Talk:Stonewall riots/Archive 10

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"Sylvia Rivera remembered..."

The construction above appears in the subsection on the riot outbreak, and it takes for granted that Rivera was present on the day, and was therefore in a position to remember anything from that night. It is noteworthy, however, that David Carter, the author most cited on this page, has concluded that Rivera was not present on the first day of rioting, that she fabricated her account of the events, and even suggests that Marsha Johnson denied Rivera was at the protests at all. For that reason, he has omitted her altogether from his many histories of Stonewall. An interview with him: [1] Rafe87 (talk) 00:14, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

One possible way of addressing this is with the "first night" and "second night" sections. I'm surprised to see the quote about Johnson dropping the bag on the cop car only in the "second night" section; I'll check Carter again, but I thought that happened on the first night. Having read all the sources, I think it's plausible that Rivera was there either on the second night of rioting, or later in the week. But I have to concur that there are no credible witnesses placing Rivera there on the first night (especially as Rivera's close friend Johnson told at least two people that Rivera was absent on night one). I think we can use Rivera as a source on the layout of the bar, as long as we cut "who was inside the bar at the time of the riot" [first night]. I also think Rivera could be mentioned in the coverage of night two, and/or later in the week. Then (if the sources check out) move the part about Johnson to night one. - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 22:05, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

OK, p.188 of Carter has the dropping of the bag on the police car on Sat. Night, so that should stay as-is. However, I see no reason to describe Johnson primarily as a friend of Rivera's, and Johnson should be mentioned on night one. A search on the google book version of Carter brings up plenty of independent references, as well as some good text about other gender-nonconforming people who were "in the vanguard" on the first night. "Jackie Hormona, Marsha Johnson and Zazu Nova" in particular are named, with some good content on page 261. - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 00:15, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Fatalities

Apologies if this has been brought up before, but I see no mention of damages and deaths caused by the riots. Is the information just not recorded anywhere or is it intentionally left out of this article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 164.165.59.90 (talk) 19:34, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

If you know of a reliable source reporting any vital missing information, you should feel free to add it to the article. Rivertorch's Evil Twin (talk) 03:11, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

'Gay community'

I have changed the verbage of 'gay community' to 'LGBT community', because I think that is much more representative of who was in the Stonewall riots -- while 'gay' was used at the time, we no longer say that 'Negros' had fought for rights during the Civil Rights era of the 60's in the US. Denial of this usage is kind of erasure to the people on the forefront of the riots (trans/drag individuals), even if 'gay' was used at the time. I thought I would make a talk page contribution for further discusion per WP:Bold. 76.84.23.253 (talk) 02:09, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for initiating discussion. I reverted the bold edit because of the note next to the sentence explaining its use. This has been discussed in the past (many years ago sometimes) Talk:Stonewall_riots/Archive_5#LGBT_vs_gay.2C_homosexual.2C_etc, Talk:Stonewall_riots/Archive_6#Evolution_of_language. However, I guess that since those discussions more information has become known about the roles of trans women and queer folks. This is something that needs consensus imho. This page doesn't get a ton of traffic, so maybe an RfC if no input in a bit? EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 02:24, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the response. (For sake of people viewing, I was the IP who started this section, was not logged in). I'll wait for some more consensus, but I would make a point that even those that were involved in Stonewall have said that not just 'gay' people were key to the movement as a whole. Lifted from the article Stonewall (2015 film, Mark Segal, fighter in Stonewall said,

"Stonewall is uninterested in any history that doesn’t revolve around its white, male, stereotypically attractive protagonist. It almost entirely leaves out the women who participated in the riots and helped create the Gay Liberation Front, which included youth, trans people, lesbian separatists and people from all other parts of the spectrum of our community."

