From Joan of Arc to Stonewall
In the last decades, the development of technology rendered many of the occupational divisions between men and women obsolete. Women were joining the work force in larger numbers, becoming a part of the working class in the most active and immediate sense. This shaped a whole new consciousness.
The contraceptive pill, first produced in 1952, virtually revolutionized social relations for many women, and allowed women to participate in all phases of life with the same freedom from unwanted pregnancies as men.
Rigidly enforced gender boundaries should also have been scrapped. But the motor force of capitalism still drives prejudice and inequity as a vehicle for division. It took monumental struggles—and still greater ones remain on the horizon—to right these wrongs.
The civil rights and national liberation movements of the 1950s and 1960s, and the massive resistance to the Vietnam war, rocked the world and helped give rise to the women’s liberation struggle as well.
In 1969, militant young gay transvestites in New York City’s Greenwich Village led a fight against cops who tried to raid the Stonewall Inn. The battles lasted for four nights running. The Stonewall Rebellion gave birth to a modern lesbian and gay rights movement that will never again be silenced behind closet doors.
From peasant uprisings against feudalism in the Middle Ages to the Stonewall Rebellion in the 20th century, transvestites and other transgendered people have figured in many militant struggles, both in defense of the right of personal expression and as a form of political rebellion.
But from the violence on the streets to the brutality of the police, from job discrimination to denial of health care and housing—survival is still a battle for the transgendered population.
Transgendered people are the brunt of cruel jokes on television and in films. Movies like “Psycho,” “Dressed to Kill” and “Silence of the Lambs” create images of transgendered people as dangerous sociopaths.
In “Silence of the Lambs,” a sort-of-transvestite, wanna-be-transsexual kills women and skins them in order to sew a woman’s body for himself. The film turns reality upside down: It is actually transvestites and transsexuals who have been the victims of grisly murders.
This point was driven home by activists who disrupted the National Film Society awards in spring 1992. They passed out fliers highlighting the real-life murder of transsexual Venus Xtravaganza, who appeared in the documentary “Paris is Burning.” Xtravaganza was murdered before the film on Harlem’s drag balls was finished.
“Silence of the Lambs” swept the Academy Awards. “Paris is Burning” wasn’t even nominated.
Fighting for a better world
The institutionalized bigotry and oppression we face today have not always existed. They arose with the division of society into exploiter and exploited. Divide-and-conquer tactics have allowed the slave-owners, feudal landlords and corporate ruling classes to keep for themselves the lion’s share of wealth created by the laboring class.
Like racism and all forms of prejudice, bigotry toward transgendered people is a deadly carcinogen. We are pitted against each other in order to keep us from seeing each other as allies.
Genuine bonds of solidarity can be forged between people who respect each other’s differences and are willing to fight their enemy together. We are the class that does the work of the world, and can revolutionize it. We can win true liberation.
The struggle against intolerable conditions is on the rise around the world. And the militant role of transgendered women, men and youths in today’s fight-back movement is already helping to shape the future.
Bibliography
Peter Ackroyd, Dressing Up—Transvestism and Drag: The History of an Obsession, Thames and Hudson, London, 1979.
Arthur Evans, The God of Ecstasy—Sex-Roles and the Madness of Dionysos, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1988.
Arthur Evans, Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture, Fag Rag Books, 1978.
Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests—Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety, Routledge, New York and London, 1992.
Gay American Indians, Living the Spirit, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1988.
David F. Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1988.
Jonathan Katz, Gay American History, Harper & Row, New York, 1976.
The Trial of Joan of Arc, W.S. Scott, ed., Associated Booksellers, 1956. (Verbatim proceedings from the Orleans manuscripts, translated, with an introduction and notes).