The gay world, or at least its movie-addicted part, is very much looking forward to the world premiere of the latest film by the German director Roland Emmerich. Not because the film is directed by him, but because of what it tackles: the Stonewall riots.
Even though they now belong to a distant world, both for its history and for the courage of the rebels to rise up against the established order, Stonewall is to this day an open wound in the heart of the LGBTQ community. Those were the years when psychological violence, which then was concrete and tangible social violence, went hand in hand with physical beatings – kicking, punching, spitting, arrests, harassment, torture; those were the years when it was probably a source of pride for democracy to marginalize a minority; those were the years when if you were gay, lesbian or transsexual you had to be thankful if you returned home alive. And it is therefore understandable how hard it must have been for those boys and girls to project themselves in a world where it was finally possible to return home without being out of breath because they were running to avoid being beaten up.
Because for certain things it takes courage not only to act, but also to think of an alternative: the man is a being who lives in a society that culturally shapes him. If there is no understanding of a minority status, there won’t be an active willpower. And not only that: the subordination to which one is subjected as part of a community or social group is often informal and private, which makes escaping from the group’s willpower an even more arduous task.
There is much debate among social theorists whether cultural affiliation is a choice: the Stonewall activists chose to revolt because they believed they belonged to that culture and they therefore chose to be the ones to spur on change. If today, forty-six years later, the LGBTQI community asks (and obtains) space it’s because they allowed them to. And if it is important to remember Stonewall, it’s because it marks the date of the founding of the contemporary history of the LGBTQI community.
This is exactly the reason why there are so many people in the world looking forward to Emmerich’s film. A masterpiece that has nevertheless has been blamed for having omitted, voluntarily or not, some important protagonists of the movement. On a number of American websites there were rumours regarding the possibility of boycotting the film exactly because, on one hand, it remembers a historical resistance movement, but on the other hand, it erases out the memory of the people who were there.
“It’s just a movie”, of course. “The characters can be even made up”, certainly. “The important thing is that it narrates the true facts”, most definitely. But for the reasons discussed above, it’s still crucial to talk about the key protagonists of those heroic achievements, the ones who began this reform towards sexual freedom; especially if these were transsexual people of colour who are often considered as the bottom of the heap of the LGBTQI community. Many of them are indeed absent from the film or at least, as the movie has not been released yet, have not been accredited in the IMDb cast list.
Precisely because it’s a true story, with real people, why not tell it the way it really is?
The point is not to highlight these people’s efforts in order to reward them for their contribution to the movement, they don’t actually need it: some of them have been dead for years, others have already been satisfied by the success of the movement for equality. The point is another one: it’s a matter of principle. One can’t tell a story and pretend they are doing it right, if the basis is missing. One can’t tell the gay and gay-friendly communities “here, these are your fathers and your mothers”, if they are the ones who are indeed missing.
It is therefore important to talk about the almost eighteen-year-old transsexual girl, Sylvia Rivera, known for having thrown her stiletto heel at the police. One must also talk about the transsexual girl of colour, Marsha P. Johnson, who was there from the very beginning to spur the riots at the Stonewall Inn, where she was to celebrate her birthday. It’s then necessary to discuss Miss Major who, as the leader of the riots, was arrested and tortured by the police. It’s again important to remember these women who participated in the riots, who stood up for all the LGBTQ people’s rights, only to be later almost blanked out from the history of the movement.
One has to remember that there have been women like them, ignored and even ostracized, also by the gay community itself. Today, one must fight for them, for their rights, for their equality.
