Library and Academic Services: Gender and Sexual Diversity: Stonewall, Activism, and Pride

Stonewall, Activism, and Pride

The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, or simply Stonewall) were a series of spontaneous protests by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighbourhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Patrons of the Stonewall, other Village lesbian and gay bars, and neighbourhood street people fought back when the police became violent. The riots are widely considered the watershed event that transformed the gay liberation movement and the twentieth-century fight for LGBT rights in the United States.

A year after the uprising, to mark the anniversary on June 28, 1970, the first gay pride marches took place in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. Within a few years, gay rights organizations were founded across the US and the world. Today, LGBT Pride events are held annually in June in honour of the Stonewall riots.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Stonewall

Chicago Whispers: a history of LGBT Chicago before Stonewall by St Sukie de la Croix; John D'Emilio (Foreword by)
Location: ebook
Publication Date: 2012
Chicago Whispers illuminates a colorful and vibrant record of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people who lived and loved in Chicago from the city's beginnings in the 1670s as a fur-trading post to the end of the 1960s. Journalist St. Sukie de la Croix, drawing on years of archival research and personal interviews, reclaims Chicago's LGBT past that had been forgotten, suppressed, or overlooked. Included here are Jane Addams, the pioneer of American social work; blues legend Ma Rainey, who recorded "Sissy Blues" in Chicago in 1926; commercial artist J. C. Leyendecker, who used his lover as the model for "The Arrow Collar Man" advertisements; and ...
Gay Power!: the Stonewall Riots and the Gay Rights Movement 1969 by Betsy Kuhn
Location: ebook
Publication Date: 2010
Come out for freedom Come out now Power to the people Gay power to gay people Come out of the closet before the door is nailed shut Come Out magazine, November 14, 1969 On the night of June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City. They intended to shut the bar down part of the mayor s order to clean up illegal businesses. The cops didn t expect much trouble, especially not from the gay men and women dancing and socializing at the bar. At that time, most gay people were afraid to expose their homosexuality. They could be arrested for having sex with one another. They could lose their jobs just for being gay. By 1969 a few gay people had started to speak out. They had filed lawsuits and staged peaceful protest marches to call attention to discrimination against homosexuals. But when the police raided the Stonewall, the bar s customers decided to take a stronger stand. They hurled rocks and bricks at the police. They chanted Gay Power. ...

