The struggle for LGBTQ rights is ongoing.
Every month in June, cities around the world throw giant pride parades, including the one
here in Toronto.
These parades began because of a massive riot in New York in 1969.
That’s the story of today, the uprising which sparked the modern gay rights movement.
Hi, I’m Tristan, and this is Step Back.
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Just a heads up, this is going to be a story which contains violence directed at LGBTQ+
people.
If that is not something you wanna watch, I understand.
History gets dark sometimes.
Let’s begin the story of the Stonewall riots with a bit of context.
We need to understand just what life was like to be an LGBTQ person in the mid-20th century.
I think I mentioned in my last video on gay life in the US, that there was a form of benign
neglect towards gay communities which began to collapse in the 1930s.
Well, after the chaos and upheaval of the Second World War, this got even worse.
I think I already mentioned the Lavender Scare, a subject I’m covering next month.
This crackdown was part of a post-war panic towards groups like homosexuals, communists,
anarchists or really anyone too different for Americans to be comfortable.
During this period of anxiety, the US fired thousands of soldiers and hundreds of more
government employees for practising homosexuality.
The FBI kept a list of “known homosexuals” and often used it for blackmail purposes.
They spent tons of manpower on hunting down gay establishments, and crack down on any
space LGBTQ people were welcomed.
Crossdressing was outlawed, city governments would perform sweeps of known gay hangouts
to hunt for people, and several professors were fired for being gay.
This brutal attack on gay life in America resulted in many LGBTQ people experiencing
violence, anxiety, humiliation, loss of jobs, and even prison time.
This drove many LGBTQ people to enter the closet and hide a considerable part of their
lives from the world.
The American Psychological Association declared being gay was a mental disorder, based on
really nothing.
It wouldn't be removed until the 1970s.
Between this, supporting torture during the war on terror, and having a hideous citation
style puts the APA in my bad books.
Seriously, Chicago or go home.
This designation of homosexuality as a disorder allowed for the medical profession to force
some unfortunate LGBTQ people into forced institutionalisation, which isn’t great
even today, but this was back when they did electroshock therapy on the regular.
Yes I know they still do it today, but it's different and for different reasons.
Though there was some pushback.
With the help of some prominent Communists.
Homosexual rights activist groups began to pop up around the country, starting in LA
and eventually making its way to the east coast.
The struggle was an uphill fight, the US postal service refused to mail their magazines, and
threats from the government were ubiquitous.
These organisations acted as a way for LGBTQ people to educate, organise, and debate how
to fight for their civil rights.
This was throughout the context of the 50s and 60s with many other significant social
justice projects such as the civil rights and anti-war movements.
A lot of these organisations, dubbed homophile groups, tried to play a form of respectability
politics.
This is when a group works to show how they can be just like the society oppressing them
by showing off how ordinary they are.
Usually, this comes in the form of policing the behaviours of their own group.
They wanted to ensure the cishet world they were just average folks.
This was an excellent idea and all, but in practice, this threw many LGBTQ people under
the bus, namely those who didn’t dress or act like the gender norms of the time.
So many trans men and women, transvestites, and the more masculine women and effeminate
men didn't get much help.
And now we need to go back to New York.
I mentioned in my last video that gay communities existed all over the megacity, but in the
50s and 60s, the gay community survived in the neighbourhood of Greenwich Village.
Beatniks like Ned Flanders’ parents moved in and the place became a bohemian place of
art, and criticism of traditional society.
In the early 60s, the city of New York’s mayor tried to crack down on the network of
underground gay clubs and bars.
Police openly broke entrapment laws, often taking the flimsiest excuses to arrest anyone
they could of secret homosexuality.
What also threatened the community, was many bars which LGBTQ people congregated in were
losing their licenses.
There really wasn't a good legal way to fight it, and these spaces were the only small pockets
of safety, where these people could be themselves.
They weren't even nice bars, most of them were owned by the mob who made more money
extorting the wealthier customers than the booze, but Stonewall and other similar gay
bars were all they had.
One of these places was the Stonewall Inn.
Converted to a gay bar in 1966, Stonewall functioned much like those gay clubs of the
olden days.
They paid off the police and operated without any liquor licence to not tip anyone off.
To stop undercover cops, you had to be a regular to get in.
They even had special lights they'd turn on in case the fuzz was coming so everyone in
there knew to act as heterosexual as possible before the cops arrived.
They kept their liquor supply hidden in the walls.
These were necessary precautions.
The police raided on average about once a month and would come in to arrest anyone not
wearing their assigned at birth gender’s clothing, or sometimes even just not wearing
ENOUGH of the right dress.
Leading up to the riots, however, these raids were getting much more frequent.
On June 28th, 1969, 8 police officers raided the Stonewall Inn.
The owners were not tipped off about the raid.
This raid didn’t go like it usually did.
The transvestites refused to go with the police officers to the bathroom to verify their genitals,
and the clients refused to give up their IDs.
Male police officers groped the lesbian customers.
The patrol wagons used to take the arrested away took too long to arrive.
Those sent out on the street refused to leave.
