Oh boy Pride month which means more bizarre ahistorical jostling over control of the narrative and the absolutely ludicrous concept of who "started it" or "threw the first brick".

Remember everyone:

It is possible to push back against the white-washed, cis-washed version of Stonewall's history without having to push the EQUALLY inaccurate concept of "Marsha P Johnson threw the first brick". Even IF that were true (and it isn't), it's ridiculous to say…

…who "started" the riot, because a number of factors all led up to it. Hell, you can arguably say the NYPD started it, and based on what we've seen this week, THAT'S PROBABLY TRUE.

What's IMPORTANT is remembering the history that the Stonewall was a cheaper gay bar that…

…less affluent parts of the community: it had lots of Black and Latino people, lots of street kids, lots of trans women, lots of drag queens, and a few butch lesbians. It was the exact opposite of the kind of bar that gay white collar professional guys or macho navy type…

…queers would ever go to.

It was "started" by a VARIETY of vulnerable, marginalized demographics within the LGBT community of the time, not one particular one, and certainly not one particular individual. Trans women - mostly Black and Latina - were DEFINITELY key to the…

…event, since trans women were being actively arrested for breaking cross-dressing laws, while gay men couldn't be arrested simply on the SUSPICION they were going to have gay sex they night, only arrested if they had drugs on them or whatever. And trans women resisted the…

…brutality of the arrests. But butch women were being arrested too, on similar grounds, and ALSO resisted.

Nobody deserves to be erased from the narrative just to make up for someone else's earlier erasure.

What happened was a targeted brutal attack on the most vulnerable members of the community, and those people pushing back against that brutality. Which certainly did INCLUDE many of the demographics people like to assign singular credit to. But it was a COMMUNAL push, from…

…ALL the parts of the queer and trans communities that were sick of the situation, and pressed too far against the wall to have any others option like retreating back to nice Upper West side apartments afterward to have their wives ice their bruises.

No one person who was…

…there deserves credit for it, and no one person who was there deserves to be excluded from the narrative, and told it wasn't REALLY them who took action, told they don't deserve any *portion* of that credit.