Ladies In The Streets: Before Stonewall, Transgender Uprising Changed Lives

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2015/05/05/404459634/ladies-in-the-streets-before-stonewall-transgender-uprising-changed-lives


If the famous Stonewall riots in New York City were the origin of this nation's gay rights movement, the Tenderloin upheaval three years before was the "transgender community's debut on the stage of American political history...It was the first known instance of collective militant queer resistance to police harassment in United States history."

[Os Cangaceiros]

Yeah that sort of militant action was actually beneficial to the gay rights movement, it's one instance where we can look at tactics like rioting and say "that benefited the movement as a whole". Especially when you consider that there had been a gay rights movement prior to that which wasn't militant at all (the "homophile movement") and that went absolutely nowhere, gay rights didn't really emerge as any kind of political issue until the 60's.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Trans women have always been at the front of "collective militant queer resistance", from Comptons to Stonewall to today.