Queer'd Liberalism : Ch. 3
III. THE LINEAGE OF THE STONEWALL UPRISING
We would be dangerously remiss if we did not mention the radical, working-class, and immensely progressive history of our fore-mothers. The comrades who preceded us in the Queer liberation movement were largely of a working-class and nationally oppressed (Black, Chicana, and Puerto Rican) character. It would also be incorrect of us to proclaim that Queer people did not exist publicly until the uprising of 1969. As Amanda Yee noted in an article for Liberation News:
“Three years before the uprising at Stonewall, homeless queer and trans youth led an uprising at Compton’s Cafeteria in 1966 in San Francisco. Compton’s Cafeteria was an all-night diner in the Tenderloin district that was a refuge for homeless queer and trans people, who were shut out of stable housing by landlords and frequently targeted by police. In August of 1966, a cop grabbed a trans woman sitting in the diner, and she threw coffee in his face, triggering an uprising where dozens of people fought with police and even set a police car on fire.” [5]
“[B]eginning in the 1880s, he not only became the first American activist to lead a queer resistance group; he also became, in the same decade, the first known person to dub himself a “queen of drag”—or, more familiarly, a drag queen.” [7]
From Swann’s activism of the late 19th century, to Compton’s Cafeteria in the 20th, through the ballroom culture and political struggles of the present day, the Queer movement, was, has been, and will continue to be led by the masses of working Queer people and must continue to reflect the class-stand with which it was originally forged.
Post-Stonewall, a number of organizations formed including the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), the latter of whom were led by the great comrades, Sisters Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. STAR is particularly notable for their work with unhoused Queer youth, sex workers, and the Queer working-class and lumpen-proletariat[8] at large. It was these organizations that were at the forefront of not only advocating for the political rights of Queer people, but for materially providing for and improving the lives of our youth.
The question remains of how this historical context directly relates to the styles of Queerness with which we are concerned. In the period presently under discussion, the economic development of publicly Queer people had been substantially retarded by the bourgeois-patriarchal status-quo. This is to say that in many circumstances, the ability for publicly and proudly Queer people to matriculate into classes beyond the lumpen-proletariat and general working-class was profoundly hindered. Indeed, entry into the general working-class was itself a continuous challenge faced by all Queer people, for if one was privately Queer, their identity was always a risk for them that— if revealed— could dramatically limit their opportunities for employment, and if one was publicly Queer, their opportunities for employment were ab ovo reduced. Fundamentally, the criminalization and social-ostracization of Queerness largely separated (specifically publicly) Queer people from typical production by virtue of their Queerness. This is— in part— a reason for the ruthless, relentless, and glorious struggle for the rights of Queer people to engage in the productive process.
The retardation, suppression, and resultant lumpen-proletarianization of the Queer masses is itself what gave birth to the style of Queerness which we now identify as the “Ketamine” style. Queerness, being relegated to the underground, became underground itself and as such adopted the attitudes and character of the communities by whom they were surrounded. Illicit drugs, sex work, and homelessness were common place, as means of engaging with legal, heterosexual society were slim-to-nonexistent. The proliferation of illicit drugs is the component of this stage of Queer development that gives name to the “Ketamine” style; however, extra-legal and arguably anti-social activity is certainly not the totality of this style. In this style, self-organization, chosen family, and self-advocacy became of paramount importance. When bourgeois society has abandoned you, you must— as Assata Shakur said— “love and protect one another.”
This stage continued into the 1980s and the AIDS crisis occurring therein. As the U. S. government stalled on the issue and then-President Ronald Reagan not even daring to mention the disease until 1985,[9][10] communities were left again to fend for themselves in the face of a disease that was and has continued to kill primarily Black, Latine, Queer, and working-class people. Self-organization by, for, and of affected communities was the only solution to prevent excess death as the diseased ravaged communities and killed our foremothers. Queer people volunteered to care for their friends and comrades as they watched others succumb to illness. All the while, the dominant bourgeois-society spread poisonous stigmas of “gay cancers” and “righteous punishment.”
Those comrades that remain of this era and those who continue to stand in their lineage are undoubtedly of the proletarian “Ketamine” style of Queerness. These are the people who bind communities together as a cord stronger than one of titanium. They are those who continue to echo the legacy of the respected comrades Rivera and Johnson, and those are who carry forward the legacy of Queer liberation. Through every nightclub meeting, through every pose and vogue, through the maintenance of our culture and refusal of capitulation, these are the advanced fighters of Queer liberation who are firm and steadfast in advancing the independent character of the Queer masses.