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In light of the present practice of applying modern information to the past and then judging people according to what they could not have possibly known at that time and the parlor game of seeing what we can claim as proof that the Stonewall Generation had done everything it could to whitewash the event so non-Whites have been erased and replaced with cisgender, Gay, White males because the people then refused to acknowledge the gender differences present, I am offering this list of terms and when they entered the conversation, got defined, and became applicable, as a follow up the the previous Stonewall/Compton blog. 

The fault is not that of those of that generation but that of those who validate themselves by refusing to build on their own strengths but attempt to increase their value by diminishing that of others even if that is based on ignorance, easily eliminated but too inconvenient to do so.

Based on this list, how can the young blame the Stonewall Generation for whitewashing when they, themselves, have erased a mixed-race Lesbian whom several eyewitness statements testified was the person who actually incited the Riot, and reached back three years and 3,000 miles away to pluck someone from one historic event, plant them in the Stonewall story, and assign that position to a person whose own statements show was not even there until two hours after the riot began.

 When psychoanalysis began there had to be an established normal and an abnormal and this was based on the fathers of the discipline being normal and all else abnormal with causation.

The term Homosexual came about around 1869 to name the abnormal with Heterosexual following decades later to name the normal as well. These, however, were clinical terms and with the general population being told one was abnormal and unnatural, without a universal term for everyday speech, people used existing labels that implied the abnormal. Nancy boy, Mary, Queer, sick, Mariposa were interchangeable and assigned to and not chosen by those to whom they were applied.

Until this time, sex was sex. Men and women got married first for legal and then religious reasons with the couple expected to have children to whom they could pass on any fruits of their labor with only the issue from marriage having a legal claim to any inheritance regardless which person, husband or wife, may have had children outside of the bonds of wedlock. Beyond being charged legally or socially with being unfaithful for not providing for or doing right by their kids otherwise, there was no special name for it even when people of the same sex might have had intimate moments, unless this led to  the dereliction of family responsibilities, or if one Lesbian assumed the male role, the pitcher, or one Gay partner betrayed his maleness by assuming the female role, catcher, people just accepted it for what is was, unfaithfulness to the marriage commitment and not much more.

We had no name for ourselves. We were what we were called. It was only among ourselves that we used chosen terms.

Even among ourselves what we knew of us was limited by what we learned from those around us, but not like us, and we did not have the knowledge or vocabulary to correct misconceptions that we too had assumed was the way we were. We got no more information from our elders than they had, so, their misconceptions were ours as well. It was only with World War II’s needing people from all over requiring people mixing with people they may not know existed until this forced migration. People lived largely among those like themselves, ethnically, religious, and culturally connected.

 Just as the rest of society had years to learn what we, ourselves, would need a period of self education to learn, it was not always easy because we, too, had to accept differences among ourselves..

Gay was the first term we chose to be publicly  known by, not assigned to us. Just as the people of North and South America had existed and did not come into existence only when Columbus discovered them but had been here, the continuum of gender existed before it was named, but it had been here, undiscovered.

Although the gender variants existed, the revelation and understanding of them took time and part of that was abandoning assumptions.

To assume that people in 1969 had the knowledge and proper terminology we have today and condemning them for knowing as much while ignoring it is ludicrous and rather ignorant.

These are the presently known terms and, rather than claim what was unknown is proof of conscious whitewashing of events, it must be accepted that those people made it possible to bring shadowed things into the light as their activism and demands for the acceptance of our existence and the reality of our personhood, brought about the gender studies that gave names to what was there but unnamed.

They did not whitewash anything but did help bring identity about in the years after Stonewall.

Glossary of terms

–Homosexual 1869 (clinical term)

–Lesbian 1870–

–Bisexual 1892

–Transvestite 1910

–Transexual 1950 (my birth year)

–Gay 1951

–STONEWALL RIOT 1969 (I was 19)

–Nonbinary 1980s (I was in my 30s)

Gender Queer 1980s

Polyamory 1990   (I was in my 40s)

Pansexual 1990s

Transgender 1990s

Intersexed 1993

Cisgender 1994

Genderfluid 1994

Gender Dysphoria (replacing Gender Identity Disorder) 2013 (I was in my 60s)

The people of 1969 should not be held responsible for not knowing terms that only came later. I learned the new terms as they were introduced. I, like so many others, was incapable of knowing yet to exist terms.

