Some thoughts on Pride Month: one thing that bothers me is when I see relentless posts from white queer people like “remember queer people of colour fought for you” or “remember black trans women started the stonewall riots”

Without even getting into the mythologising and flattening/binarising of identities inherent in a lot of this, it simply undermines that plenty of queer people of colour were organising by and for themselves, and not “for” white queer people. Even if our efforts aided them

I think while well intentioned sometimes these discourses present historical queer people of colour as voluntary sacrificial lambs aiding broader gay liberation - but in truth sometimes the goals of self organisation and self preservation were the priority.

There’s plenty of mythology about Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera’s connection time the stonewall riots, but what matters more is that they co-founded STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) to help transvestites/transsexuals who were homeless/sex workers.

Equally black gay men were organising amongst and for themselves, and often more active within black organising spaces than white queer ones. Of course there were coalitions and mutual activism, but there was also significant conflict and sidelining of minority struggles.

I think when we reduce legacies to singular brick-throwing moments we do a disservice to the work of our queer ancestors. We shouldn’t focus on just those singular broad events of alleged pan-queer liberation because they gloss over the significance of smaller-scale organising

This of course doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pray tribute to your historical antecedents, but it means knowing what you’re thankful for & learning about them beyond those singular cinematic moments of revolution - sometimes the revolution was boring, and most of it is not televised!

As is often the case, my wonderfully intelligent friend @benvyle has written similarly of the issues with positioning Stonewall as the “ground zero” for queer liberation: https://twitter.com/benvyle/status/1267377773947076608?s=21

Black queers were/are integral to civil rights and feminist activism; it matters in pride month and in LGBTQ history month to consider how civil rights and feminist history is also queer history. Queer history is not only when activism had positive consequences for *you*

I see many of you have found this thread valuable, would mean the world to me if you could donate to @ukblackpride. We can’t celebrate in person this year but next years needs to be bigger and better than ever https://www.ukblackpride.org.uk/checkout/donate?donatePageId=5ce3e9e917f60b0001ac4c90