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Post by kathryn on Jun 15, 2020 15:51:46 GMT
The whole mudblood storyline was about LGBTQ+ rights anyway, so there is allegories in the books anyway. I always interpreted that as a racism allegory. But as you say, there's lot of potential allegories and metaphors in the series, and they're generally flexible enough to be read in several different ways. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 15, 2020 16:02:02 GMT
The whole mudblood storyline was about LGBTQ+ rights anyway, so there is allegories in the books anyway. I always interpreted that as a racism allegory. But as you say, there's lot of potential allegories and metaphors in the series, and they're generally flexible enough to be read in several different ways. It’s probably both, but the fact you can’t visually tell who is mudblood or not sways it for me. I believe JKR has said werewolves - so Lupin - was a commentary on AIDS (and why Lupin has issues with having children, in case he passed on the genes etc). |
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Post by sweets7 on Jun 15, 2020 16:32:41 GMT
I always interpreted that as a racism allegory. But as you say, there's lot of potential allegories and metaphors in the series, and they're generally flexible enough to be read in several different ways. It’s probably both, but the fact you can’t visually tell who is mudblood or not sways it for me. I believe JKR has said werewolves - so Lupin - was a commentary on AIDS (and why Lupin has issues with having children, in case he passed on the genes etc). I thought it was depression/bipolar. But AIDS works too. I find it heartening to read so many opinions here and that people shared such personal stories. I worry about the world at the moment. I worry about the increasing narcissism and teenage behaviour of many including our leaders. More than anything it is the desire for the unitary story that upsets me. We must all be the same. Speak the same. Have the same opinions. Never open our mouths. But we all know in our heart of hearts that tolerance is about understaning the multi identities within us all and the diversity of stories between us. Intolerance, prejudice and racism can be understood too. In many cases they boil down to fear of change. Frar of acceptance. People in the USA talk about the loneliness of the immigrant. As a child on holidays in Cornwall I remember meeting two Irish women on a restaurant who started chatting to my parents. They were soon crying. Longing for a place they left and unable to go back. Of course the reality is they couldn't go back, the place no longer existed. And it is a living experience in communities and cultures around the world as we diversify and yes change. But to accept anything without question amd reflection also leads to prejudice, to fear and to authorianism. If we listen and try to see the view form a different stand point. But that isn't the way at the moment and we will be worse for it. We are the worse for it. |
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Post by kathryn on Jun 15, 2020 16:36:39 GMT
I looked the Lupin one up as it was being used as evidence of homophobia (because there’s a werewolf who attacks children) and it’s a partial misquote. www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/jk-rowling-harry-potter-theory-debunked-remus-lupin-aids-david-thewlis-a7235751.htmlAs I say, there’s quite a bit of stretching going on to make some of the metaphorical readings of HP fit. They can be fun intellectual exercises for kids just discovering the concepts of allegory and metaphor, but they do tend to unravel if you look too closely at them. Jo Rowling was adopted by a generation as some sort of Yoda figure, the fount of all moral wisdom, rather than as quite a good writer of entertaining kids’ stories with basic moral messages. That’s part of why the howling is so extreme when she disagrees with them, and the need to brand her as actually bad all along. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 15, 2020 16:58:21 GMT
I looked the Lupin one up as it was being used as evidence of homophobia (because there’s a werewolf who attacks children) and it’s a partial misquote. www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/jk-rowling-harry-potter-theory-debunked-remus-lupin-aids-david-thewlis-a7235751.htmlAs I say, there’s quite a bit of stretching going on to make some of the metaphorical readings of HP fit. They can be fun intellectual exercises for kids just discovering the concepts of allegory and metaphor, but they do tend to unravel if you look too closely at them. Jo Rowling was adopted by a generation as some sort of Yoda figure, the fount of all moral wisdom, rather than as quite a good writer of entertaining kids’ stories with basic moral messages. That’s part of why the howling is so extreme when she disagrees with them, and the need to brand her as actually bad all along. I’ve actually met JKR and she’s lovely and can’t believe she’d intentionally want to hurt anyone (that wasn’t a Tory). The hype around Harry Potter was intense and she navigated it’s all rather well upon reflection. I don’t know what it was about the stories that got everyone worked up, but it still remains one of those rare occasions when something so ridiculously hyped still manages to deliver (I’m looking at you Star Wars and Game of Thrones). But as a teenager I grew up on those books and the wait for each subsequent book was torture - but it was so exciting going to buy the books at midnight and racing through them in 24 hours in efforts to avoid all spoilers (my best friend and I would turn off our phones and had strict instructions only to text each other to say when we had finished). I believe I read it first when I was 12 and a month shy of 20 when the last book was published. I suppose the books really are about coming to terms with the wider world and you’d place within it, before having to go off out into it. I doubt we’ll ever see anything quite like that again to be honest. |