Rather than waste time condemning people in the past from our privileged standing of having the knowledge they did not have, we should appreciate that from Stonewall on, our knowledge and vocabulary grew because of the people whose condemnation now is a popular thing that makes the present generation self-satisfied with how superior we are to those from the past while reducing them to stereotypes so easily put down to build ourselves up.

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You may have liked the “old girl” while she met your needs, but sadly, once done with her, we sell the old car for parts.

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Before slavery was abolished in Massachusetts upon ratification of John Adams’s State Constitution in 1780, Prince Boston was born into it on Nantucket Island. Although his parents were given their freedom, their children were to remain in bondage until their late 20s when they would be free as well.

 As his slave, Prince Boston was signed onto a whaling ship by William Swain, a Nantucket merchant. When the ship returned with its oil and bone, Mr. Swain arrived at the settlement house to collect Boston’s share of  what the crew was to receive, but was denied it.

The Quakers who ran the whaling industry on the Island did not approve of slavery, though they had to live with it, and, because of their belief in the equality of man (debate among yourselves), a man was owed the wages for which he had worked. Mr. swain may have owned the slave but the slave, not he, was the one who had done the work and, so, it was to him the wages belonged to do with as he chose and, whether or not he gave all, some, or none to Mr. Swain was up to him. If he wanted to earn those wages, Mr. Swain was welcome to work for them. 

The earned wages were held in escrow until Mr. Swain’s court case to obtain them was adjudicated with the Supreme Judicial Court agreeing with the Quakers that Prince Boston had earned and was owed the wages. He got both his wages and his freedom in 1773.

Considering this event, the soon to be ratified State Constitution, and the influence the Quakers in New Bedford wielded as the whaling and manufacturing tycoons who knew the important people and, like most such men, exerted both overt and covert control in the running of things, their influence went far beyond the harbor of New Bedford and into the halls of the state house in big and powerful ways.

In spite of Boston’s claiming to be the birthplace of the Abolition Movement, it began among the South Coast Quakers who did everything they could to interfere where they could not abolish or prevent slavery. 

Things had been bad enough when any Black crew members who had signed on from whatever country a whale ship had passed while needing additional crew on global voyages along with the American Black crew had to be protected from bounty hunters and false claims of previous enslavement and escape when entering southern ports, but the Fugitive Slave law of 1793 allowed this to spread far beyond the South into non-slave areas by requiring people in non-slave states to cooperate with bounty hunters in retrieving someone’s “property”.

What had been a concern for ships and their crew when entering Southern ports now became a concern for everyone and in Massachusetts, a state with major ports and harbors, beyond annoying. It was met with the usual New England coldness to people, from other places telling us what to do and imposing their regional attitudes on us where we do not want it and did not ask for it. 

Many northern states enacted laws to protect free black Americans as well as runaway slaves that required slave owners and fugitive hunters to produce evidence that their captures were truly fugitive slaves in order to protect free black residents from being kidnapped and sold into servitude in the South on just the claim they had been a slave with no proof of that.

Whereas the other state with freedom laws may have addressed slavery directly, Massachusetts chose a broader approach, protecting everyone in the state, regardless of past or present circumstances and standing in society by enacting Part 1:Title XV: Chapter 93: Section 102 of the General Laws in 1843 which states:

“(a) All persons within the commonwealth, regardless of sex, race, color, creed or national origin, shall have, except as is otherwise provided or permitted by law, the same rights enjoyed by white male citizens, to make and enforce contracts, to inherit, purchase, to lease, sell, hold and convey real and personal property, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other.”

The law covers ALL persons regardless of anything and gives the remedies for violations:

(b) A person whose rights under the provisions of subsection (a) have been violated may commence a civil action for injunctive and other appropriate equitable relief, including the award of compensatory and exemplary damages. Said civil action shall be instituted either in the superior court for the county in which the conduct complained of occurred, or in the superior court for the county in which the person whose conduct complained of resides or has his principal place of business.

(c) A violation of subsection (a) is established if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that any individual is denied any of the rights protected by subsection (a).

(d) An aggrieved person who prevails in an action authorized by subsection (b), in addition to other damages, shall be entitled to an award of the costs of the litigation and reasonable attorneys’ fees in an amount to be fixed by the court.

Perhaps as Homeland Security and ICE are having a good time being the middle school bullies with permission and encouragement from the equally weak, this needs a revisit.

In the name of John  Adams, we need to enforce our truth, “All persons within the commonwealth, regardless of sex, race, color, creed or national origin, shall have, except as is otherwise provided or permitted by law, the same rights enjoyed by white male citizens.”

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