During the Enlightenment Era of the 17th and 18th centuries thoughts and attitudes towards same gender sexual behaviors and cross-dressing performances were frowned upon and were considered to be outside of normative social behaviors. However, in several of Shakespeare’s plays, actors would often times play characters of the opposite sex. For example, in Troilus and Cresside (1609), pubescent played the role of female characters. This trend was the norm in Elizabethan theatre. Furthermore, such behaviors transcended mediums as writers began to defend same-sex behaviors. Thomas Canon’s Ancient and Modern Pederasty Investigated and Exemplify’d (1749) is one of the earliest works to defend homosexuality. While this English author defended this
It was not until 1950 that an American gay rights movement would come to fruition. The Mattachine Society, founded in Los Angeles by Harry Hay. The Mattachine Society effectively launched an era that focused on the rights of gays and lesbians, which became known as the Homophile Movement. Collectively, all of the organizations under the umbrella of the homophile movement demanded the equal rights and respect for all people regardless of gender identity and sexual orientation. Despite all of the work that has been done on the LGBT movement, the historiography of gays, lesbians, and transgender people have actively left people of color out of the conversations of the Homophile movement, Stonewall era, and specialized investigations of regions and
This new phase developed into the Gay Liberation Movement (GLF). The GLF exploded as gays, lesbians, and drag queens resisted police raids on the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in New York City in 1969. David Carter’s Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked a Gay Revolution, challenges this narrative. Using an abundance of interviews, Carter argues that the Stonewall riots were not started by transvestites who patronized the bar. The first hand accounts demonstrate that transgender people and queer people of color only made up a small number of those resisting police efforts. Carter cites the reason for the police riots was due to Mafia activities of the owners who were extorting money from customers, some of whom were undercover police officers. This narrative has faced strong backlash from many veterans who argue that accounts like Carter’s continue to white wash and cis-wash the riots. Responding to Stonewall and its aftermath came a number of studies that brought gays and lesbians out of the metaphorical closet and into the mainstream. Consequently, these narratives tend to continue the trend of not discussing the critical roles that transgender and queer people of color played in the
In Vicki L. Eaklor’s Queer America, the experiences of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people in the years since the 1970s gay liberation movement are described as a time of transformation and growth. The antigay movement, threatened, now more than ever, created numerous challenges and obstacles that are still prevalent today. Many of the important changes made associated with the movement were introduced through queer and queer allied individuals and groups involved in politics. Small victories such as the revision of the anti discrimination statement to include “sexual orientation”, new propositions regarding the Equal Rights Amendment and legalized abortion, were met in turn with growing animosity and resistance from individuals and groups opposed to liberal and
The stonewall riots happened june 28, 1969. It took place in the the Stonewall inn which is located in Greenwich Village which is a neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. “The stonewall inn is widely known as the birthplace of the modern LGBT rights movement and holds a truly iconic place in history” (gaycitynews). This means that the Stonewall riots was the event that started the gay rights movement. This is saying that The Stonewall is where the gay rights movement started for gay people to have same rights has anyone else. It all started with A number of incidents that were happening simultaneously. “There was no one thing that happened or one person, there was just… a flash of group, of mass anger”(Wright). This means that everything was happening at once and a bunch of people were angry. People in the crowd started shouting “Gay Power!” “And as the word started to spread through Greenwich Village and across the city, hundreds of gay men and lesbians, black, white, Hispanic, and predominantly working class, converged on the Christopher Street area around the Stonewall Inn to join the fray”(Wright). So many gay and lesbian people were chanting “gay power” . “The street outside the bar where the rebellion lasted for several day and night in june”(gaycitynews). so the stonewall riot lasted many days and
Historian David Carter, provides an intriguing in-depth look into the historical impact of the Stonewall Riots in Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution. This engaging book adds to the genre of sexual orientation discrimination. Carter extensively analyzes the various factors that played a role in igniting the Stonewall riots and the historical impact that the riots had on the Gay Revolution and movement for gay equality. Through the use of interviews, newspapers, and maps, Carter argues that the riots were a product of many geographical, social, political, and cultural factors. Carter further argues that the riots ultimately led to the forming of the Gay Revolution and caused sexual orientation to be a protected category in the growing movement for civil rights. Carter’s book provides a well-structured argument, supported mainly by primary evidence, into the different factors that contributed to the riots as well as a detailed account of the events that transpired during the riots and the political attitudes towards homosexuality in America during this time.
In his work about gay life in New York City, George Chauncey seeks to dispel the various myths about the gay lifestyle before the Civil Rights era of the 60’s. He distills the misconceptions into three major myths: “…isolation, invisibility, and internalization” (Chauncey 1994, 2). He believes a certain image has taken in the public mind where gays did not openly exist until the 60’s, and that professional historians have largely ignored this era of sexual history. He posits such ideas are simply counterfactual. Using the city of New York, a metropolitan landscape where many types of people confluence together, he details a thriving gay community. Certainly it is a community by Chauncey’s reckoning; he shows gay men had a large network of bar, clubs, and various other cultural venues where not only gay men intermingled the larger public did as well. This dispels the first two principle myths that gay men were isolated internally from other gay men or invisible to the populace. As to the internalization of gay men, they were not by any degree self-loathing. In fact, Chauncey shows examples of gay pride such a drag queen arrested and detained in police car in a photo with a big smile (Chauncey 1994, 330). Using a series of personal interviews, primary archival material from city repositories, articles, police reports, and private watchdog groups, Chauncey details with a preponderance of evidence the existence of a gay culture in New York City, while at the same time using secondary scholarship to give context to larger events like the Depression and thereby tie changes to the gay community to larger changes in the society.