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Post by sweets7 on Jun 15, 2020 17:17:36 GMT
I looked the Lupin one up as it was being used as evidence of homophobia (because there’s a werewolf who attacks children) and it’s a partial misquote. www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/jk-rowling-harry-potter-theory-debunked-remus-lupin-aids-david-thewlis-a7235751.htmlAs I say, there’s quite a bit of stretching going on to make some of the metaphorical readings of HP fit. They can be fun intellectual exercises for kids just discovering the concepts of allegory and metaphor, but they do tend to unravel if you look too closely at them. Jo Rowling was adopted by a generation as some sort of Yoda figure, the fount of all moral wisdom, rather than as quite a good writer of entertaining kids’ stories with basic moral messages. That’s part of why the howling is so extreme when she disagrees with them, and the need to brand her as actually bad all along. I’ve actually met JKR and she’s lovely and can’t believe she’d intentionally want to hurt anyone (that wasn’t a Tory). The hype around Harry Potter was intense and she navigated it’s all rather well upon reflection. I don’t know what it was about the stories that got everyone worked up, but it still remains one of those rare occasions when something so ridiculously hyped still manages to deliver (I’m looking at you Star Wars and Game of Thrones). But as a teenager I grew up on those books and the wait for each subsequent book was torture - but it was so exciting going to buy the books at midnight and racing through them in 24 hours in efforts to avoid all spoilers (my best friend and I would turn off our phones and had strict instructions only to text each other to say when we had finished). I believe I read it first when I was 12 and a month shy of 20 when the last book was published. I suppose the books really are about coming to terms with the wider world and you’d place within it, before having to go off out into it. I doubt we’ll ever see anything quite like that again to be honest. She weaves a good yarn that leaves you wanting more. I equate it to high quality fast food. You just want your next hit. I feel about like that about her Strike books to fair. I cannot wait for the next one. |
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Post by paulbrownsey on Jun 18, 2020 21:05:30 GMT
And now she has posted an article about the toxicity within the LGBTQI Community. Nice that she has found an article to support how she feels. Shame she isn’t LGBTQI. it’s easy to bash minorities Some of us think it is very odd to glue gay people and trans people together as "LGBT" people. It makes as much sense as saying that all single parents and all sex workers are to be referred to as "SPSW people". Gay men do not think they're women. Lesbians do not identify as men. So why are they always lumped together with people who identify as belonging to the sex other than that constituted by their biology? When EastEnders first acquired a gay couple, The Sunmj printed a cartoon of Dirty Den in suspender belt and black stockings: gay men used to be seen as wanting to be women. I thought we'd got beyond that, but now it's back again, with "LGBT" implying that being gay and being trans are fundamentally the same. |
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Post by oxfordsimon on Jun 18, 2020 21:21:32 GMT
And now she has posted an article about the toxicity within the LGBTQI Community. Nice that she has found an article to support how she feels. Shame she isn’t LGBTQI. it’s easy to bash minorities Some of us think it is very odd to glue gay people and trans people together as "LGBT" people. It makes as much sense as saying that all single parents and all sex workers are to be referred to as "SPSW people". Gay men do not think they're women. Lesbians do not identify as men. So why are they always lumped together with people who identify as belonging to the sex other than that constituted by their biology? When EastEnders first acquired a gay couple, The Sunmj printed a cartoon of Dirty Den in suspender belt and black stockings: gay men used to be seen as wanting to be women. I thought we'd got beyond that, but now it's back again, with "LGBT" implying that being gay and being trans are fundamentally the same. The conflation of sexuality/sexual identity with gender/gender identity has always been problematic to my mind. They are very separate issues - and whilst there will be times when coming together to campaign makes great sense, it is not appropriate to permanently link the two things. We should all seek to support one another as much as possible - but it should be on a case by case basis and allowing for differences between various groups rather some sort of artificial universality of approach. But you aren't allowed to articulate such thinking - because you are excluding someone/being *phobic. We have seen an explosion in gender reassignment surgery in Iran being held up by a few as a wonderful example of enlightened thinking about gender - whereas the reality is that gay men are transitioning rather than face prosecution/persecution for being gay. That is not a choice any human being should be asked to consider. The risk of fusing the issues surrounding sexuality with those of gender identity is that we create confusion where we should be seeking to highlight the individual and their needs rather than rushing to uniformity. |
