In her speech “Our Armies Are Rising and We Are Getting Stronger”, to the Latino Gay Men of New York (LGMNY) in 2001, Sylvia Rivera recounted her life in the context of her contribution to transgender activism, specifically that of the Stonewall Riots which took place during the summer of 1969. Throughout her speech Rivera reveals the underlying and persistent marginalization that took place not only on behalf of the cisgender, heteronormative community, but by her own community as well. Just eight months before her death, Rivera’s speech encapsulated a hierarchy of oppression that attacked her from all sides, which is not only reflected through her personal narratives, but also through the memorialization of social movements and the people
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She revealed the rigidity of identity politics that Jessi Gan describes as, “seeming to desire to cling to explicative postures [and] unified subject hood [that] has often resulted in repression, self-censorship, and exclusionary practices that continue to trouble organizing efforts”. This effort to homogenize the movement as a single subject, likely that of a gay, white, male of privileged economic class, placed individuals like Rivera on the margins, by which the memory of her and her contribution to the numerous movements for social justice were deemed as insignificant and therefore disposable. Rivera notes in her speech to the LGMNY that, “they [the LGB community] keep pushing us [the T community] every year, we’re further and further towards the back”. Rivera reveals in both of her speech’s that the marginalizing of transgender people was the same method used by the heteronormative, cisgender community to marginalized the gay community. Therefore the erasure and imposed invisibility of the transgender community can be attribute to a variety of individuals and communities. This is so due to the prejudices against intersections of identities such as race, class, and refusal to adhere to strict assumptions of what gender is meant to look and act like.
[Next Body Paragraph: I will discuss the topic of transgender visibility and how transgender people are talked about/not talked about. I will be using a source from 1969 from the village voice from two reporters: one inside and one outside and another source by Emylia Terry, “An Exclusionary Revolution: Marginalization and Representation of Trans Women in Print
She revealed the rigidity of identity politics that Jessi Gan describes as, “seeming to desire to cling to explicative postures [and] unified subject hood [that] has often resulted in repression, self-censorship, and exclusionary practices that continue to trouble organizing efforts”. This effort to homogenize the movement as a single subject, likely that of a gay, white, male of privileged economic class, placed individuals like Rivera on the margins, by which the memory of her and her contribution to the numerous movements for social justice were deemed as insignificant and therefore disposable. Rivera notes in her speech to the LGMNY that, “they [the LGB community] keep pushing us [the T community] every year, we’re further and further towards the back”. Rivera reveals in both of her speech’s that the marginalizing of transgender people was the same method used by the heteronormative, cisgender community to marginalized the gay community. Therefore the erasure and imposed invisibility of the transgender community can be attribute to a variety of individuals and communities. This is so due to the prejudices against intersections of identities such as race, class, and refusal to adhere to strict assumptions of what gender is meant to look and act like.
[Next Body Paragraph: I will discuss the topic of transgender visibility and how transgender people are talked about/not talked about. I will be using a source from 1969 from the village voice from two reporters: one inside and one outside and another source by Emylia Terry, “An Exclusionary Revolution: Marginalization and Representation of Trans Women in Print