Ask Lemon Cookie!

"Where were transmascs during Stonewall?" Across the street throwing lit mattresses at cops and chanting "gay rights, gay rights, gay rights!" from the windows of the Women's House of Detention, asshole.

"The House of D [was] 500 feet from the Stonewall Inn," Ryan says. "On the first night of the riots, people incarcerated in the prison could actually see what was happening out their windows, and they started a riot all their own, setting fire to their belongings and throwing them down to the streets below while chanting 'Gay rights! Gay rights! Gay rights!' "By the '50s and '60s, Ryan estimates, "around 75% of the people incarcerated in the House of D are queer in some way." In the 1960s, the prison began marking gay prisoners with a "D" for "degenerate," and placing them into solitary confinement because they were considered a "danger to other women." [...] The first waywardism laws in New York State start in the 1880s and they only apply to girls and women, originally ones who are arrested for prostitution and then expanded greatly in the late 1800s to women who might become prostitutes. And that's where they really get into danger, right? Because suddenly the charge of prostitution has nothing to do with sex work or exchanging sex for money. Instead, a wayward girl is anyone who was thought to be improperly feminine to the point where she has an invitation to prostitution. She's either too sexual or she's too masculine and unable to get any other kind of job. So of course she's going to end up being a prostitute.

Happy Pride Month! This year let's make all make an effort to talk about the Women's House of D and transgender warrior Stormé DeLarverie when we talk about Stonewall and the origins of Pride :)