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Rear Window (1954)

actually adding my tags. ik op also talked about Stormé in the notes but like. i really do find it so frustrating how he has been completely neglected as a historical figure. to the point where there's a lot of people who will, when talking about the erasure of Black trans people from Stonewall history, will immediately jump to talking about Marsha P. Johnson (who, while a vital figure in US queer history who deserves the attention she has started to receive from the community, did not start the uprising and arrived to them later) and continue to credit her with "throwing the first shotglass." but they don't even know who Stormé is, despite again, it being at the very least equally if not more likely she was actually involved with sparking the uprising.

and its even more frustrating because part of the reason its likely isn't just Stormé's own recollection, but because there are other reports that the uprising was kicked off when the cops arrested, specifically, a person seen as female who was wearing male clothing and was being violently arrested for FTM crossdressing. FTM activists were trying to raise awareness about this in 1989. like people specifically saw (even if it wasn't Stormé) a butch dyke getting arrested explicitly for wearing too many men's clothes and not enough women's clothes.

and yet, no one ever. fucking talks about this. no one who specifically is trying to talk about the erasure of trans people from queer activism mentions this. and we should all be asking, ourselves and each other, why? a lot of people don't want to have this conversation because it asks a lot of us, but that's exactly why its so vital to have responsibly.

Stonewall is as much myth as it is historical event, especially at this point in time. and how we choose to narrate it matters, even though we (should) all know that we will never know the full exact story, nor do we need to because, again, much of its importance is serving as a grounded myth of the birth of organized queer resistance in the US. And the fact is, there is every reason for us to tell a version of this myth which highlights that the inciting moment for queer people being fucking done with the constant acts of violence, was a mixed Black transmasc woman, a drag king who identified as a transgender warrior in Leslie Feinberg's book of that name, being violently arrested for his transmasculine presentation.

and not only is that not the version we tell, there's often no trace of transmasculinity at all in how we remember Stonewall or any queer historical events. & op is so. so incredibly right in prompting people to critically examine that absence. because i do believe if Stormé was a femme lesbian, people would be a lot more invested in making sure people know about the lesbian woman who started Stonewall. almost like, on an unconscious collective level, we see transmasculine figures as undesirable when it comes to being community icons, martyrs, heroes, theorists, creatives, etc.

anyways, for those curious, here's Stormé's recollection of Stonewall, from this interview:

The conversation turned to the night in June of 1969 at the Stonewall Inn where she made history. Quite a few friends, writers and historians over the years have identified her as the tough cross-dressing butch lesbian who was clubbed by the NYPD, which evoked enough indignation and anger to spur the crowd to action. She was identified as the Stonewall Lesbian in Charles Kaiser’s book The Gay Metropolis, and her scuffle with the police has been mentioned a few times in passing by The New York Times in the past couple of decades. Then in the January 2008 issue of Curve Magazine she identified herself as the Stonewall Lesbian in a detailed interview with writer Patrick Hinds, an excerpt of which is below: I asked her if she still remembered that night. She answered in the affirmative. After the cop hit her on the head, she socked him with her fist. “I hit him,” she said. “He was bleeding.” A natural protector, she has worked as a security guard at a few of the lesbian bars in the city. I spoke to her friend, Lisa Cannistraci, who has known her for around 25 years. Now one of the owners of lesbian bar Henrietta Hudson, Cannistraci said that DeLarverie worked as a security guard at the original Cubby Hole, located at 438 Hudson Street, starting in 1985. Cubby Hole eventually moved to the corner of West 4th and West 12th. Then Henrietta Hudson opened at the 438 Hudson Street location, and DeLarverie continued working there until 2005. “Until she was 85 years old?” I asked her. Cannistraci said yes.

also, just to drive home the point, the community ignoring Stormé was not a harmless act. he developed dementia later in life and did not receive the support that she fucking deserved from the community:

