Stonewall Meditation

[gwydion]

I watched the Stonewall Documentary on The American Experience. This is a bit of history I know well, but I think it's important to remember what they risked and to record and listen to the voices of our elders before they disappear. I was born in the year of the Riots (There were two), and I think it's important to take a little time now and then to think about how different my life would have been without them, even though I didn't hear about them until much later. It was Stonewall that opened up the discussion of LGBT rights in the mainstream. It was the March after Stonewall that really crystallized a new, more dynamic protest movement and led to widespread organizing for change. It was Stonewall that made it possible for me to grow up with a few positive portrayals of queer folk in the media mixed in with the crap. I have so often said that it was the drag queens and the butch lesbians and most especially the people of colour, the ones with the least power and societal support who put it the most on the line at Stonewall, who took the risks. I have always thought it shameful that the movement as it developed tried so hard to marginalize those same people who were the bravest and risked the most. It's been pointed out that most of the drag queens at Stonewall later transitioned. It was heartwarming to see that they included a trans woman of colour amoung the documentary interviewees. I'd have liked to see more diversity, but at least they tried. The thing that I did see that was new to me, was they included a retired policeman who had been on the other side during the riots, and his remorse at the end was touching.

We can measure our progress in the length of my life time. In the trans community sometimes we look across this huge chasm at each other, the pre Stonewall folk and the post Stonewall folk, our experiences and perspectives leaving us struggling to make sense of each other. The gap is there in LGB gatherings too, though I don't think it's quite as wide. I have found myself at the Big Gay Potluck or at trans gatherings trying to explain my generation and the millennials to well meaning folks who were adults before they even had a word for themselves, for whom the modern diversity and complexity of labels, orientation, gender, and identity has evolved at light speed, leaving them gasping. I have similarly found myself trying to explain to Millenials why the boomers and olders are so different, what they suffered, or sat trying to wrap my head around the experience of someone who's isolation growing up was so absolute they really did think they were the only one