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Post by crowblack on Jun 19, 2020 8:08:47 GMT
We have seen an explosion in gender reassignment surgery in Iran being held up by a few as a wonderful example of enlightened thinking about gender - whereas the reality is that gay men are transitioning rather than face prosecution/persecution for being gay. That is not a choice any human being should be asked to consider. There was a report on Newsnight last night about the Tavistock clinic and it looks very like the same thing is happening here, with multiple voices coming out and saying children were being transitioned because of homophobia from their parents and school bullies - parents preferring a 'straight' transed child to a gay one. What was also chilling was that no-one was prepared to speak on camera and even the actor voicing the words had their face outline blurred - I wondered why and then realised: given the rabid climate about this in the Arts too they probably think if they're recognised they won't get work! I do wonder if the loss of so many to AIDS also means we have lost a generation of wise voices here, elder statespeople in the LGBT community who could pour some oil on troubled waters: some prominent survivors of Britain's 'gender bender' pop era have spoken out (and got the now-inevitable sh*tstorm in return) but what we seem to have imported is a movement from the USA, a far more Christian-conservative, homophobic country that never had the mainstream pop cultures with flamboyant, openly bisexual/gay stars. And of course Big Pharma and a multi-billion-dollar plastic surgery industry to feed... |
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Post by kathryn on Jun 19, 2020 11:17:42 GMT
Hmm, yes. Everything is now viewed through the lens of gender identity. Witness the Bohemian Rhapsody film having Freddie Mercury trying on clothes from the ladies’ section and wearing his mum’s dress to perform as if he was somehow playing around with his gender identity on stage, rather than Queen deliberately chasing the glam rock trend because it was hugely popular when they first started out, and then dropping it with great relief as soon as it went out of fashion. (His friends report him saying ‘yes, I know I looked ridiculous in those leotards, darling, but we wanted the attention and it worked, didn’t it!’)
But having said that, Elton John was always more popular in the USA than the U.K., and he is plenty flamboyant.
Even the likes of Sam Smith doesn’t seem to know his gay and pop history - remember when he thought he was the first gay man to win an Oscar?! And he actually personally knows previous gay Oscar winners...
Maybe it’s just the tendency of the young to think that they are inventing everything rather then realising that they’re not the first to do it!
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Post by crowblack on Jun 19, 2020 12:14:42 GMT
Maybe it’s just the tendency of the young to think that they are inventing everything rather then realising that they’re not the first to do it! I think many of us go through that stage as teenagers where we think we know everything but we know sod all, but the problem now is that those voices are amplified through social media as never before, and drown out those with knowledge and lived experience ("ok Boomer"). In 5 years' time I think a lot of these shouty voices will be thinking bloody hell, what was that all about? But by then some people will have been hounded out of careers and worse, some young people will have made mistakes that they'll have to live with for the rest of their lives. |
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Post by oxfordsimon on Jun 19, 2020 12:35:51 GMT
We have seen an explosion in gender reassignment surgery in Iran being held up by a few as a wonderful example of enlightened thinking about gender - whereas the reality is that gay men are transitioning rather than face prosecution/persecution for being gay. That is not a choice any human being should be asked to consider. There was a report on Newsnight last night about the Tavistock clinic and it looks very like the same thing is happening here, with multiple voices coming out and saying children were being transitioned because of homophobia from their parents and school bullies - parents preferring a 'straight' transed child to a gay one. What was also chilling was that no-one was prepared to speak on camera and even the actor voicing the words had their face outline blurred - I wondered why and then realised: given the rabid climate about this in the Arts too they probably think if they're recognised they won't get work! I do wonder if the loss of so many to AIDS also means we have lost a generation of wise voices here, elder statespeople in the LGBT community who could pour some oil on troubled waters: some prominent survivors of Britain's 'gender bender' pop era have spoken out (and got the now-inevitable sh*tstorm in return) but what we seem to have imported is a movement from the USA, a far more Christian-conservative, homophobic country that never had the mainstream pop cultures with flamboyant, openly bisexual/gay stars. And of course Big Pharma and a multi-billion-dollar plastic surgery industry to feed... The Tavistock report is horrifying. Young lives are being altered by a dogma - a dogma being applied by doctors who should know better. But trying to challenge that is almost impossible without being attacked. Of course young people with gender dysphoria should be treated with care, consideration and real concern for their well being. But that does not mean automatically reaching for hormones and scheduling surgery. We need to pause, understand and then proceed. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 19, 2020 13:20:31 GMT