In March, Farrell, who lived next door to DeLarverie at the Hotel Chelsea, found DeLarverie disoriented and, uncharacteristically, asking for help. DeLarverie was shaking and dehydrated, and she was taken to and treated at the nearby St. Vincent’s Hospital. No next of kin has been located, and she no domestic partner. Friends say that she had a long term relationship with an aerialist and burlesque performer, but that was “a long time ago.” With no one in her life legally able to make health care decisions, she was given a court appointed a guardian: the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged (“JASA”). She remained at the hospital as doctors ascertained her ability to care for herself. When St. Vincent’s went bankrupt and closed abruptly, she was transferred to the nursing home. SAGE, an advocacy group for elderly members of the LGBT community, has also been offering assistance. Her friends say that communication with the aforementioned groups has been inadequate and a source of frustration, and they feel powerless to improve her situation. [...] DeLarverie continued emceeing and singing after Stonewall — at gay events and at benefits. Her friend Williamson Henderson, President of the S.V.A., told me that she hosted an annual gay nightlife event, The Gay Bar People’s Ball, where all of the movers and shakers of NYC gay nightlife would congregate and receive awards. “It was an event that was well known and a big deal,” he said. In Sam Bassett’s film, DeLarverie said that she continued to sing at benefits for battered women and children, remarking “Somebody has to care. People say, ‘Why do you still do that?’ I said, ‘It’s very simple. If people didn’t care about me when I was growing up, with my mother being black, raised in the south.’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t be here.'” What does the future hold for DeLarverie? Cannistraci told me that she is currently in the process of petitioning for legal guardianship of DeLarverie and hopes to move her into a brighter, more modern nursing home with a larger staff and activities for the residents — and one where a friend of DeLarverie’s already resides. “She was a protector of the community, and [her situation] is heartbreaking,” she said. [...] DeLarverie’s situation is, unfortunately, not unique, and it highlights some of the issues faced by gay and lesbian seniors. It is unclear whether DeLarverie has no surviving family members or whether she has surviving family members but simply lost touch with them over the years. Many elders become isolated from their families, either because of family disapproval or because they moved away from their families to a big city with a large gay and lesbian population, thereby becoming out of sight and out of mind. If they do end up in a retirement home or nursing home, there is also the issue of whether other residents will have a problem with their sexual orientation. Furthermore, in many states, same-sex partners cannot be legally bound, and if there is no next of kin, one can end up being a ward of the state. If the Rosa Parks of the gay community can end up in a nursing home among strangers like other forgotten elderly men and women, it is certainly a wake up call.

^^^ all of this + Gavin Grimm not only did that, but he didn't benefit basically at all. he graduated before the case was decided, and he only got $1 from it. Gavin was left traumatized and poor and has since struggled with housing. And I personally have never heard his name mentioned in discussions of vital modern trans activists in the US. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Fuck, I've barely heard his name ever, and I'm a queer from the DMV (region in the northeast USA) who has been pretty involved in my local queer community, so there's really no excuse.

You can still donate to his GoFundMe if you'd like. From this article:

As Donald Trump rolled back LGBTQ+ rights, including banning trans servicemembers from the military and authorizing homeless shelters to exclude trans people, Grimm won repeated court victories. But his school district appealed. One court of appeals judge compared Grimm to the historic American plaintiffs who challenged slavery, Japanese concentration camps, segregation and bans on interracial and gay marriage. A 2020 ruling offered a “resounding yes” in favor of the constitution and civil rights laws protecting trans students from discrimination. Grimm graduated before the case was resolved and never got to return to his school’s boys’ bathrooms. In 2021, the supreme court allowed Grimm’s victory to stand, and the school board was ordered to pay $1.3m in attorney’s fees. Grimm, however, only got a symbolic $1. To secure damages, Grimm would’ve had to give the opposition’s lawyers access to his medical records to scrutinize the cause and extent of his emotional distress, a process he couldn’t stomach after years of fighting. The idea he’d have to prove his anguish was unbelievable to his mom, who can’t shake the memories of her son becoming suicidal. Grimm doesn’t regret moving on without damages. But he desperately could’ve used financial help – especially as the trauma of his childhood began to catch up with him. [...]

while we're here, might as well add on that not only was the Stonewall Uprising likely kicked off by a transmasculine person resisting state violence because of their masculine presentation, but the transmasculine people & other queer (perceived-)women of the nearby Women's House of Detention rioted in solidarity:

"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."

1. make a syllabus for yourself - books, media, places, recipes

2. complete 40% of it