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Sexual revolution of the 20th century
Sexual revolution of the 20th century
Sexual revolution of the 20th century
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For a long time, the gay community was pushed underground, not considering its potential at a time when many other marginalized groups where fighting for their own right. Women protested their right to vote and black Americans protested their right to be treated equally, and the gay community frustratingly accepted the laws that pushed them to the edges, mixing them in with the drug world and sex trafficking. While many people did start to form groups in hiding, it would not be until the late sixties that people made great changes in popular opinion. In 1969, while the bar called the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in New York City was being raided by police, a five-day riot occurred that set off what would be considered the spark for the …show more content…
gay rights movement and all across the United States. Even though other groups and riots happened before Stonewall, this particular protest was important in bring people together to have a clear realization. Prior to the 1960's, the gay community was forced to meet underground which flourished during the jazz age of the 1920's. This flourish in culture after the First World War created the club scene and created a more open mindedness around the conventions of sexuality and gender. Within these clubs the Ball scene would start and continue to thrive till today . The Ball scene would start out with simple cross dressing and drag, but later would evolve to be competitions in dancing and style within the parties themselves. It would not be until the early 1950's that the first gay right group was created in Los Angeles called The Mattachine Society. The group would go onto publish papers about the community. What the group did would not be considered radical in today's standard but was important for encouraging many other groups to make similar publications . The 60's was then when the gay community started to become more connected and personal than it had been. As people found the community they started to realize all of the troubles they had with the law and how many similar experiences they shared with each other. With the anger that came from their treatment it would be reasonable to assume that their awareness for such things as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which outlawed discrimination against race, gender, religion, and nationality not discrimination against sexuality) . Seeing how other groups and organization where able to work for their rights, with peace or with violence, was a clear message that they could do the same as well. Before a riot like Stonewall the Compton Cafeteria Riots took place in San Francisco.
The riot occurred in Gene Compton's Cafeteria in a neighborhood that was described as a place "where sex work, gambling, and drug use were commonplace" . The Cafeteria was used as a meeting place for transgender women to meet, talk, and get a meal. But, the atmosphere was still far from feeling safe. The owners of the Cafeteria saw the women gathering as bad for business and would often call the police who would, in a not so friendly manner, escort them out or outright arrest them for breaking laws that prohibited cross-dressing. In 1966, when a police officer became physical with a girl like many times before the girl decided to fight back by throwing her drink at the officer. This action caused many of the other girls who were present to flip table and throw any of the utensils and kitchen ware they could find. The riot would eventually die down with arrests being made and people roughed up but it did make an impact in the mind of the community in what they were capable of …show more content…
. While the Compton Riots can be seen as influential for showing the power the gay community has, the Stonewall Riots enforced that sentiment harder and inspired people to organize and demand the rights they are due.
The Stonewall Inn was a common gay bar that welcomed in "drag queens, transgender people, butch lesbians, male sex workers, and homeless youth" at a time when many bars would deny such people from coming in in the first place. All of these sorts of people would have been present June 28, 1969 when nine police officers came with the intent to arrest workers at the bar for not have a license to sell alcohol and in the meantime harassed and arrested people who were at the bar for many of the common offences around cross dressing. A crowd had formed around the officers while they load people into a paddy wagon which turned violent towards the officers quickly. In retaliation the men had to barricade themselves in the bar while the crowd outside grew. Eventually the police were able to escape thanks to reinforcements and the riot continued on nonetheless. Unlike Compton, this riot last for several days thanks to people calling their friends to join or people noticing that there was something going on . The event gave people the realization that they are stronger in
numbers. After the riots many gay rights groups would form and use the protest as their own "remember the Maine" event. These groups would then start the tradition of having pride on the anniversary of the Riot in June, pass laws in favor of gay people, and get openly gay officials in public office. These groups would have an active participation through the AIDs epidemic all the way through getting gay marriage legalized in 2015 and none of it would have been possible without the Stonewall Riots happening. Therein lies the difference between Stonewall and the events that came before, while previous event may have brought about change none of them brought people together, all across the nation, like the Stonewall Riots did. Bibliography Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. April . Civil Right Act. 13 2018. Accessed May 31, 2018. —. n.d. Stonewall Riots. Accessed May 31, 2018. Chauncey, George. 1994. A Gay World, Vibrant and Forgot. June 26. Accessed May 31, 2018. Pasulka, Nicole. 2015. Ladies in the Streets: Before Stonewall, Transgender Uprising Changed Lives. May 5. Accessed May 31, 2018. Schlaffer, Natasha. June . The Unsung Heroines of Stonewall: Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. 27 2017. Accessed May 31, 2018. Staff, History.com. 2017. Gay Rights. Accessed May 31, 2018.