The media considers the1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City the spark of the modern gay rights movement. This occurred after the police raided the Stonewall bar, a popular gay bar in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. Allyn argues that the new energy and militancy generated by the riot played a crucial role in creating the gay liberation movement. Arguably, the Stonewall Riots have come to resemble the pivotal moment in gay rights history largely because it provided ways for the gay community to resist the social norms. In fact, the riots increased public awareness of gay rights activism (Allyn 157). Gay life after the Stonewall riots, however, was just as varied and complex as it was before. In the following era, ho...
Prior to the 1970’s, members of the LGBTQ community, and especially those who also identified as people of color, were forced to stay silent despite constant discrimination because of their minority statuses. They did not have a voice or means to speak out against the oppression. During the 1960’s, the few safe spaces established for QPOC in urban communities had disappeared, since this particular era was being overshadowed by the Civ...
Kuhn, Betsy. Gay Power!: The Stonewall Riots and the Gay Rights Movement, 1969. Minneapolis, MN: Twenty-First Century, 2011. Print.
This paper will look at the different conceptions highlighted by Bulman in his article through the use of different methods used by the actors in the play. Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare captures the different conceptions of gender identity and different sexualities within the Elizabethan period.
Howard, Jean. "Cross-dressing, The Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern Eng- land." Shakespeare Quarterly 39 (1988): 418-40.
Though the Stonewall riots were started by trans-women of color, individuals from this group are
The Stonewall Riots marked the start of the gay rights movement, and inspired members of the gay community to fight for their rights instead of being condemned for their sexuality. Even today, gay people in the US use the incident at Stonewall to educate younger members of the gay community. "The younger generation should know about Stonewall so that they will realize it is possible to make change. It is possible to overcome entrenched, institutionalized prejudice, discrimination, and bigotry. And that they can live full equal lives." (Frank Kameny, aarp.org) This is the message that many members of the gay community continue to spread after the incident at the Stonewall Inn.
The history of the gay rights movement goes as far back as the late 19th century. More accurately, the quest by gays to search out others like themselves and foster a feeling of identity has been around since then. It is an innovative movement that seeks to change existing norms and gain acceptance within our culture. By 1915, one gay person said that the gay world was a "community, distinctly organized" (Milestones 1991), but kept mostly out of view because of social hostility. According to the Milestones article, after World War II, around 1940, many cities saw their first gay bars open as many homosexuals began to start a networking system. However, their newfound visibility only backfired on them, as in the 1950's president Eisenhower banned gays from holding federal jobs and many state institutions did the same. The lead taken by the federal government encouraged local police forces to harass gay citizens. "Vice officers regularly raided gay bars, sometimes arresting dozens of men and women on a single night" (Milestones). In spite of the adversity, out of the 1950s also came the first organized groups of gays, including leaders. The movement was small at first, but grew exponentially in short periods of time. Spurred on by the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the "homophile" (Milestones) movement took on more visibility, picketing government agencies and discriminatory policies. By 1969, around 50 gay organizations existed in the United States. The most crucial moment in blowing the gay rights movement wide open was on the evening of July 27, 1969, when a group of police raided a gay bar in New York City. This act prompted three days of rioting in the area called the Stonewall Rio...
Susan B. Anthony, a woman American civil rights leader said, “I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim. Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.” This quote directly relates to the stereotypical thinking about gender in both the Elizabethan Era and 19th century because women wanted to be recognized. In Chekhov’s, “The Lady with the Little Dog,” Dmitri Gurov experiences women to be the “lower race,” but when he meets Anna Sergeyovna he begins to think differently. One of Shakespeare’s works, Twelfth Night, depicts a love triangle that plays an important gender role. In addition, Viola/Cesario disguises herself in order to survive in the Illyria. In the film, Shakespeare in Love, Viola de Lesseps fools society by dressing as man, Thomas Kent, to follow Shakespeare, her love of the theater. The film reminds us repeatedly, a complex world where gender roles are uncertain, and things are seldom what they may seem. Anton Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Little Dog” and William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, along with the film Shakespeare in Love, depict the similarities of the Elizabethan Era and 19th century of women through induced character roles and powerful emotions. Shakepeare in Love comes closest to breaking the gender seal because the Viola uses clear and concise actions throughout the film.
Carol Thomas McNeely had once said “ The sexes so sharply differentiated in the play, badly misunderstand each other. The men persistently misconceive the women; the women fatally overestimate the men. Each sex, trapped in its own values and attitudes misjudges the other. ” To rephrase the quote, it says that due to the misunderstanding of the fundamental needs for each gender, it confines the genders into stereotypical boxes. In the play, Othello, one of the main themes about gender roles in this play is that miscommunication between the different genders. Due to the misunderstanding between the two of the main characters in the play, it had caused a great demise for both sexes.
In nutshell, women in Elizebathan era were expected to play second fiddle to men in their families irrespective of the strata of society they belonged to. In contrast, men enjoyed all the power & authority and had the final say in everything that mattered.