The point in forgetting Stonewall is to hold on to the much more difficult task of thinking about “event-ness” and history in more complicated ways.
I’m pleased to announce that my piece “Forget Stonewall” was published in The Gay and Lesbian Review, in its special issue commemorating the 50th anniversary of Stonewall.
An excerpt:
No one has mapped the network of back-to-the-land lesbian homesteads in Down East Maine that have been there since at least the 1970s. No one has written about the bilingual, bi-national Northern Lambda Nord newsletter that was published regularly between 1980 and 1999 servicing Acadian and indigenous queers living in Northern Maine, Eastern Quebec, and Western New Brunswick. And still, no one defends the men who continue to be periodically busted for indecency while cruising the truck stop off the rural highway just outside my hometown, as they aren’t the proper queer subjects that identify as gay, don’t necessarily have a strong interest in liberal gay politics, or participate in urban gay cultural events like Gay Pride. Somehow the mythical history of the Stonewall Riots takes precedence.
You can read the rest here. Contact me if you need a pdf.
Photo by Yasmin Nair