Intersectionality of the Gay Liberation and Civil Rights movements (original) (raw)
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The unfinished revolution: social movement theory and the gay and lesbian movement
Choice Reviews Online, 2002
Tracing the rainbow: an historical sketch of the American gay and lesbian movement To be overtly homosexual, in a culture that denigrates and hates homosexuals, is to be political. An historical analysis of the American gay and lesbian movement utilizing the political process model seeks to answer a variety of questions. What changing opportunity enabled the movement even to be contemplated? What types of organizations existed to capitalize on this opportunity? When did members of this disenfranchized minority realize their inherent agential power thereby experiencing cognitive liberation? What organizations did the movement spur? What type of response did the movement elicit from both the government and other citizens? How has the movement changed over the course of its existence? What factors have in¯uenced this change? This chapter attempts to address these questions by sketching the evolution of the American gay and lesbian movement throughout the post-war period. Starting with an analysis of the effect of the Second World War on homosexual identity and community, this chapter traces the development of the homophile movement of the 1950s and 1960s, explores the effect of the Stonewall riots of 1969, examines the ideology of gay liberation in the 1970s, analyzes the complex impact of AIDS on the movement, and assesses current notions of gay and lesbian visibility and the present status of the movement. Although homosexuals have obviously existed before this time, and a homosexual subculture had been emerging since the late nineteenth century, the onset of the Second World War ushered in a new era of visibility that would profoundly shape not just the lives of American gay men and lesbians, but question the understanding of sexuality itself. Despite and sometimes because of the mounting political war against them, the generation of the Second World War gay veterans did ®nd ways to break through
The popular narrative of the gay rights movement in the United States has often unfairly emphasized the importance of the Stonewall Riots. At his second inaugural address in January of 2013, President Barack Obama reinforced the primacy of Stonewall by associating it with other milestone events in the ongoing struggle for social equality, "We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths—that all of us are created equal—is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall." Although the Riots were an undoubtedly significant moment in the history of the movement, the emphasis placed upon them obscures a more nuanced transition between the conservative principles and tactics employed by the homophiles in the 1950s and 60s and the outspoken and confrontational activism of the gay liberationists who appeared in the 1970s. This piece contributes to the existing historiography in three ways. First, I use a new methodological lens (Social Movement Theory) to reexamine the historical narrative of the gay rights movement. By focusing this lens on the actions of the Mattachine Society and, more generally, on the east coast homophile organizations, this paper identifies a protracted development from mobilization in the early 1950s, through “assimilationism,” and eventually to “liberation” in the early 1970s. In the course of this reexamination, I use primary and secondary documents to focus on several often ignored events that clearly illustrate a transition in the principles and tactical repertoire of the gay rights movement. By adding the ECHO conferences, NACHO conventions, and ERCHO meetings to the historical narrative this piece helps reorient the Stonewall Riots. Finally, and more abstractly, this piece returns to the common historiographic issues of identity and community. The organizations and individuals studied in this piece wrestled with the idea and/or nature of “gay community” and the role of sexuality in the construction of their personal identities. The introduction of this piece addresses the major thematic trends and chronological tropes in the historiography of the gay rights movement. Section one begins the narrative in earnest by providing a thorough history of the Mattachine Society and the regional conferences organized by the “East Coast Homophile Organizations.” Section two continues the narrative by describing the national meetings of the “North American Conference of Homophile Organizations” and the radicalization of the “East Coast Homophile Organizations.” Finally, the paper concludes with a section that explores recent historiographic trends and the importance of continued historical study for the future of the gay rights movement.
Defending Genders: Sex and Gender Non-Conformity in the Civil Rights Strategies of Sexual Minorities
Hastings Law Journal, 1997
2. Id. at 114748. 3. John D'Emilio identifies the emergence of identity politics in the 1970s, which became "the organizing framework for oppression and... the basis for collective mobilization," as partly responsible for the foundering of the more radical aspects of the gay liberation movement in the U.S., a movement which originally sought to challenge the very categories upon which gay oppression was based. The rise of the Gay Activist Alliance and the concomitant demise of the Gay Liberation Front exemplifies this shift. JOHN D'EMILIO, MAKING TROUBLE 245 (1992).
Rights through Resistance: What Lies beyond Legalism for the LGBT Movement?
Economic & Political Weekly, 2020
The legalist approach taken so far with respect to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement has marginalised more radical possibilities of resistance by rendering diverse identities and intersectionality invisible. In this context, the historical examination of the LGBT movement in comparison with the civil rights movement and local case studies gives the trajectories of "lost" possibilities a new context and significance. These possibilities are explored here.
The Uneasy Collaboration of Gay and Trans Activism, 1964-2003
People who are today known as transgendered and transsexual have always been present in homosexual rights movements. Their presence and contributions, however, have not always been fully acknowledged or appreciated. As in many other social reform movements, collective activism in gay and lesbian social movements is based on a shared collective identity. Homosexual collective identity, especially in the days before queer politics, was largely framed as inborn, like an ethnicity, and based primarily on sexual desires for persons of the same sex and gender. 1 However, such definitions make sense only when founded on clearly delineated distinctions between sexes and genders. It becomes considerably harder to delineate who is gay and who is lesbian when it is not clear who is a male or a man and who is a female or a woman. Like bisexual people, transgendered and transsexual people destabilize the otherwise easy division of men and women into the categories of straight and gay because they are both and/or neither. Thus there is a long-standing tension over the political terrain of queer politics between gays and lesbians, on the one hand, and transgendered and transsexual people, on the other.
The Communist Movement and Gay Rights: The Hidden History
June is International Gay Pride month -a concept which in itself would have been unthinkable a half-century ago. In looking back on the history of what we today call the struggle for Gay Rights or Gay Liberation, the Communist and Socialist contributions to that struggle are deserving of both recognition and analysis. And the role of militancy itself also needs to be remembered, both by gay and straight people, if the gains of recent decades are not to be reversed.