By Foster Rudy
June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month, a month-long celebration that commemorates LGBTQ+ history and honors the LGBTQ+ community. Many cities and towns hold Pride marches where people can express the parts of themselves that are not always celebrated in mainstream society. From drag queens to leather daddies to trans mermaids, Pride is a party, a spectacle, and a statement of our collective joy.
Pride is not all rainbows and parades, though. Pride began as a riot and today, many trans activists call for a return to its roots. Pride represents the ongoing fight against oppression, and our marches today honor our collective resistance to heteronormativity, the continued criminalization of trans bodies, and the systems that try to suppress and destroy us. Pride acknowledges that we thrive in spite of a dominant culture that wishes we’d keep quiet and stay home. We’re here and we’re queer—and we’re not going anywhere.
The Origins of Pride
Pride emerged from the gay liberation movement, which was a response to laws that targeted LGBTQ+ people. In New York state in the 1960s, it was illegal to wear “gender-inappropriate” clothing. It was also illegal to serve alcohol to a gay person until 1966. In 1969, homosexuality was still considered a criminal offense. Thus, gay people often congregated in bars and clubs that operated without liquor licenses, providing an open door for raids and police brutality.
On the night of June 27, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a mafia-owned bar in Greenwich Village, New York City. Although cops claimed to have a search warrant and went through the standard procedure of interrogating the bar’s patrons and detaining “cross-dressers,” this night the bar’s patrons decided to resist. An eyewitness account in The Village Voice by Howard Smith said, “The turning point came when the police had difficulty keeping a dyke in a patrol car. Three times she slid out and tried to walk away. The last time a cop bodily heaved her in. The crowd shrieked, ‘Police brutality!’ ‘Pigs! A few coins sailed through the air…escalated to nickels and quarters. A bottle. Another bottle.”
Marsha P. Johnson, a Black trans woman who was known in the Village as a survivor and organizer, is credited with throwing the first brick at Stonewall. The raid quickly turned into a riot. Police locked themselves in the bar. Hundreds of angry gay, trans, and queer people raged in the streets, demanding justice. The first skirmish ended around 4:00 a.m., but the conflict was not over. Word spread through the city and by nightfall on June 28, 1969, thousands of protestors gathered at Stonewall. The protests lasted more than a week. Iconic trans activists like Sylvia Rivera and Miss Major were present, along with hundreds of unnamed trans people who took part in shaping this history.
A Party With Political Meaning
The Stonewall riots left an indelible mark on the world and the way LGBTQ+ people were perceived by the media, the mainstream culture, and one another. One year after the first Stonewall uprising, organizers held the first Pride march in New York City. Called U.S. Gay Pride Week and March, the event gathered community to “commemorate the Christopher Street Uprisings of last summer in which thousands of homosexuals went to the streets to demonstrate against centuries of abuse….from government hostility to employment and housing discrimination, Mafia control of Gay bars, and anti-Homosexual laws.”
Simply being visibly trans or queer remains illegal in many states. In New York, this law is still on the books, banning any person who is “disguised by unusual or unnatural attire or facial alteration, loiters, remains or congregates in a public place with other persons so masked or disguised.” Laws of this type discriminate against gender-nonconforming people and are used to crack down on people of different gender expressions. Anti-trans bills are still being pushed in legislatures across the nation. They target transgender-related healthcare, trans youth, and other issues. The conflicts that sparked the first Stonewall haven’t subsided in 2021—if anything, they are more urgent than ever. Plume established our HRT Access Fund in a response to these punitive laws, empowering trans people in any of our active states to access hormone therapy.
Choosing to gather publicly to celebrate, speak out, honor our community’s history, express ourselves, love one another, and shout our defiance and our joy—is an act of resistance.
Pride’s origins are undeniably political, and anyone who is trans experiences the intertwined nature of the personal and the political. Pride parades and events have always been both political events and a party because these elements of trans life are inseparable. Being unabashedly who we are is political. For us, celebration is resistance. Loving ourselves, our families, and our communities is radical and fierce. We refuse to be erased. We claim the right to be celebrated and honored, in every aspect of our lives. That is what Pride symbolizes to us, and it’s why trans people are essential participants.
We Take Care of Us
Pride showcases the power of community and what is possible when we work together. From rejecting police brutality to organizing for fair treatment, we take care of us. This principle of care is demonstrated in the first Stonewall riot, and it’s shown in LGBTQ+ marches today. When the powers that be try to suppress us, when systems like policing and healthcare fail us, we as trans and queer people take care of each other. We always have. We always will.
No matter how different we are, Pride is a place where trans people show up for one another. We march for joy and to express our rage, too. We march to demand equal, compassionate, empowered care. We march to assert our existence and our well-being. When we gather at Pride and through the year—in all our fabulousness—we show each other what is possible. We show up to claim, dream, and create the trans future we all deserve to dance toward, together.
