, to the point that I would rather avoid Pride, avoid going to the Big Event™ that everyone always says You Have To Go To that would make me feel validated… than go to it. Because of Kink Gear. And I have had other people contact me tonight saying the same thing – they can’t go to Pride because you Kinksters. They can’t because of triggers, or the fact that it’s uncomfortable, or the fact that “well, my parents aren’t homophobic, but it’s too adult.”

3.      “Okay, so make a PG Space – we were here first.” “It’s not inclusive if Kink isn’t there.” “Children won’t even understand the kink in the first place.” Here’s my problem with all of this. Kink already has spaces, but PG spaces don’t exist in this much openness. See, I’ve always heard of kinky spaces. Expos, dungeons, etc. I’ve always heard of safe-spaces for kinky gays. Including Pride. But I rarely hear of PG Spaces for Gay People. I rarely hear of PG spaces at all. It’s hard to exist in this world without people making it about sex, so much so that I find myself often getting stuck in Children’s Fandoms, Children’s Spaces, because they’re the only spaces that haven’t been touched by sex stuff. So we need PG Spaces for Gay People - and yes, we COULD make a PG thing for gay people. I think that’s a great idea. I think a parade sounds nice. A PG Parade for Gay People!!! It sounds perfect, like a perfect solution ----- except now I’m not being Inclusive Enough.

We’ve wrapped around to my big problem with Kink at Pride. It always boils down to not being inclusive of Gay People. But the issue is… By keeping Kink at Pride, we aren’t being inclusive of a lot more people.

Banning Kink at Pride: We have gays, lesbians, trans folks, queer folks, people who still aren’t sure, allies, asexuals, aromantics, children, and yes, kinky people who are not wearing fetish gear. You can still come to pride and have pride in your sexuality. You have now excluded anyone who cannot stand to not wear leather/chains/leashes in a sexual manner for a few hours.

Keeping Kink at Pride: We have Kinky Gays, Kinky Lesbians, Kinky Trans Folks, Queer Trans Folks, People who aren’t sure but Are Kinky, Kinky Allies, a handful of Asexuals/Aros, please god don’t bring children, and kinky peope in fetish gear. You have now excluded anyone who is uncomfortable with sex, triggered by sex, or minors.

I assure you, the amount of people who are exluded keeping Pride Kinky is more than if you could just not be sexual for a few hours. Literally. I’m not saying Kink isn’t valid – fuck, dude, I’m kinky. But there is a reason sex isn’t meant to be public. Consent is important, and I’m shocked that people who insist they know about kinks and BDSM don’t understand that.

Pride has changed. In a lot of ways, not for the better, but in some ways, yes, for the better. It’s bigger, with more people, and more inclusiveness. But your idea of making a “PG Pride over there away from ours” --- well, where do you think we should? How can we do it without getting screamed at for not being inclusive? When can we do it without people screaming at us for “taking up too much time with being gay”? We already have a full month and a whole parade – and clearly everyone should be okay with the kinky shit that goes on.

My suggestion is this: Have Pride be PG, and have the Kinky Pride things isolated to Private Kink Party things that aren’t publicied on television because we don’t need people to know more about our sex lives – the majority of gay people just want to exist now. Those in 1970 needed to be loud, proud, and yes, openly kinky – but we don’t need that now. With keeping sex stuff private, you can still celebrate your Kinky Pride with all those who are capable of celebrating that Pride, while those who can’t, don’t need to be subjected to it. Because the fact of the matter is, Pride Parades are subjected to the eyes of the world – the most public thing you can have right now as a gay person. Subjecting people to nonconsentual kink is not the way to make people approve of sex work or kinky pride. It makes them rage against it. And I would rather be able to work for sex positivity through conversation and hard work, rather than alienating anyone who speaks against it (and those who speak for it).