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
The Los Angeles riots kicked off on the twenty-ninth day of April 1992 following the acquitting of four officers who had beaten and injured a motorist in the previous year. In the year 1991, California Highway Patrol officers detected Rodney King speeding as he drove in Los Angeles. King then led the officers on a high speed chase for the fear that the court would revoke his probation for a robbery offense he had committed (Gray, 2014). He was caught and ordered out of his car surrounded by several L.A.P.D cars and this led to a struggle between him and the police officers with some of them thinking that he was resisting arrest. One sergeant, Stacey Koon, used a Taser gun to fire at him before they beat him with their buttons mercilessly. He was struck with police batons more than fifty times and suffered eleven fractures besides other injuries. George Holiday, who was a nearby resident, videotaped the ordeal and delivered it to a local television station the following day (CNN Library, 2014). The tape sparked tension between the black Americans and the whites. The blacks saw the beating as racial discrimination against their community. However, no violence was recorded from the blacks du...
The Stonewall Riots were a series of riots that took place at a gay club, Stonewall Inn, in Greenwich Village, New York City, during a six-day span commencing on June 28, 1969. Generally speaking, the protesters were homosexual men and women fighting against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. At certain points during the riots, there were “between two hundred and three hundred police on the scene” and police officers chased down the protesters with nightsticks (Carter 193). Indeed, according to a news report cited by Carter, “young people, many of them queens, were lying on the sidewalk, bleeding from the head, face, mouth, and even th...
Even though many of the protesters were severely beaten, they still stood their stance and got the message out. What is a Riot? According to Encyclopedia.gov a riot “is a social occasion involving relatively spontaneous collective violence directed at property, persons, or authority.” There are five main
Racism was a huge factor in the protesters’ decisions to yell nasty things at Ruby. The white people thought they were superior to black people; therefore, not allowing to let Ruby into “their” school.
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...
On the night of August 11, 1965 the Watts community of Los Angeles County went up in flames. A riot broke out and lasted until the seventeenth of August. After residents witnessed a Los Angeles police officer using excessive force while arresting an African American male. Along with this male, the police officers also arrested his brother and mother. Twenty-seven years later in 1992 a riot known as both the Rodney King riots and the LA riots broke out. Both share the similar circumstances as to why the riots started. Before each riot there was some kind of tension between police officers and the African American people of Los Angeles. In both cases African Americans were still dealing with high unemployment rates, substandard housing, and inadequate schools. Add these three problems with policemen having a heavy hand and a riot will happen. Many of the primary sources I will you in this analysis for the Watts and the LA riots can be found in newspaper articles written at the time of these events. First-hand accounts from people living during the riots are also used.
In article “Richmond's Bread Riot” author Alan Pell Crawford shares about the chaotic happenings and what came to be of Richmond, Virginia during the civil war time period. There were many issues that contributed to the hectic time period Richmond faced in the 1860s.
The Stonewall riots became a symbolic call to arms for many, it was gays and lesbians literally fighting back. After the riots many gay rights groups found new hope in gaining rights. New ideas, tactics, events and organizations were all a result of the riots.
A video was taken of the whole incident. The officers were acquitted. Numerous people of all colors became livid after they heard this. There were protests and riots, although many just wanted whites and blacks to come together. There are several other accounts of police brutality among individuals.
...protest movements throughout America and the world.” Among the gay community Stonewall has become the word for freedom, for fighting, for equality. It became a turning point in Gay history, so much so that most books on the subject refer to “pre-Stonewall” and “post-Stonewall” as the lines of demarcation. Of course the journey is still long and fight has not been won. At the turn of the century there were still 20 states that made homosexual sex illegal , any only a few states would recognize the love and companionship of gays through marriage or civil unions. The military policy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is still active and prejudices continue to exist. But, as exemplified by any other civil rights movement, it is through the constant grind of activists and lay-people constantly protesting and educating, that change occurs, even if only one person at a time.
On June 28, 1969, an event occurred that was to be the start of one of the most powerful movements in US history. On that Friday in June, the New York police force raided a popular bar in Greenwich Village called the Stonewall Inn because it was suspected of operating without a liquor license. Raids usually went on undisturbed by people involved, but during this raid the area around the inn exploded into fierce protest. The repercussions and multiple disputes that resulted from the initial raid would come to be known as the Stonewall Riots.
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...
There were many laws in place that limited LGBT rights prior to the Stonewall Riots, with horrible consequences for those who broke them. The most infamous of these was a law present in every state except Illinois that made gay sex punishable by a prison sentence or a fine. This prison sentence could, on some occasions, be a life sentence, depending on the state and the severity of the crime. Additionally, gay sex could result castration in seven states. New York City had the strictest laws against sodomy in the country. Additionally, New York was home to the most homosexuals. This resulted in a high rate of arrest. In the year 1966, an estimated 100 or more men were imprisoned because of the NYPD’s anti-gay effort. New York City’s anti-sodomy laws included banning homosexual behavior in both civic and independent establishments. Oftentimes, bars were the only businesses to accept openly gay patrons. This was mostly the case in the 50’s and 60’s, the time period in which the Stonewall Riots took place. Although bars were the safest places for LGBT members to gather, they generally meant bad news for such bars. In 1969, it was against the law in New Y...
There were several causes which led to this riot and the immediate cause was racial tension. Racism tends to persist most readily when there are obvious physical differences among groups e.g. “Black” and “white” differences. This no doubt results in attempts to limit economic opportunities, to preserve status, to deny equal protection under law and to maintain cheap labor. Discrimination was represented ...