Jean O’Leary is pictured here, middle. She was a masculine lesbian woman and lesbian feminist. She not only accepted gender nonconformity, she embodied it.
O’Leary gave a speech at the 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade. This speech was apolitical, per the restrictions given by the organizers of the event. At one point during O’Leary’s scripted speech, two drag queens— Ray “Sylvia” Rivera and Lee Brewster (only one of whom later began to self-identify as a transwoman)— climbed onto the stage and took the microphone from O’Leary.
After this disruption, the organizers of the event allowed the crowd to vote on which speaker they would prefer to hear from; either O’Leary or Rivera and Brewster. The crowd, which was mostly gay men, voted to hear from the men. Rivera then delivered his speech, “Y’all Better Quiet Down.” Once Rivera delivered his speech, O’Leary was permitted to continue speaking.
In response to the interruption, Jean O’Leary’s entire speech is as follows,
It’s times like this that I find it very hard to be gay and proud, because there’s another side of me that is a woman. And I’m insulted by this mockery and these costumes up here, by these people [gesturing to Rivera and Brewster, who continued to stand behind her and make crude and mocking gestures for the duration of her speech. Parts of their behavior was filmed in this version of the recording.] Lesbian Feminist Liberation has negotiated for a week and a half using the means that rational women, and women have always used in the past— not disruptive means— to try to get up here and read a statement. We were told “no.” That there would be no political statements read today. Because one person— a man, Sylvia— gets up here and causes a ruckus, we are now allowed to read our statement. And I think that says something right there. Now I’d like to go on and speak. I have written here a statement that is backed up by 100 women, and this was voted on. So I’m just going to read this statement. “When men impersonate women for reasons of entertainment or profit, they insult women. We support the right of every person to dress in the way that he or she wishes. But we are opposed to the exploitation of women by men for entertainment or profit. Men have been telling us who we are all our lives. They have tried to do it with scholarship, with religion, with psychiatry. When all else fails, they have used humor to tell us, and each other, who and what we are. We object to today as another instance in which men, laughing with one another at what they present as women, are telling us who they think we are. We don’t want to know. Men have never been able to show us ourselves. We are coming into a time and a place as women in which we can, and do, show one another who we are. Let men tell each other what they think of women. Let us tell you who we are.”
After O’Leary finished her speech, River and Brewster took the stage again, (this video was taken down for copyright, conveniently) yelling, “You go to bars because of what drag queens did for you, and these bitches tell us to quit being ourselves!” Rivera also called O’Leary a “bloody rag” in his subsequent rant.
The original Rivera quote lacks this complete context in which Rivera and other gay men could get along with lesbians “famously”— as long as we did not address their virulent misogyny. As soon as lesbians dared show some female class consciousness, men like Rivera began attempting to “tell us who we are” through shame and intimidation.
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