This morning, while idly scrolling through my Bluesky feed (yes I am one of the privileged few to have made it into the Bluesky beta), I accidentally clinked on a link to a Kevin M. Kruse essay commemorating the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. The bulk of Kruse’s piece is not actually about Stonewall — it’s about the fact that before queers were oppressed, we were generally tolerated by society, at least enough for there to be thriving queer subcultures and scenes — but that’s not what my essay is about. What I am focused on, as per usual, is one small bit from early on in the piece:
There will doubtlessly be a lot of discussion of the uprising today, but one aspect that seems important to stress at this moment — as forces on the right try to create a dividing line between gays and lesbians on one side and transgender people on the other — is that these groups have long shared a common history of exclusion and discrimination. And that was never as clear as it was at Stonewall.
Kruse is repeating an important point that’s often made these days; one underscored by the rhetorical question “Who threw the first brick at Stonewall?” Despite modern attempts to sideline trans people, to act as though the rioters at Stonewall were all just cis queers who wanted nothing more than the right to marriage*, trans people have always been a part of the movement. Indeed before gender identity was understood as something distinct from sexuality**, being queer was understood as a perversion of gender not dissimilar from being trans. There’s a very dated plot line from the first season of the 1970s/1980s soap opera parody SOAP in which a gay male character played by Billy Crystal*** pursues a “sex change” so that his boyfriend will be able to publicly acknowledge their relationship; by modern standards this seems bizarre but it was in line with the mainstream understanding of sex and gender at the time.
But I digress.
Trans people were absolutely at Stonewall, that is indisputable. But someone else was there too: not just gays and lesbians, but bisexuals. The fact that I even have to point this out feels bizarre — Do people think that bisexuals just didn’t pursue any queer relationships in the mid-twentieth century? Do people think Stonewall turned bisexuals away at the door? — and yet apparently it must needs be said, because here I am, reading an essay that positions Stonewall as the domain of gays, lesbians, and trans people alone. But yes: bi people were at Stonewall too, right along with the LGTs, because bi people went to the Stonewall Inn and bi people fought for their rights alongside their queer peers.
Indeed, as I mentioned earlier this month, bi people were integral to — even leaders within! — the early queer rights movement in America, only splintering off in the 1970s and 1980s as increased visibility for queerness created a split between the monosexual and bisexual versions, not unlike the way that increased visibility for queerness led many cis queers to declare the gender deviants within the crew to be a bridge too far for mainstream America to understand and an acceptable sacrifice for the “greater good” of employment protections and marriage rights for the more easily assimilable cis queers.
To put it more bluntly: when queerness was forced underground, we were all united, more or less. It was only with rebellion, with visibility, with a glimmer of a chance at normalcy that the divisions really began to occur. It was only when cis gays and lesbians — more legible to cis straight people than the baffling trans folks or chaotic bisexuals — saw a chance at mainstream acceptance that bisexuals and trans people became, not comrades-in-arms, but potential traitors and collateral damage, respectively.
And it’s sad, really, that the unity we once had was shattered, not by losses, but by wins; that it was the potential access to safety that splintered a group that had been united when all we knew was fear. There’s a larger message in there somewhere, I’m sure — something about crabs in a bucket clawing each other on the way out — but for now, at a bare minimum, let’s just remember that we all stood together at Stonewall, and it was only later, only in the rewrites, that we were fractured into our individual pods.
* Lol, for so many reasons, lol
** Which… I have complicated feelings on whether it is or isn’t, but that’s not relevant right this moment
*** Yup
Fun fact the title of this essay is inspired by a feminist Jewish poem https://ritualwell.org/ritual/we-all-stood-together/