
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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