Activism, Advocacy, and Ally-ship

About Canada: Queer Rights by Peter Knegt
Location: HQ 76.3 .C3 K64 2011 (Located at NDC)
Questioning whether or not Canada is a “queer utopia,” this document reflects on the country’s exponential growth of acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle, speculating if it was truly the goal that queer activists hoped to achieve. Using the origins of the 1970s gay and lesbian liberation movement as a starting point, the history of the struggle for queer rights in Canada is highlighted, creating a clearer understanding of the present day. Covered topics include regional organizing; legal reform; institutional homophobia; children, youth, and education; health; and difference and privilege. Contending that Canada’s queer community is as diverse and multicultural as the country itself, this study also emphasizes that the region’s homosexuals are not easily generalized, arguing that they have not yet achieved equality.
Has the Gay Movement Failed? by Martin Duberman
Location: ebook
Publication Date: 2018
"Martin Duberman is a national treasure." --Masha Gessen, The New Yorker The past fifty years have seen significant shifts in attitudes toward LGBTQ people and wider acceptance of them in the United States and the West. Yet the extent of this progress, argues Martin Duberman, has been more broad and conservative than deep and transformative. One of the most renowned historians of the American left and the LGBTQ movement, as well as a pioneering social-justice activist, Duberman reviews the half-century since Stonewall with an immediacy and rigor that informs and energizes. He revisits the early gay movement and its progressive vision for society and puts the left on notice as failing time and again to embrace the queer potential for social transformation....
Historical Dictionary of the Lesbian and Gay Liberation Movements by JoAnne Myers
Location: ebook
Publication Date: 2013
Not so long ago hardly anything was said of the Lesbian Liberation Movement and the Gay Liberation Movement, indeed, the terms gay and lesbian were not even used if some other expression could be found. Today, by contrast, hardly a day passes when something important does not occur, and is carried by the major media and disseminated on more personal levels through blogs and the social media. If anything, there is perhaps too much "news" and not enough "information." Obviously, a book like this cannot keep up with the news, but it can do something equally important when it comes to information, by reminding us of the past and what has been going and just how fast events are moving. The Historical Dictionary of the Lesbian and Gay Liberation Movements covers the history of this movement through a cross-referenced dictionary with over 1000 entries on specific countries...
Never Going Back: A History of Queer Activism in Canada by Tom Warner
Location: ebook
Publication Date: 2002
Never Going Back: A History of Queer Activism in Canada is the first comprehensive history of its kind. Drawing on over one hundred interviews with leading gay and lesbian activists across the country and a rich array of archival material, Tom Warner chronicles and analyzes the multiple - and often conflicting - objectives of a tumultuous grassroots struggle for sexual liberation, legislated equality, and fundamental social change. Warner presents the history of lesbian and gay liberation in a Canadian context, telling in the process the story of a remarkable movement and the people who made it happen. His history encompasses efforts to attain legislated human rights for gays and lesbians, significant regional histories, autonomous lesbian organizing, and the histories of lesbians and gays of colour, two-spirited people, and those living outside the urban mainstream of lesbian and gay life. It also recalls the crises confronting the movement: the backlash against queer activism from social conservative 'family values' campaigns, state and police harassment, and the exigencies of responding to AIDS. Moving beyond the discussions of equality-rights campaigns, ...
Queer Mobilizations: social movement activism and Canadian public policy by Manon Tremblay (Editor)
Location: HQ 76.8 .C3 Q87 2015 (Located at NDC)
Canada is considered a leader when it comes to LGBTQ rights, yet this is a fairly recent phenomenon - one that is largely due to the tireless work of disparate groups of LGBTQ activists. Queer Mobilizations examines the relationships between LGBTQ activists and local, provincial, and federal Canadian governments. The contributors explore how various governments have tried to regulate and repress LGBTQ movements, and how, in turn, queer activists have successfully shaped public policy, across the political spectrum, from city halls to Parliament Hill.
Reclaiming Queer: Activist and Academic Rhetorics of Resistance by Erin J. Rand
Location: ebook
Publication Date: 2014
Reclaiming Queer is an examination of the rhetorical linkage of queer theory in the academy with street-level queer activism in the 1980s and early 1990s. The late 1980s and early 1990s were a defining historic moment for both queer activism and queer theory in the United States. LGBT communities, confronted with the alarming violence and homophobia of the AIDS crisis, often responded with angry, militant forms of activism designed not merely to promote acceptance or tolerance but to forge identity and strength from victimization and assert loudly and forcefully their rights to safety and humanity. The activist reclamation of the word "queer" is one marker of this shift in ideology and practice, and it was mirrored in academic circles ...
Straightforward: How to Mobilize Heterosexual Support for Gay Rights by Ian Ayres; Jennifer Gerarda Brown
Location: ebook
Publication Date: 2011
What can straight people do to support gay rights? How much work or sacrifice must allies take on to do their share? Ian Ayres and Jennifer Brown--law professors, activists, husband and wife--propose practical strategies for helping straight men and women advocate for and with the gay community. "Straightforward" advances a thesis that is at once simple and groundbreaking: to make real progress at the central flashpoints of controversy--marriage rights, employment discrimination, gays in the military, exclusion from the Boy Scouts, and religious controversies over homosexuality--straight as well as gay people need to speak up and act for equality. Ayres and Brown take aim at both the hearts and minds of the general public, focusing on strategies that can change the incentives and therefore the behavior of the ...
The Digital Closet: How the Internet Became Straight by Alexander Monea; Violet Blue (Foreword by)
Location: ebook
Publication Date: 2022
In The Digital Closet, Alexander Monea argues provocatively that the internet became straight by suppressing everything that is not, forcing LGBTQIA+ content into increasingly narrow channels--rendering it invisible through opaque algorithms, automated and human content moderation, warped keywords, and other strategies of digital overreach. Monea explains how the United States' thirty-year "war on porn" has brought about the over-regulation of sexual content, which, in turn, has resulted in the censorship of much nonpornographic content--including material on sex education and LGBTQIA+ activism. In this wide-ranging, enlightening account, Monea examines the cultural, technological, and political conditions that put LGBTQIA+ content into the closet. Monea looks at the anti-porn activism of the alt-right, Christian conservatives, and anti-porn feminists, ...
Under the Rainbow: a primer on queer issues in Canada by Jeanette A. Auger; Kate Krug
Location: HQ 76.3 .C3 A93 2013 (Located at NDC)
With contributions from Dayna B. Daniels & Judy Davidson, Valda Leighteizer and Ross Higgins Under the Rainbow is a primer on the social and political history and the everyday practices and processes of living queer lives in Canada. Framed through a life-course perspective, this book provides an overview of the historical and contemporary issues in the lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans and/or queer folk. The chapters in this text highlight the contributions of academics and community groups as well as individuals working on queer issues in Canada and focus primarily on contemporary Canadian material, introducing readers to topics such as law, history, health, education, youth, older persons, end of life decisions, social constructions of sexual identities, sports, transgender issues and issues experienced by lesbians and gay men living in Quebec.

