And History Repeats Itself

Two stories that caught my attention this morning (well, over the past couple of days, but I was focused on other things).

First, this, from Towleroad:

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, gay state Senator Mark Leno, and gay SF Supervisor Scott Weiner were booed off stage at a kickoff event for the annual Trans March in San Francisco, KRON reports:

“My first year in Sacramento, we added gender identity to the Fair Employment Housing Act,” state Sen. Mark Leno said.

But he was mooned by a heckler and booed by several others. Openly gay state Sen. Leno was yelled off the stage, as was Scott Weiner, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and also openly gay, and Lee.

Lee and Weiner didn’t even have a chance to speak.

“Though this has not been a warm welcome or one of respect, I will continue to fight for transgender rights, equality, and the respect that you’re not giving us today,” Leno said.

This is what caught my eye:

“I’m upset because I’m a Trans woman who has a lot of Trans friends who are homeless, and I’m tired of people using our community as a prop, a political prop,” Ashley Love said. “I’m tired of white, gay men riding the Stonewall movie and reducing Trans women of color to secondary props, to historical props, to social props, political props. I’m tired of politicians coming here for 5 minutes, do a little sound bite, and run off, but do they really care about us?”

I've seen this before: in the 1970s-80s, I watched the New Left take over the gay rights movement, which up until then had been pretty well focused and pretty effective. All of a sudden, it was "Yes, we'll work on equal rights for gays and lesbians, but first we have to end war and world hunger." It took a decade and the AIDS epidemic to regain momentum. Now, suddenly, the trans rights movement has to take on homelessness.

And as for white gay men "whitewashing" Stonewall, read this:

Two longtime LGBT leaders/activists, who were at the Stonewall uprisings, one transgender and one lesbian, have just weighed in publicly. Here’s what they witnessed that night.

Trans leader Dana Beyer writes:

“I was there [at the Stonewall Uprising] the second night, too, and the streets were overwhelmingly filled with white men (which included the way I was perceived back then, too).”

Lesbian activist Robin Tyler:

“I was there [at the Stonewall Uprising] the second night. The majority of protesters were white gay men. And a lot of people were very upset about the death of Judy Garland and their grief turned into anger. We talked about it.”

All the documentary evidence, eyewitness accounts, what have you, point to the fact that the majority of the demonstrators/rioters were white gay men. As Aravosis points out, yes, there were trans people of color, mostly trans women, heavily involved, front and center, but let's not have a lot of bullshit about "whitewashing."

It's worth noting that the controversy was sparked by a two-minute trailer.

Pat Cordova-Goff, an 18-year-old who describes herself as a “trans woman of color” and a student at Citrus College in Glendora, Calif., created the Gay-Straight Alliance Network petition calling for a boycott of “Stonewall” after watching the trailer. The petition has now racked up more than 24,100 signatures.

And, strangely enough, we hear from Ashley Love again:

“Seeing the film in its entirety was disappointing in how once again white gay men reduce trans women of color down to historical, social and political props,” said Ashley Love, 35, a journalist and coordinator with the education group Stonewalling Accurate & Inclusive Depictions. Describing herself as a black and Latina woman of transsexual history, she said that the film further highlighted “issues of classism, trans-misogyny, anti-blackness, Hollywood trans-face casting, misgendering, identity appropriation and transparent propaganda.”

What I'm hearing is a lot of ideologically generated bullshit, backed by a desire to be in the spotlight.

And, for the love of all that's holy, the film is not a documentary, it's fiction.

What I'm seeing in both these stories is ideological (read "moral") purity overtake all other considerations. (Fiction is supposed to reflect your agenda? Since when?) I saw it in the '80s, with the rise of the New Left and its "politically correct" approach to everything, and if you look real hard (actually, not all that hard), you'll find it on the anti-gay right, and in fact, the contemporary conservative movement (which shares with the fringe left the inability to differentiate fiction from reality).

And that approach is self-defeating. By all means, boo the people who are in the best position to help advance your cause, and boycott a movie that's going to do more to raise awareness than you're ever going to do. That will be real effective, won't it?