They crowded around the bar and watched this authoritarian power trip.
Soon, more than a hundred people had gathered outside of the Stonewall.
Some customers performed for the police egged on by the crowd.
The first wagon arrived, but the second was delayed because of a radio problem.
The number of bystanders now outnumbered those arrested and way outnumbered the police.
As the police took away the employees, someone in the crowd screamed “gay power”, and
“we shall overcome”, slogans from the civil rights movement.
The hostility against the fist of the state was getting hot.
A police officer shoved a transvestite who then hit the officer back with her purse.
People began to throw bottles at the wagon.
Police responded by attacking the crowd, who weren’t going to take this attack on their
community any longer.
They tried to flip over the wagon.
They began to throw coins at the cops, mocking their taking of bribes.
They found cinder blocks, and the police were overwhelmed.
They barricaded themselves inside the Stonewall, pulling guns on the crowd before backup arrived.
Later reports say this was not organised.
This was a community which had had enough of the violence, repression, and hatred.
I mean, what is a riot but the last desperate cry of the voiceless?
The police were humiliated.
This was the one oppressed group they felt they could attack with impunity.
Racial minority groups and protestors were already fighting back, and this was the time
the LGBT communities did as well.
The police arrested anyone they could get their hands on.
They tried to form a phalanx to disperse the crowd now openly mocking them.
The chaos in the streets sometimes is referred to as almost cartoonish.
They'd taunt the police, get out of sight, and appear again behind them like something
out of Bugs Bunny.
They clashed with the police until almost four in the morning.
All the most prominent newspapers in New York had been called in to cover the riot, and
news of the siege covered the city.
Rumours and anxiety flooded Greenwich village.
Visitors to Stonewall wrote graffiti calling for gay rights.
The next night, a second riot broke out.
The same people were joined by new allies, tourists, and more than a few police provocateurs
who are police who join riots to provoke them into more violence and justify more draconian
countermeasures.
Thousands gathered around the Stonewall, which oddly enough reopened that night.
The police came again, and another street battle continued well into the night.
Everyone was on edge over the next few days.
Violence broke out again, there was looting, respectability politics people popped the
monocles.
It was a whole thing.
Oh hey real quick before we continue, there’s a link in the description for the Step Back
Slack community if you wanna join in.
Stonewall is famous because of what came out of it.
At a big gathering in Philadelphia, gay couples were spotted holding hands, and their by the
books demonstration got more press coverage than ever before.
Playing by the cishet world’s rules wasn’t going to cut it anymore.
The respectability politics was now too little too slow for gay liberation.
Those who fought the police at Stonewall, or were inspired by their act of defiance
against repression were now committed.
In their own words, you bet your sweet ass they’re revolting.
The local paper, the village voice in New York refused to print the word Gay in their
text, so New York activists started their own newspaper simply called Gay.
They began to borrow tactics from other major new left movements of the time.
They soon organised under the banner of the Gay Liberation Front, the first group to use
Gay in the name.
Many disaffected, more pragmatic members splintered off into the Gay Activists Alliance, because
if you’ve ever hung out with activists…
this is kinda inevitable.
These groups would corner politicians and pressured the Democrats to stop the raids
on gay nightclubs after one raid left a young man impaled on a fence.
Things got significant on the first anniversary of the riots.
LGBTQ activist groups in major cities around the world participated in the first Gay Pride
Parades.
This was no longer ashamed homophiles trying to fit in, but people proud to be different.
Many newspapers reported it as a significant milestone after so much chaos one year ago.
Gay activism was surging.
What was once only a few groups were now many popping up all over the place.
The march for gay liberation was on.
And this was not just in America.
Gay rights groups began to pop up all over the western world.
The movement had to contend with many different interests and their identity with other groups.
Intersectionality was still a few decades off, so this quickly got heated.
Second Wave Lesbian feminists began to have issues working with gay men citing the same
chauvinism as straight men, and these massive movements started to distance themselves from
trans matters claiming they were too hard to attain.
However, there were successes.
These groups successfully lobbied the American Psychiatric Association to delist homosexuality
as a mental disorder.
To this day, Stonewall stands as a turning point in the path of LGBTQ people in the west.
It sparked a move towards major political victories, such as the spread of gay marriage
around the west, and the slow work to make their humanity known and accepted.
I mean, hell now even the corporate banks make themselves all rainbowed up for pride.
Stonewall was significant enough that Former President Barack Obama named the Stonewall
Inn as a protected national monument, and you can go visit it to this day.
I can't help but think of it in the context of the current Me Too movement happening right
now.
There’s just a breaking point that once passed, people begin to fight back in this
fast turnaround.
It’s one of those dramatic moments in history where enough pressure and time breaks a dam.
Of course, that’s just me.
If you have a different thought about the importance of lynchpin moments like these
please leave a comment explaining your thoughts.
Thank you to 12 Tone for the theme and the patronage of don and Kerry Johnson, Kolbeinn
Mani, Scott Smith, and new 20 dollar patron Martin King!
Thanks, Martin!
Come back next week for more Step Back.