 Some of the sources I used (not all - again, no kink sources here, because I closed all of them. I couldn’t handle it.)

http://www.phillygaypride.org/annual-reminders-50th-anniversary/

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/lgbtq-history-month-road-america-s-first-gay-pride-march-n917096

https://www.history.com/topics/gay-rights/the-stonewall-riots

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/when-was-first-gay-pride-parade-origin

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/first-pride-marches-photos-1-180972379/

https://greenwichvillage.nyc/blog/2019/06/13/remembering-craig-rodwell/

https://phaylen.medium.com/stonewall-vet-fred-sargeant-attempts-to-erase-black-trans-activists-from-history-2e82ac59e96f

https://addressesproject.com/memory/ellen-broidy

https://www.them.us/story/brenda-howard

https://talbertario.medium.com/pride-and-prejudice-the-craig-schoonmaker-story-122c8a4c1339

https://www.history.com/news/how-activists-plotted-the-first-gay-pride-parades

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsha_P._Johnson

 One last thought, after the sources, because I work in Analogy the best:

Imagine this amazing bakery. This bakery sells a lot of cakes: chocolate cakes, strawberry ones, blueberry ones. This bakery gets national press coverage. Now, from day one, this bakery has used gluten in every single cake. It’s a time honored tradition! And every single Cake Eater goes to this bakery. It becomes a rite of passage, to the point that some people even say “You aren’t really a cake eater if you haven’t gone to this bakery.”

But as the bakery gets more and more popular, people start saying “Hey. We need some gluten free cakes too. Can you please keep the gluten away from our cakes?”

“NO!!! If you want gluten free, go somewhere else!”

“But everyone else only has gluten cakes. Even when they say they’re gluten free, they still bake other gluten cakes. Please, we know how to make the gluten free cakes taste just the same as gluten cakes – we’re only getting rid of the one thing. It’ll be taste almost exactly the same, and you can make those other cakes, so long as they don’t touch our cake. You can still enjoy your cakes. We just ask that we can enjoy ours.”

“NO! Go make your own then!”

“But… This is the bakery with the most famous cakes. We could always make our own, but the world will never know about it, because YOU’RE the biggest bakery in the world. And of those few who have tried, they’ve been yelled at for not using gluten because they aren’t inclusive. We wanted to be able to enjoy cake with everyone else – we just need our cake to be a little different.”

“If I make YOU Gluten Free cakes, that means the Gluten won’t be included!”

“That’s the point – gluten is bad for us. If we have gluten near us, it will actively hurt us.”

“No. This is a gluten bakery only. We refuse to change.”

And so, those who were going to enjoy the cakes there – who wanted to enjoy the cakes there – couldn’t. And even those who would try to make their own gluten-free cakes were overshadowed by the behemoth that was the gluten bakery.

That is how this entire night has felt.

Night, y’all.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” ― George Orwell, 1984

Malcolm:

Did not start the Stonewall revolt. There was no one event, but an accumulation of episodes of harassment including multiple arrests (such as Stormé DeLarverie) and strip-searches, which built up into an unleashed mob revolt.

Was not even there when the Stonewall revolt began. He himself says he arrived at about 2am and the fighting and the fire were already well underway.

Was not "trans." he describes himself as a "boy" and a drag queen.

If you're wondering, the religious parallel is the Crucifixion. It's ahistorical, there's no evidence it happened, but it's pushed, as an article of faith, as being "true" in order to fabricate a "debt" owed and an obligation by others to repay that mythical debt.

New York's pride was organized by Craig Rodwell, Fred Sargeant, Ellen Broidy, and Linda Rhodes. Michaels had nothing to do with it.

It's interesting that the Dems' official account believes that gay men and women were not organizing and advocating for their own interests and rights until a drugged out, homeless, prostitute and pedophile pimp drag queen came along. That's what they think the legacy of gay rights and its core values are about.

[queerasfact]

We propose that a demonstration be held annually on the last Saturday in June in New York City to commemorate the 1969 spontaneous demonstrations on Christopher Street...

Ellen Broidy’s resolution to the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations, November 1969 (quoted in David Carter’s Stonewall: the riots that sparked the gay revolution)

learn more about stonewall and the birth of pride with queer as fact: a queer history podcast

[tubularfem]

Don’t let the propaganda fool you

Gay people were responsible for gay liberation in the US.

Gay people started Pride and were absolutely instrumental during the Stonewall riots. We do not owe trans people anything, nor did they GIVE us anything. We were allies, but we fought for our own liberation (and this was during a time that most trans people were homosexual males).

Storme Delarverie, a black butch lesbian is widely credited with being the one who ”started” Stonewall, by asking the crowd if they were going to do anything.

The first Parade was organized by two gay men, Fred Sargeant and Craig Rodwell, and two lesbians, Ellen Broidy and Linda Rhodes.

Gay history is made by gay people! They didn’t just sit around and twiddle their thumbs, and I’m tired of historical appropriation and misinformation.

Trying to reframe a gay rights movement as not led by gay people is dishonest and ahistorical at best, homophobic erasure at worst.