Last week I wrote about the Stonewall Uprising Revisionist History since then national blogs have taken up the cause. The comments can be broken down into categories – those that are outraged about the editorial and those who say it “no big deal.”
Well I feel it is a “Big Deal” because of Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and the argument by many of those who favor the non-inclusive bill saying that we have not earned our right to be included (as if civil rights is something that has to be earned) in the ENDA law. By writing us out of the history, it lends legitimacy to their argument, so we must challenge any attempt to write us out of history.
This was not the first time that we were written out of history and pushed aside; “Queers Without Borders” has a good historic film clip from a PBS show called “Question of Equality” with footage of Sylvia Rivera on stage at the 1973 New York Pride festival.
Less we forget… here is a short list of events that shaped modern trans-history:
1965 -- Philadelphia’s Dewey’s Lunch Uprising Counter
1967 -- San Francisco’s Compton’s Cafeteria Uprising
1969 -- New York’s Stonewall Uprising - Sylvia Rivera was one of the rioters who took part in the uprising along with our gay and lesbians brothers and sisters.
1969 -- Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) - Sylvia Rivera was on of the founders of these organizations and was forced out because she didn’t fit the image that the organizations wanted portray.
1970 -- Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) - Sylvia Rivera was one of the founders of STAR.
1973 -- New York Pride - Sylvia Rivera forced her way on stage to protest the exclusion of “Drag Queens” from the Pride.
1975 -- Minneapolis passed a groundbreaking ordinance protecting "affectional preference" and defining it as "having or manifesting an emotional or physical attachment to another consenting person or persons, or having or projecting a self-image not associated with one's biological maleness or femaleness."
1979 -- National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights – once again the trans-community was told that we were not welcome
1993 -- The Transsexual Menace
1993 -- TransActivists working for many years with Gay and Lesbian activists, successfully pass an anti-discrimination law in the State of Minnesota protecting transsexual and transgendered people along with Gays and Lesbians.
1993 -- Jessica Xavier founded It’s Time, America!
1995 -- Riki Wilchins founded the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition GenderPAC
1995 -- Action Alert: EDNA to lobby for a gender inclusive bill
1999 -- National Transgender Advocacy Coalition (NTAC) founded.
2003 -- National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) founded
Our activism spans more than four decades and we cannot let our history be rewritten by the likes of DaBrow and Rep. Barney Frank.
References:
http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2008/06/monicas-ne-transpride-march-speech.html#links
http://queerswithoutborders.com/wpmu/blog/2008/06/09/historical-footage-of-sylvia-rivera-and-the-lesbian-backlash/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Rivera
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Transvestite_Action_Revolutionaries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riki_Wilchins
http://www.qrd.org/qrd/trans/1995/action.alert.trans.inclusion.in.enda-09.15.95
http://www.3dcom.com/tgfs/docs/rikipt1.html
http://www.jenellerose.com/htmlpostings/20th_century_transgender.htm
http://www.transhistory.net/history/TH_Jessica_Xavier.html
http://www.humanrights.state.mn.us/rsonline12/genderidentity.html
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