Hopefully, people will agree with me in trying to give a voice back to trans and queer folks :). DoomLexus (talk) 02:33, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Whatever term is used in the lede, or in the main body of the text, it is essential that we also include text, or at the very least notes, that at that time "gay" was the synonym for "LGBT". No one used strings of initials yet in that era. By the 1980s, among radicals, "queer" became the more-inclusive version, and the one-word alternative to the strings of initials. This documentation of changing terminology needs to stay in these historical articles precisely so people don't get confused and think that only gay men are being referred to. If these details are not remembered, noted and kept clear, names of groups like the Gay Liberation Front (which were multiracial and fully LGBT) and publications like Gay Community News (also multiracial and fully LGBT) will be seen as something they were not. As encyclopedians and historians we need to be very careful that in clarifying that we don't accidentally confuse. <3 - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 02:52, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree that we should keep a note in the lede if we change the acronyms or keep it as 'gay'. Good eye in catching that! <3 DoomLexus (talk) 03:23, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

I've had this article on my watchlist for over eight years (since before it was a FA, although I had little to do with that status), and this discussion is a variant on a recurring point of contention that has arisen repeatedly. I think we need to be very cautious about changing these terms, which were chosen deliberately, largely based on the sources used, with great care taken to avoid anachronistic language. The LGBTx alphabet soup didn't exist in 1969, and it may or may not exist in the future in anything like its present form, but what has been true for decades, is still true today, and is likely to remain true is this: the Stonewall Riots are widely considered to have signaled the birth of the modern gay rights movement, and innumerable reliable sources agree that gay people were out there fighting the police. Saying so in the lede isn't erasing the identity of anyone else who may have participated, but not saying so in the lede runs the risk of diluting or even obfuscating the contributions of those gay people.

As a member of the larger LGBT-whatever community, I have no objection to anyone claiming Stonewall as an inspiration for other movements or providing compelling evidence to show that non-gay people participated in it, but as a Wikipedian I do object to 2016 terminology being retroactively applied to events of almost half a century ago. As a member of the gay community specifically, I cannot fathom how one can equate the word "gay" with the word "Negro". At best, that comparison seems to be a red herring, and that is putting it nicely. Rivertorch's Evil Twin (talk) 04:12, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Well said. I think "gay (LGBT) community" and the note suffices. I'm not sure whether to oppose or support just going with "LGBT" and the note, though. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:16, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Also, as for gay vs. LGBT, this has been discussed before; see this discussion on the LGBT community talk page and this discussion on the Gay pride talk page. Yes, use of gay community to refer to the LGBT community is being phased out, but it's also still being commonly used. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:28, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

My point about 'Negro' is that there is outdated language that needs to be modernised and to recognise the contributions of people within the community; recently we learned that trans women and drag queens were at the forefront of the riots and I don't think that we need to say that it was solely the 'gay community', with a note saying that it was the usage of the time. I did not mean the racial baggage that comes along with the term 'Negro', for that I'm sorry. However, just saying that the gay rights movement was started as a result of the riots and thus it would make sense to say that it was gay people (with a note) at the forefront seems false; removing the word 'gay' in the lede does not dilute the contributions of gay people in the slightest, when what I'm advocating for is a change to LGBT or something similar. DoomLexus (talk) 03:40, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Umm, no. We didn't "recently" learn that drag queens were at the forefront of the riots; that has been widely known forever and a day. Perhaps I misunderstand you, but I fail to see how the (prominent) participation of drag queens in the riots could support an argument for changing the word gay to something else. To the best of my knowledge, drag is largely a part of gay culture—overwhelmingly so. The question of trans women is a different one, probably more complex, but I think on that we need to be very cautious not to infer anything about anyone's sexual orientation based on their trans or cis identity. In any event, this all seems rather esoteric, if not entirely beside the point. The article has a plethora of reliable sources that use the word gay, and unless they are supplanted by newer, equally reliable sources that use other terms, we really need to go with what the sources say. Rivertorch's Evil Twin (talk) 04:38, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

An anachronistic alphabet soup should be avoided, particularly if it's not found in sources from the period. Jonathunder (talk) 03:50, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Agree. The article originally said "gay community" (with a footnote), but somehow got stuck with "gay (LGBT) community" (with the same footnote) during a time of rapid editing, but without discussion. I'll put it back how it was. Stickee (talk) 04:03, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

I've undone your change, as it runs contrary to the discussion above. Mentioning that the period term was "gay" is useful. Insisting on exclusively denoting LGBT people via a now-anachronistic term like "gay" which now means something else, on the other hand, misleads readers. (If we were writing about a species of mushroom which was discovered back when the word "plant" included mushrooms, perhaps we could describe it as a "plant" and then in parentheses note that "plant" now excludes fungi — parallel to "gay (LGBT)" — but better would be to just use the modern terminology, and then perhaps in parentheses explain the older terminology.) We should be adding clarity, not removing it. I'd suggest putting the short sentence on the subject that is currently hidden in a footnote into the prose. -sche (talk) 08:33, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

