28 June 2016 - 12:55 PM
47 Years After Stonewall: The Struggle Beyond Marriage Equality
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teleSUR English examines the origins of Gay Pride, speaking with Alok Vaid-Menon, an advocate for trans and gender non-conforming people of color at Audre Lorde Project and an administrator with the popular Facebook page DarkMatter. This article was originally published on June 28, 2015 and has been updated.

“There is no pride in how LGBTQ immigrants are treated in this country and there can be no celebration with an administration that has the ability to keep us detained and in danger or release us to freedom.” - Jennicet Gutiérrez

It is hard to imagine police raids of LGBTQI bars in countries like the United States today, but 47 years ago – when the acronym was still unheard of – it is precisely what catalysed the movement for sexual and gender liberation. What we know today as “Pride” was born out of riots ignited on June 28, 1969 after the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a rare underground space where gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex people could dance and mingle in New York City.

An often forgotten yet important historical detail is that, based on multiple testimonies, a black transgender woman named Marsha P. Johnson was the one who “really started it.” Similarly, the Puerto Rican transgender activist Sylvia Rivera said that the uprising that birthed the contemporary LGBTQI movement was in fact “started by the street queens of that era.”

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While transgender women of color have been at the forefront of the struggle, literally often being the ones receiving the hits and punches, their legacy is often erased during the annual commemoration of the Stonewall uprising, now celebrated as "Gay Pride."

It has become a common assumption that where homosexuality can be freely practiced and marriage equality is legal, LGBT liberation has been achieved. Yet the the kind of acceptance and victories gained by gay and lesbian people today has historically come at the expense of excluding the "T" from its acronym and neglecting LGBTQI people subjected to racism and poverty.

 

 

This dates back to the 1970s, when gay, lesbian and transgender people started to organize themselves. At the time there was already a deliberate and conscious awareness among white gay men that liberation depended on convincing the heterosexual establishment they were “just like them,” with the exception of sexual orientation. Inclusion, in other words, relied on the very exclusion of everything that defied norms and ideas of respectability, like anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, anti-racism and fighting transphobia.

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Activists like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were unpopular and kicked out of what was called the Gay Liberation Front precisely because they fought not only for gay rights, but also for racial, economic and trans justice. None of these forces of exclusion could be seperated for them since they lived the violence of these very intersections everyday.

“A lot of people do this strange thing where they separate 'trans' from 'racial justice' and 'economic justice.' It's important to understand that trans people of color lie at the nexus of multiple oppressions and therefore experience the brunt of racism and economic oppression,” Alok Vaid-Menon, an advocate for trans and gender non-conforming people of color at Audre Lorde Project, told teleSUR English.

The Audre Lorde Project is among the few organizations that continue the political legacy of Johnson and Rivera, who together erected a shelter for homeless trans and queer youth called the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) in 1970.

“Trans issues don't just look like 'trans specific' campaigns: they look like ending prisons, ending detention centers, making health care free and accessible, giving people stable housing and employment. With the turn to neoliberal capitalism we're seeing a complete assault on social services and privatization of basic resources necessary to survive. Obviously this is going to hurt trans people the most”, Vaid-Menon added.

 

 

Transgender undocumented migrants in the United States are particularly vulnerable with 75 transgender people detained every night and subsequently denied medical care, including HIV medication and hormone treatment, while also facing risks of sexual abuse. Transgender people further make up one of every 500 detainees and one out 5 times the confirmed victims of reported sexual abuse, according to a Fusion investigation.

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“There is no pride in how LGBTQ immigrants are treated in this country and there can be no celebration with an administration that has the ability to keep us detained and in danger or release us to freedom,” undocumented trans woman Jennicet Gutiérrez wrote for Washington Blade.

Last year, Gutiérrez interrupted Obama’s speech at a White House LBGTQI event for neglecting his role in detaining trans undocumented women. Gutiérrez was booed by the crowd and escorted after shouting “President Obama, release all LGBTQ immigrants from detention,”

The complete neglect of these urgent problems faced by the most vulnerable is why some transgender and gender non-conforming people of color have turned their backs to the annual parade and have been organizing their own marches, also called Trans Day of Action.

According to Vaid-Menon, “the major difference is that Pride is a corporate sponsored event which is largely white and affluent. Trans Day of Action is one of the only spaces where trans women of color are invited, centered, and made to feel safe. We have an explicit political agenda, whereas Pride is just one big corporate parade.”

 

While it is possible to contain these issues to a U.S. context, similarities can also be found in countries often considered LGBTQI safe-havens, like the Netherlands and the UK. In the Netherlands one third of transgender people live below the poverty line and 75 percent has reportedly considered suicide. While projecting an image of LGBTQI paradise, the Netherlands also often refuse people who seek asylum in the country based on their sexuality or gender identity. In 2013, a Dutch court rejected the asylum application of three men because they allegedly failed to "prove” their sexuality.

Meanwhile, in the UK a report found that 88 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people had experienced some form of physical and/or verbal violence. Transgender people are disproportionately affected according to the report, stating they can be victims of violence up to 50 times in one year. Similar to the Dutch case, detained asylum-seekers feel often forced to “prove” their sexuality by showing pictures of them having homosexual intercourse in order to get asylum.

While transgender women of color have been at the forefront of the struggle, literally often being the ones receiving the hits and punches, their legacy is often erased during the annual commemoration of the Stonewall uprising, now celebrated as ‘Gay Pride.’

The reports and statistics come as newly-released studies continue to find that even the most “developed nations” transgender and other gender nonconforming students continue to face discrimination. Earlier in June, the United Nations released a press release, saying that violence motivated by homophobia and transphobia “constitute serious human rights violations, often perpetrated with impunity,” while another report published by New York Civil Liberties Union found that New York’s transgender students face “relentless harassment, threats, and even violence,” despite the city’s famous Pride parades.

For many queer, trans and gender non-conforming people of color facing these realities, having the possibility to eat wedding cake might not be what comes to mind when their lives are too often at peril merely for who they are. For them “love wins,” not when gay marriage is legal, but when they can safely walk the streets without fears of getting harassed, killed or incarcerated; when mobility is free for all regardless of migration status; when there is free and inclusive healthcare ; when they have equal access to jobs and housing without discrimination; when they can be their true and authentic selves without their existence questioned.
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