[Marxism] Wayne Dynes: My take on Stonewall plus 40

[David Thorstad <binesi@xxxxxxxxx>]

I hope this isn't too long for the list because it provides a perceptive 
summary of the impact of Stonewall among same-sexers at the time, even 
if not its relevance (or lack of it) for today.
David
===========================================================

The Stonewall Rebellion was a series of spontaneous, violent
demonstrations against a police raid that took place at the end of
June 1969 at a gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, in Greenwich Village in
Manhattan.  The events were triggered by a seemingly routine police
raid in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969.  The police entered
the premises and began collaring the patrons to transfer them to the
black marias.  Surprisingly, however, some of the victims fought back.
Soon a large crowd of angry street people gathered outside, tossing
coins, beer cans, rocks, and other objects at the police.  After much
drama and well-justified righteous anger, things quieted down.
Undeterred however, the rioters returned for two more nights of
violent demonstrations.

The Stonewall Rebellion was very important in giving a decisive push
to the American gay and lesbian movement.  However, it was not, as the
Wikipedia article asserts, “the defining event that marked the start
of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.”
Quite the contrary.  The modern American gay rights movement began a
generation before in Los Angeles, when Harry Hay and his friends
founded the Mattachine Society in 1950.

For their part, the Stonewall events had a startling catalytic effect
because a number of factors converged to form an almost unique
constellation.  Opposition to the Vietnam War was intense and growing.
The civil rights and women’s movements were well established.  In the
spring of 1968 Columbia University saw the eruption of two student
occupations, the beginning of a student militancy that spread
throughout the land.  And of course the thriving Counterculture--the
Summer of Love had taken place in San Francisco in 1967--encouraged
nonconformity of all sorts, including liberal use of psychedelic
substances.

Some skeptics maintain that the Stonewall events were blown out of
proportion by the media, centered as it was in New York City. This
claim is unpersuasive, because there was very little media coverage,
except for articles in a local paper, The Village Voice.  Even though
the riots went on full swing for three nights, no television station
bothered to cover them.

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion.
Among the events currently taking place are two conferences on the
origins of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), an influential, though
short-lived gay organization that sprang up in the immediate wake of
the events at the Greenwich Village bar.

In 1969 itself a series of meetings were held during the month after
Stonewall, culminating in a large gathering of gay and lesbian
radicals and other outspoken people held on July 30 at the Alternative
University.  The group adopted the moniker Gay Liberation Front, in
homage to the Vietnam Liberation Front and the Algerian Liberation
Front (FLN).  Solidarity with Third World movements was a sentiment
that was widely and fervently voiced at the time.

The current GLF commemorations took place at the New York Public
Library on June 24 and the Lesbian and Gay Community Center in
Greenwich Village on the following evening.  Some twenty-five
individuals, all members of the group spoke at these symposia, sharing
their reminiscences and understandings of the goals and purposes of
the group.

In the last few years several key GLFers have died, but it was good to
see so many survivors, most in good health.  Their presentations
offered a learning experience for the largely younger crowds attending
the gatherings.

The views to which most of the original GLFers subscribed have been
aptly characterized by a handout distributed on June 25.  “GLF
believed that the oppression of lesbians and gay men sprang from
‘patriarchy’ (the belief that men should/must dominate women).
Patriarchy gave birth to ‘sexism,’ the attitude that people could be
treated differently because of their gender.  Sexism led directly to
homophobia, the irrational fear and disgust straight people had for
individuals whose sexual variation was rooted in same-sex attraction
and sexual practice.  Gender variance and expression were seen as
homosexual signifiers.  GLF saw capitalism as the heart of racism,
which was tied to sexual and homophobia.  Only by attacking
patriarchy, sexism, and capitalism together could society’s attitudes
toward women, minorities, lesbians, gays, and youth be changed.”

Revolution--the word and the concept--was constantly invoked.  As a
result of this torrent many came to think that a socialist revolution
in America was imminent.  As every one knows, that did not occur, nor
is it likely now.  But it is arguable that the late ‘sixties and early
‘seventies saw a fundamental transformation in consciousness.  Things
were very different afterwards than they were before.  To be sure,
much still needs to be done for gay and lesbian people, but we have
taken giant strides.

Back though to the GLF commemorations of this past week.  I regret to
say that several themes struck by the presenters were misleading.

Even after all these years, few of the participants had taken the
trouble to learn the basic facts concerning the history of the
American gay movement prior to the irruption of the Stonewall
Rebellion.  In reality, many of the innovations claimed for GLF had
already been undertaken by such early pioneers as Harry Hay, Dorr
Legg, Don Slater, Jim Kepner, Dell Martin, Phyllis Lyon, Barbara
Gittings, Frank Kameny, Dick Leitsch, and Robert A. Martin.  Most of
these figures are profiled in the volume “Before Stonewall,” which I
began and which was completed and published by the late Vern Bullough.

