My First Pride Parade

June 27, 2009 — Suzan

I first marched in a Pride Day Parade in Hollywood, 1974.  It was called The Christopher Street West Pride Parade in those days.

In 1972, Gay Pride had coincided with me getting SRS and in 1973, I had just gotten my nose and chin worked on.

In 1974, I was in LA.  I had started doing photography and was documenting the lives of some of my transsexual and transgender girl friends.

I had come out as bisexual/lesbian and I found myself in the Shane like (The L-Word) position of being all these girl’s lesbian experience.

I had partied the night before with one of my transgender friends and a straight couple who were involved with the RCP (Revolutionary Communist Party).  In the interests of promoting greater understanding of LGBT/T people he slept with my friend and I slept with his wife.

The next day we went to the parade.  I could feel the distance forming between some of my transgender sisters and myself.  When I had moved to LA I had rented an apartment near Sunset and Fairfax and not in the area where they lived and worked.

I partied at Rodney Bingenheimers, Starwood, The Whiskey, the Roxy and upstairs at the Rainbow.  I only occasionally went to the one remaining trannie bar, Dupars up on Ivar north of Hollywood Blvd.

But I was into the spirit of the day.

The parade in those days was far less commercial and far more political.

All the West Coast Movement leaders were there.  Troy Perry, Morris Kight, Harry Hay and Jim Kepner.

I was recognized from some of the conferences I had attended and I believe it was Jim asked me to say a few words since I had co-run the NTCU and he knew me.  I said I din’t know what to say.

Damian, husband of the RCP couple said I should say something about how all the bars were segregated and how they wouldn’t let transsexuals and queens in to gay bars.  I said something about them not letting black guys in either without demanding the same 3 or 4 pieces of ID.

I got up on the platform, took the mike and said,  “It’s really beautiful to see us all here today.  Gay men, lesbians, trannies, black, brown, white.  All marching together, all gathered here together.  It make’s me really happy.

But I know when Gay Day is over we will all go back to our own bars like this togetherness had never occurred.  Trannies will still be excluded from the West Hollywood clubs and so will lesbians as well as blacks and Latinos.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every day was like gay pride day and we could all party in the same places rather than all of us going our own separate ways.”

It may not have been the worlds best speech.  I prepared it while waiting to speak but the sentiment was good.

Unfortunately we are still working on the getting along together part.

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Stonewall 1949-1969: The Back Story

June 27, 2009 — Suzan

Stonewall is one of those great events.  Up until Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States: 1492 until Present, we thought of history in terms of great leaders and special pivotal events.

But history is far more complicated than that.  Pivotal events do not just spring from a vacuum but are more the result of the convergence of a number of elements all building towards that moment.

The riot that happened 40 years ago this weekend had some 20 years of people organizing, agitating, building movements and shifting consciousness. When Stonewall happened it marked the end of one era and the birth of another instead of simply vanishing into an incident forgotten by all except perhaps the participants the way so many acts of resistance from that era are forgotten.

The modern Gay and Lesbian movement started in the late 1940s after World War II had called so many to serve.  And gay men as well as women served.  Transsexuals too, Christine Jorgensen was in the military.

When they returned home many stayed in the big cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York.  They stayed because they had learned during their time in the military that they were gay and lesbian and these cities offered contact with others like themselves.

In 1949, Harry Hay, Dale Jennings, Rudi Gernreich Chuck Rowland, Paul Bernard and other gay men founded the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles.[1]

They came together to struggle for gay right even though they didn’t start using that term until years later. They used the term “homophile” because censorship prevented even the use of the term homosexual  for purposes of placing classified ads in order to announce meetings. This also permitted the mailing of their newsletters and publications at a time when postal authorities censored mail for even using the term “homosexual”, much less discussing it.

In San Francisco several years later Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon organized Daughters of Bilitis, the first modern lesbian organization.[2]

From these two groups as well as groups who broke off from these groups sprang the modern Gay and Lesbian movement.

At first, they had modest goals including simply being there to show others they were not alone.  In this regard, they published newsletters (magazines).  The Mattachine published One and Daughters of Bilitis published The Ladder.

The forces of censorship required a certain degree of subterfuge in the distribution of these newsletters and eventually led to the Mattachine society having to fight a legal case to win their right to send the newsletter through the US Mail.

About this time, Christine Jorgensen got her surgery in Denmark.  She wasn’t the first and she wasn’t the only one changing sex in the early 1950s. [3]

In cities across the nation there was a lively and only semi under ground bar scene.  Sometimes in the gay and lesbian meccas of cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco,[4] sometimes in unlikely locations such as Buffalo, NY.[5]

Fire Island was the gay vacation place and a summer party for gay men from the 1950s onward.[6]

Thanks to the efforts of Virginia Prince and another cross dresser known as Susanna there was the start of what evolved into the heterosexual organized cross dressing scene complete with resorts and conferences.[7]

There are a pair of films available on DVD that offer a glimpse of LGBT/T life both before and after Stonewall conveniently titled Before Stonewall and After Stonewall

[1] Timmons, Stuart; The Trouble with Harry Hay Alyson Pub Boston 1990

[2] Gallo, Marcia; Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement Seal Press 2007

[3] Meyerowitz, Joanne; How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States Harvard University Press 2004

[4] Stryker, Susan; Van Buskirk, Jim  and Maupin, Armistead; Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area Chronicle Books 1996

[5] Kennedy, Elizabeth;  Davis, Madeline;  Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community Routledge 1993

[6] Newton, Esther;  Cherry Grove: Fire Island Beacon 1993

[7] Raynor, Darrell; A year among the girls Lancer Books 1968?

Posted in History, Lesbian, LGBT/T, Sex Change Surgery, Transgender, Transsexualism, Uncategorized. 2 Comments »