I think many of us go through that stage as teenagers where we think we know everything but we know sod all You misspelt "all". I think it's intrinsic to the way society works. Parents protect children from all the complications of the world so they have no idea how little they know about how things really work and how complicated things really are. |
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Post by paulbrownsey on Jun 20, 2020 12:15:49 GMT
Some of us think it is very odd to glue gay people and trans people together as "LGBT" people. It makes as much sense as saying that all single parents and all sex workers are to be referred to as "SPSW people". Gay men do not think they're women. Lesbians do not identify as men. So why are they always lumped together with people who identify as belonging to the sex other than that constituted by their biology? When EastEnders first acquired a gay couple, The Sunmj printed a cartoon of Dirty Den in suspender belt and black stockings: gay men used to be seen as wanting to be women. I thought we'd got beyond that, but now it's back again, with "LGBT" implying that being gay and being trans are fundamentally the same. The conflation of sexuality/sexual identity with gender/gender identity has always been problematic to my mind. They are very separate issues - and whilst there will be times when coming together to campaign makes great sense, it is not appropriate to permanently link the two things. We should all seek to support one another as much as possible - but it should be on a case by case basis and allowing for differences between various groups rather some sort of artificial universality of approach. But you aren't allowed to articulate such thinking - because you are excluding someone/being *phobic. We have seen an explosion in gender reassignment surgery in Iran being held up by a few as a wonderful example of enlightened thinking about gender - whereas the reality is that gay men are transitioning rather than face prosecution/persecution for being gay. That is not a choice any human being should be asked to consider. The risk of fusing the issues surrounding sexuality with those of gender identity is that we create confusion where we should be seeking to highlight the individual and their needs rather than rushing to uniformity. What you say in your last sentence struck home with me. I have seen and heard many things said outwith the bubble which suggests that mambers of the general public are getting the idea that being gay and being trans are basically the same, and I suspect that the relentless promotion of the "LGBT" initialism is to blame. Example: a journalist on the Scottish Sunday Herald, purporting to explain current controversies, said that self-declaration was coming out about your sexuality. (No, no, no.) I heard an old man ranting in the lounge of a country house hotel near Keswick: "D'you see they've got a bisexual on Last Night of the Proms?...(mutter, mutter)...Can't tell if they're a man or a woman." That sounded as if he was confusing bisexual with trans. And if you look below the line on sites like Conservative Woman or Charisma News, you'll find plenty of posters who, if it's a trans matter, start saying things about God disloiking homosexuality, and, if it's about gays, will start in about men in dresses. There was a time when gay men were routinely looked upon as women manque. Mae West claimed to have stopped the police beating up gay men by telling the police that in reality they were hitting women. When I first started going about the Glasgow gay scene in the 1970s, the tradition still lingered of referring to gay men by women's names. ("Are you going to Nellie and Alice's party?" I was asked, re a party given by Neil and Allan.) I thought we'd got beyond that in the last couple of decades, but it seems to be creeping back again via the perpetual glueing together of gay and trans as "LGBT people". What was probably once just a matter of gay groups giving a bit of shelter to a different minority has now become something a lot more problematic. |
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Post by paulbrownsey on Jun 20, 2020 13:16:40 GMT
The conflation of sexuality/sexual identity with gender/gender identity has always been problematic to my mind. They are very separate issues - and whilst there will be times when coming together to campaign makes great sense, it is not appropriate to permanently link the two things. We should all seek to support one another as much as possible - but it should be on a case by case basis and allowing for differences between various groups rather some sort of artificial universality of approach. But you aren't allowed to articulate such thinking - because you are excluding someone/being *phobic. We have seen an explosion in gender reassignment surgery in Iran being held up by a few as a wonderful example of enlightened thinking about gender - whereas the reality is that gay men are transitioning rather than face prosecution/persecution for being gay. That is not a choice any human being should be asked to consider. The risk of fusing the issues surrounding sexuality with those of gender identity is that we create confusion where we should be seeking to highlight the individual and their needs rather than rushing to uniformity. What you say in your last sentence struck home with me. I have seen and heard many things said outwith the bubble which suggest that members of the general public are getting the idea that being gay and being trans are basically the same, and I suspect that the relentless promotion of the "LGBT" initialism at least partly is to blame. Example: a journalist on the Scottish Sunday Herald, purporting to explain current controversies, said that self-declaration was coming out about your sexuality. (No, no, no.) I heard an old man ranting in the lounge of a country house hotel near Keswick: "D'you see they've got a bisexual on Last Night of the Proms?...