I don't find the biological kingdoms analogy particularly apt. The gay people who rioted at Stonewall didn't stop being gay when the term LGBT gained acceptance, and it is not anachronistic to refer to them as gay. The anachronism is applying the term LGBT to people and events of 1969. I'm in favor of removing the parenthetical. Rivertorch's Evil Twin (talk) 04:23, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

I think Rivertorch's Evil Twin and Jonathunder are raising some important points here. It's very, very hard for those born in recent decades to understand what the community was like in 1969. The aim of inclusivity is of course noble, but truth can't be sacrificed, either. For instance, when the current political climate leads to well-meaning people going through articles and adding in "and bisexuals and nonbinary people" to "gay men and lesbians", as just one example, it can be very misleading. To be out in 1969 was so hard and dangerous, you basically only came out if you were a Kinsey 6. Bisexuals mostly got married and assimilated as straight if they could manage it. It was just too brutal for most people to manage otherwise. Same with being trans. Most people only identified as trans if they went full transsexual, with the aim of passing, assimilating into the straight world, and then going full stealth as a straight person. Many of the people being retroactively seen as trans these days, by people who did not know them and were not part of our community back then, did not identify that way when they were alive. We were gay and lesbian, gender nonconforming, drag queens, street queens and butch dykes. All this other stuff is very new in the broader scheme of things and the history needs to be preserved accurately. So when thoroughly well-meaning people who didn't live through those times want to change terms to be inclusive, while I honour their intent, we also need to slow down and really think about whether it is accurately representing the history. We have several serious issues with this article, in several sections on this talk page, that deal with these issues. All of this needs to be addressed, as it goes way deeper than just this one sentence. With love and patience and gratitude for you all. This is a stressful time. Let's appreciate each other and that, despite it all, we are still here. - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 17:42, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

That was nicely put, CorbieVreccan. I'd like to add that I really appreciate that everyone here is assuming good faith and remaining civil. That said, I will say that I don't understand some of the viewpoints expressed in this thread and am having trouble seeing it as a question of age or era. I'm hardly ancient (way too young to remember Stonewall) and I try to stay reasonably up to date on trends and terminology, but I'm baffled. Some of the comments here make it seem as though the word "gay" is deprecated. I don't get that. Maybe that's beyond the proper scope of this particular talk page, so let me just say this for now: I find the current wording—"a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the gay (LGBT) community^{[note 1]}"—awkward and unfortunate. The note makes sense if the parenthetical word is removed; otherwise, it's redundant. But it's far more descriptive than the parenthetical word alone. When I see the phrase "gay (LGBT)", I wonder why. Usually, a word placed in parentheses like that is there to clarify the preceding word—for instance, if it's unfamiliar or ambiguous. Well, "gay" isn't an unfamiliar word; it has been around a lot longer than "LGBT" and is used widely and neutrally throughout the English-speaking world every day. And any ambiguity is ameliorated by the note. So why is "LGBT" there? I don't understand. Rivertorch's Evil Twin (talk) 16:48, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Revisting issue of patronage

Related but not exactly the same, this bit:

It catered to an assortment of patrons and was known to be popular among the poorest and most marginalized people in the gay community: drag queens, transgender people, effeminate young men, butch lesbians, male prostitutes, and homeless youth.

Whatever your opinion on where Sylvia Rivera was that night (mine is that Rivera was nodding off in the park, and only at the Stonewall on some of the subsequent nights of rioting), I do think what Rivera and plenty of others who were known denizens of the Village bar scene said about the Stonewall is accurate: there really were not that many draq queens or POC in the bar. Rivera only went there to score drugs. It was mostly a men's bar, and it wasn't really a trans hangout. Is the characterisation in the quote above from Duberman? I know some of the very recent, revisionist, and not credible reports have characterised it this way, but this doesn't actually line up with the older reports. I'm not sure many dykes really went to the bar at all. Rivera says in the Piers interview, "There were no lesbians at the Stonewall." The fact the riots were more diverse was because people converged from all over the Village and joined in. They came from the park, the streets, from neighboring bars and from other gay and lesbian bars as word spread. It wasn't just regular Stonewall patrons who rioted that night. - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 03:01, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

References