The other day I was sitting around a table with women my age and the topic of the Stonewall Riots came and one the of the women said it was the beginning of the Gay revolution (I could have commented on several areas of that statement like it wasn’t a “riot” it was an “uprising” or that there were many other demonstrations around the country before Stonewall) and said that I didn’t like to label Stonewall as “Gay” but rather LGBT. A couple of the questioned why, they say nothing wrong with using “Gay” as in LGBT and my reply was it writes out of history all the lesbians and trans people who took part in the uprising.
After a discussion about it I think I brought them around to seeing why I prefer LGBT to “Gay.”
What do you think?
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I have always thought that folks who haven't been activists for years, the news media and some in GAY INC were just plain lazy to use the word GAY instead of LGBT. Either that or they just don't know the hard fight that activists in the LBTI communities have had to go through to be known. Gay indeed was used at one time for everyone but I thought that we had grown up from that. I cringed when the media starting calling all of us gay such as in gay marriage and very few in that movement stood up and corrected them. Using the term Gay not only writes out many from the Stonewall uprising but dishonors those who have been in the trenches and battlefields for many years. It also dishonors the many activists who have fought hard, knocking and kicking down doors for a place in a movement on their terms.
ReplyDeleteIts a shame and I am going to say there is no excuse for people to not know ourstories as there are plenty of books, research, movements that have corrected the errors, ripped off the straight jackets, broken the chains, and gave us all room to breath.
But I guess some folks just don't get it and heaven forbid they ever lead a movement.