(mutter, mutter)...Can't tell if they're a man or a woman." That sounded as if he was confusing bisexual with trans. And if you look below the line on sites like Conservative Woman or Charisma News, you'll find plenty of posters who, if it's a trans matter, start saying things about God disliking homosexuality, and, if it's about gays, will start in about men in dresses. There was a time when gay men were routinely looked upon as women manque. Mae West claimed to have stopped the police beating up gay men by telling the police that in reality they were hitting women. When I first started going about the Glasgow gay scene in the 1970s, the tradition still lingered of referring to gay men by women's names. ("Are you going to Nellie and Alice's party?" I was asked, re a party given by Neil and Allan.) I thought we'd got beyond that in the last couple of decades, but it seems to be creeping back again via the perpetual glueing together of gay and trans as "LGBT people". What was probably once just a matter of gay groups giving a bit of shelter to a different minority has now become something a lot more problematic. |
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Post by kathryn on Jun 20, 2020 19:40:52 GMT
I’ve seen people confuse ‘drag queen names’ with gay men actually being trans. That’s why the ‘first brick thrown at Stonewall was by’ narrative changed from being ‘a drag queen’ to ‘a trans woman’.
Even though people who were there at the time say they weren’t trans.
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Post by vdcni on Jun 20, 2020 19:53:00 GMT
Or those attitudes remained but are just seeing more expression these days as with a lot of other ugly bigotry over the last few years.
Though of course that's only anecdotal evidence. You could just as easily point to the increasing visibility of drag over the last few years.
And of course Trans people were involved with the Stonewall Riots and a lot of early activism so it's hardly a recent connection.
I'm not comfortable with the extreme end of Trans activism but having grown up in a time when homosexuality was reviled I wouldn't be inclined to abandon them.
Certainly right wing organisations masquerading as gay right groups like the LGB Alliance are not the way to go.
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Post by oxfordsimon on Jun 21, 2020 10:20:15 GMT
There are many who seek to label historical figures with contemporary terms because it fits their agenda rather than it being an honest reflection of the identity of any individual.
The modern concept of transgenderism is a very recent one - it is not that many years since the term used was transsexual. Where people spoke of a sex change we have moved through gender reassignment surgery to gender confirmation surgery (and there may be other forms of language used)
The ground - in linguistic terms at least - is constantly shifting.
But it is wrong to apply a label that was coined in the past decade to anyone who is no longer alive to claim that label for themselves or who would not recognise themselves from the current thinking.
This is not just being done by the trans lobby, it happens when people claim for certain that a historical figure was gay, lesbian, bi - whatever.
We all want a connection to our shared histories - but it is wrong to redefine the past in the light of contemporary thinking. We have to understand and acknowledge the truths of the past - not try to force our views onto it.
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Post by vdcni on Jun 21, 2020 10:59:35 GMT
Though for many possible gay and lesbian people in history; evidence pointing towards their sexuality was often ignored or downplayed.
More recent scholarship may sometimes go to far in claiming them as definitely gay but then at least it's bringing that evidence into the open giving a more rounded view of the person.
For Stonewall certainly at that point drag, transvestisism and transexuality were less defined but certainly someone like Miss Major Griffin-Gracy would recognise Trans as what she was even if she hadn't transitioned at that point though she may have already I'm not sure.
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Post by oxfordsimon on Jun 21, 2020 11:21:16 GMT
It is one thing to say that the evidence would strongly suggest someone and a completely different thing to claim someone as a member of any one group without placing their life and lifestyle into the proper context.
Our shared (and individual) histories should not be airbrushed - but they should also not be artificially embellished.
We should celebrate our individuality, our uniqueness and commemorate our shared and individual struggles. But rewriting history to serve the ends of a particular agenda is not something I can endorse.