Except for John Lauritsen, who gave two excellent presentations, none
of the participants at the gatherings just completed seemed to have
been aware of that book or any of the other treatments of the
formative stages of American gay-movement history.  For example, the
speakers seem to have regarded the GLF publication Come Out!  (first
issue: late August 1969) as the first significant gay periodical.  In
fact it was preceded by a least four other major ones: ONE Magazine,
Mattachine Review, The Ladder, and Tangents.  One speaker even
proffered the strange claim that GLF had originated the Radical Fairy
movement.  In fact the Radical Fairies were the brainchild of Harry
Hay, the actual father of American gay liberation.  At the meetings
just concluded Hay’s illustrious name was conspicuous by its absence.
There is no excuse for this ignorance.  At this very point in time a
powerful drama on Hay and his partner Rudi Gernreich, “The
Temperamentals,” is playing to a packed house on Off-Broadway.

Another dubious claim was that there was no gay community before GLF
had forcefully inserted itself.  In fact there was a very lively gay
bar scene; gay quarters were thriving in a number of American cities;
and advocacy organizations had taken root, working vigorously for gay
rights.  At the forefront of the last were the chapters of the
Mattachine Society.

Those things being so, many doubt--as well they may--that even now a
gay community exists.  Not surprisingly, that goal remains as elusive
as ever in the age of that strange collage GLBTQ.

As a point of personal disclosure I should note that I had been a
member of New York Mattachine (MSNY) since 1967, two years before
Stonewall.  I was in Europe in June of 1969 so I did not witness the
events personally.  However, many conversations and much
cross-checking have confirmed that David Carter’s 2004 “Stonewall”
monograph is a generally reliable guide.

In my view, the most serious problem with most of the GLFers, then and
now, is their absolute privileging of personal experience, overriding
any general truths.  This notion flies in the face of all that we know
about cultural advance.  For human knowledge to survive as a coherent
body we must all engage in a process of sifting and testing the
evidence.  Yet according to the GLF credo this task is superfluous and
even harmful, for the only real truth lies in Subjectivity, sovereign
and unchallengeable.

In the presentations of the last few days all the reminiscences were
taken as a matter of course to be of equal value, even though some
individuals had clearly edited and remolded events and impressions in
their minds.  A series of studies by academic psychologists has shown
that that is the way human memory works, as it gradually interweaves
true recollections with truncations, enhancements, and other
embroidery of various kinds.

Subjectivity was the thing then.  Yet having entered the boiling
cauldron of what was GLF, though, one could not expect to emerge with
the same personal attitudes that one had on going  in.  “Consciousness
raising” was mandatory.  The experience was supposed to be profoundly
transformative, so that a New Person emerged.  Some of the lessons
administered in this process were unpleasant, even harshly punitive.
This was particularly true for men, who were constantly abjured to
abandon their perceived “sexism” and humbly to seek pardon for their
supposed complicity in the “patriarchy.”  Despite the explanation
offered above, I never quite learned what the patriarchy was.  Yet
there was one thing we all knew for certain about that abomination:
patriarchy was evil!  This reign of this odious monster must not be
allowed to stand.  In its stead, the overarching goal was to advance
to a beatific utopia “after patriarchy.”

This imperative was particularly felt by the women, and in due course
many of them seceded to form other organizations.  These groups, which
I won’t attempt to characterize now, were generally termed
Lesbian-Separatist.  The corresponding idea of Male Separatism was,
however, absolutely taboo.

In keeping with their general leftist orientation, GLF participants
offered active support to the Black Panthers, the Young Lords (a New
York Puerto Rican group), and other liberation movements.  Efforts to
link up with NOW, the national women’s organization, were for a time
blocked by Betty Friedan, who had trumpeted her strident warnings
about the so-called lavender menace.  The most decisive setback,
however, occurred in Cuba, where GLF sent a brigade to help with the
harvest of sugar cane.   In this endeavor they were met with intense
homophobia from both North Americans and Cubans.  To his great credit
the GLFer Allen Young published a book about state-sponsored
homophobia in Castro’s Cuba.  Gradually the GLFers learned the lesson
that solidarity is meaningless without mutual respect.

In the course of the year 1971 GLF gradually withered away, as most
participants shifted to other organizations or dropped out.  Hundreds
of people had attended the meetings and an immense amount of useful
publicity had been generated.  GLFers were in the forefront of
planning New York’s first gay march, an annual tradition that began in
June 1970, one year after the Stonewall Rebellion.

According to all reports the meetings were characterized by constant
exuberance, sometimes mounting into a frightful din in which it was
hard to discern anyone’s views.   This hurley-burley was fostered by
the principle, adopted at an early meeting. that all decisions were to
be reached not by majority vote, but by unanimity.  This principle of
absolute consensus may have stemmed from the Quakers, passing through
the intermediary of the women’s movement--I am not sure.  But it was
common in Counterculture and left-leaning organizations of the time.
As a response to their frustration with the prevailing anarchy, a
number of key GLFers split off in December 1969 to form the Gay
Activists Alliance (GAA), which had a regular structure, including
observance of Robert’s Rules of Order.

Despite its problems, the exuberant GLF model proved wildly
influential at first.  By December 1970 at least 52 Gay Liberation
groups had been formed throughout the country.  Others sprang up
abroad.  At the same time, however, the New York organization had
begun its decline.  It is indisputable, however, that the energy,
determination, and daring of GLFers served to seed much of what
followed.


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