Pride

Pride Parades: how a parade changed the world by Katherine McFarland Bruce
Location: ebook
Publication Date: 2016
On June 28, 1970, two thousand gay and lesbian activists in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago paraded down the streets of their cities in a new kind of social protest, one marked by celebration, fun, and unashamed declaration of a stigmatized identity. Forty-five years later, over six million people annually participate in 115 Pride parades across the United States. They march with church congregations and college gay-straight alliance groups, perform dance routines and marching band numbers, and gather with friends to cheer from the sidelines. With vivid imagery, and showcasing the voices of these participants, Pride Parades tells the story of Pride from its beginning in 1970 to 2010. Though often dismissed as frivolous spectacles, the author builds a convincing case for the importance of Pride parades as cultural protests at the heart of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender ...
Queer Festivals by Konstantinos Eleftheriadis
Location: ebook
Publication Date: 2018
To what extent is queer anti-identitarian? And how is it experienced by activists at the European level? At queer festivals, activists, artists and participants come together to build new forms of sociability and practice their ideals through anti-binary and inclusive idioms of gender and sexuality. These ideals are moreover channelled through a series of organisational and cultural practices that aim at the emergence of queer as a collective identity. Through the study of festivals in Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Copenhagen, and Oslo, Queer Festivals: Challenging Collective Identities in a Transnational Europe thoughtfully analyses the role of activist practices in the building of collective identities for social movement studies as well as the role of festivals as significant repertoires of collective action and sites of identitarian explorations in contemporary Europe.
Pride : celebrating diversity & community by Robin Stevenson
Location: HQ 76.5 .S74 2016 (Located at EDC)
For LGBTQ people and their supporters, Pride events are an opportunity to honor the past, protest injustice, and celebrate a diverse and vibrant community. The high point of Pride, the Pride Parade, is spectacular and colorful. But there is a whole lot more to Pride than rainbow flags and amazing outfits. How did Pride come to be? And what does Pride mean to the people who celebrate it?

Provide Feedback

Do you have a title to recommend for our collection? Use the Suggest a Purchase form to suggest a book, video or journal.

Are you an RRC Polytech staff or student with suggestions or feedback that can help improve this guide? Please contact this guide's author on the "Getting Started" page.