Look to the past, explore the links, celebrate those who went before - but do so with an understanding of the differences between then and now.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2020 12:44:01 GMT
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Post by kathryn on Jun 21, 2020 12:47:27 GMT
For Stonewall certainly at that point drag, transvestisism and transexuality were less defined but certainly someone like Miss Major Griffin-Gracy would recognise Trans as what she was even if she hadn't transitioned at that point though she may have already I'm not sure. They weren’t less defined, though, they were simply defined as distinct things. Transvestites went to great lengths to tell people that they didn’t think they were women, and didn’t want to change sex, they simply wanted to wear whatever clothes and make-up they wanted, when they wanted. Eddie Izzard had this down to a fine art - full comedy routines about it. Drag was performance, an art form, as not an attempt to portray real women but an exaggerated parody of womanhood. A subversion of gender norms, coming from the comic tradition of the topsy turvy world where breaking the usual rules creates a space where the absurdity of the status quo is made obvious. All of the above mentioned ‘drag queen names’ were friendly piss-taking, in-group bonding rituals. That’s why they were bestowed on people rather than chosen by the individual themselves. Transsexuals really felt like the were the opposite sex, ‘born in the wrong body’, wanted to pass as the opposite sex - they didn’t want to stand out as breaking gender norms or parodying them, they wanted to conform to them so that people would think they were the opposite sex. These 3 very distinct groups have all been subsumed into the grouping ‘trans’ as if they are interchangeable. Along with a whole host of new terms like non-binary, agender, Demi-gender, gender variant, bi-gender, gender fluid, aporagender, etc. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2020 13:01:45 GMT
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Post by vdcni on Jun 21, 2020 13:08:22 GMT
For Stonewall certainly at that point drag, transvestisism and transexuality were less defined but certainly someone like Miss Major Griffin-Gracy would recognise Trans as what she was even if she hadn't transitioned at that point though she may have already I'm not sure. They weren’t less defined, though, they were simply defined as distinct things. Transvestites went to great lengths to tell people that they didn’t think they were women, and didn’t want to change sex, they simply wanted to wear whatever clothes and make-up they wanted, when they wanted. Eddie Izzard had this down to a fine art - full comedy routines about it. Drag was performance, an art form, as not an attempt to portray real women but an exaggerated parody of womanhood. A subversion of gender norms, coming from the comic tradition of the topsy turvy world where breaking the usual rules creates a space where the absurdity of the status quo is made obvious. All of the above mentioned ‘drag queen names’ were friendly piss-taking, in-group bonding rituals. That’s why they were bestowed on people rather than chosen by the individual themselves. Transsexuals really felt like the were the opposite sex, ‘born in the wrong body’, wanted to pass as the opposite sex - they didn’t want to stand out as breaking gender norms or parodying them, they wanted to conform to them so that people would think they were the opposite sex. These 3 very distinct groups have all been subsumed into the grouping ‘trans’ as if they are interchangeable. Along with a whole host of new terms like non-binary, agender, Demi-gender, gender variant, bi-gender, gender fluid, aporagender, etc. Sorry, not what I meant. More that for some at that time they were transvestite or drag and it went no further than that while some may have been on a journey towards being transexual at a time when that was still a relatively new thing. So as I said even if someone like Miss Major Griffen-Gracy may not have started transitioning at the time, and she might of I don't know, she would still recognize the Trans label and identify as such. I don't know it's quite difficult, when you see Trans teaching material talking about boys liking dolls or Sam Smith coming out with all that feel like a woman stuff then it sounds nonsense but then that's what gay people were told for years, that their feelings were invalid and invented I hesitate to just dismiss it. |
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Post by kathryn on Jun 21, 2020 14:23:57 GMT
I think we both have different people in mind. I was referring to Marsha P Johnson, who was definitely a drag queen and I have seen retrospectively claimed as ‘trans’, who in some accounts was described as being among the first rioters (though he claimed not to have arrived until after the riot started on the first night).
The problem with all such claims are that it was a riot - chaotic by nature, with lots of conflicting accounts.
This only seems important to me because I see claims that trans women actually started the gay rights movement and that LGB people owe trans women for gay rights when some LGB people express concern about trans rights and gay rights being conflated as LGBT rights. And that’s when ‘it was a trans woman who threw the first brick at Stonewall’ usually comes up.
That’s when I get pedantic about this stuff. I know that history is always a project of a present, and the past is constantly being re-written to confirm contemporary ideology, but it’s startling to see it happen to an event when there are contemporary witnesses still alive, and many who have passed have had their accounts preserved.
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