We would not be able to celebrate or recognize this month without Trans women of color, specifically black trans women like Marsha P Johnson who threw the first brick, and Stormé Delarverie, a black lesbian who threw the first punch during the stonewall riots. A riot against police brutality. The very same brutality that we are still experiencing and protesting today. White gays please recognize that your white privilege is not cancelled out simply bc you are gay. Remember if you’re sad that you can’t attend pride festivals and concerts this year that there is a fight we absolutely have no excuse not standing in solidarity with. A fight for the lives that allow us the freedom to live our own!
Chris, David B. Feinberg, John Weir, and Wayne Kawadler supporting their friends from the sidelines during the First Dyke March in Washington DC, 1993 | ph: Porter Gifford
John Weir is a writer and activist who collaborated with ACT UP, and most recently published the book Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me in 2020. Wayne Kawadler now works as Director of Community Relations at Lenox Health Greenwich Village, where he continues to advocate for women, LGBT people and HIV/AIDS patients. David B. Feinberg was a writer, activist, and member of ACT UP, known for his book Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone. He would pass away a year later in 1994 due to AIDS related complications.
I’m reading The Deviants War: The Homosexual vs The United States of Americaandthe entire point of gay pride as a concept comes from police raids on bars, clubs, public restrooms, etc where gays were humiliated and outed in the newspapers (sometimes with their addresses!) and had careers ruined and lives upended by being associated with perversion and vice squads and all that and they responded by going “no I’m proud” and took that pride to the streets in defiance of the huge mechanism of shame that existed to oppress the gay community into obscurity and so the fact that people are now trying to apply conservative dogma to pride parades to make them “safe for children” or in other words “safe for people with oppressive conservative values” is simply insane
