Once again I am begging TERFs to read any pre-1960 queer history
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Hugh Ryan
@Hugh_Ryan
Find me elsewhere: @hughryan@mastodon.lol Order your copy today: "THE WOMEN'S HOUSE OF DETENTION: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison" linktr.ee/HughRyan
Hugh Ryan’s posts
Today is the 53rd anniversary of the first night of the Stonewall Uprising! Did you know Afeni Shakur - Black Panther leader, community organizer, author, mother of Tupac - was involved in the riots? [THREAD]
In case you were wondering, "how long has the Salvation Army been terrible to queer people?" I'm reading a file now where they denied a 17 year old homeless girl shelter b/c her mother said she was a lesbian... in 1948
Today I saw a mistranslated shirt that rendered “the future is female” as “girl, the future is you” and now I’m obsessed
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Once at like 6:30am on a Wednesday, I saw a manhole cover open on Canal Street, and a tall drag queen in a full look emerged from the sewers and walked off
Once, an exterminator accidentally sprayed me in the face with pesticide, after which he screamed at me "That didn't happen! I didn't do that! You're ok!" The NYT internal response to the letter about their trans reporting has very similar energy
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Here's author Rita Mae Brown, another Stonewall vet, writing about how men have systematically left this part of the riots out
150 years ago, ppl we think of as trans women, effeminate gay men, and intersex people mostly would have understood themselves as a singular "invert" category; gender-normative homosexuals mostly didn't see themselves as an identity at all.
It is impossible to separate gay history from trans history, & attempts to do so inevitably collapse into bad scholarship. This has been a theme in my work for decades, and I'm honored that the Digital Transgender Archive invited me to write about it: digitaltransgenderarchive.net/learn/LGBTHist
Since #QueerHistoryMonth starts this weekend: I think we are undergoing a massive shift in the meaning of queer identity RIGHT NOW - the 2nd one in American history [🧵]
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Shakur and Bird were in prison on trumped up charges that they and other Panthers were planning on bombing sites throughout NYC; charges that Shakur, working as her own lawyer(!), got dismissed.
Most American "gay" history, pre WWII, is as much trans / intersex history as it is gay. When you hear people talk about separating "LGB" & "T," they've swallowed a bunch of anti-trans right wing talking points & have no idea of our history. More here: digitaltransgenderarchive.net/learn/LGBTHist
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I'm so happy to have worked with to finish this piece and share it with the world. All I want for Christmas? An end to the prison industrial complex.
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During Stonewall, Shakur and Joan Bird - another Panther leader - were incarcerated at the Women's House of Detention, the infamous Greenwich Village prison that was just a few hundred feet from the Stonewall Inn
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Christopher Street dead-ended at the House of D. The people inside heard the noise of Stonewall, and held a riot all their own, setting fire to their belongings and throwing them out the windows yelling "Gay Rights!" Arcus Flynn discusses it here at 45:40 herstories.prattinfoschool.nyc/omeka/items/sh
My homophobic story (with a happy ending): Back in May, an editor solicited me for a pitch, and I said I wanted to write a piece on the queer case for prison abolition, centered around the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in June.
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Here's a newsletter describing their (generally forgotten/ignored) first protest, outside the House of D
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While our of the House of D on bail, Shakur worked to connect the Black Panthers and the Gay Liberation front. Here, for instance, is a report back made by the Chicago GLF, about working with Shakur at the gay men's workshop at the Black Panther Constitutional Convention
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The glorious thing about queer history? It allows us to see how profoundly things that feel "natural" have changed in a short period of time - which allows (encourages, requires) us to imagine very different futures.
Stop looking out a window and thinking it's a fucking mirror
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This idea that our current categories of "gay" and "trans" are permanent, ahistoric identities that are diametrically opposed is ridiculous when looked at with any historical rigor. Same with the idea that "too many" gen z folks are identifying as trans and not gay.
For years, I've been researching Buddy Kent, one of the foremost drag kings in New York City in the mid 20th Century [thread]
How many cis journalists can simultaneously say "I'm neutral!" and also only report on trans people/issues from a moral panic, protect cis children place? Apparently all of them! Show me the pieces you've written on trans joy, trans accomplishments, trans ideas, come on
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So as you celebrate Stonewall - celebrate the whole story. The complicated, political, radical, queer, Black liberationist, feminist story. Then listen to this fantastic lesbian love song (the first on Broadway, by Melvin Van Peebles!) abt the House of D
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In the aftermath of the Uprising, a meeting was held by gay organizers. Overwhelmingly, younger activists who had been at Stonewall wanted to protest the prison in support of the Panthers. When older activists demurred, they founded a new organization: the Gay Liberation Front
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When Huey P. Newton held a press conference at Jane Fonda's apartment on the future of the Black Panthers, Shakur invited GLF to meet with Newton. Here, in a video from that day, you can see Shakur, Fonda, and GLF member Angela Lynn Douglas (full vid: youtube.com/watch?v=NplrUh
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I was privileged to get to learn about this history, to talk to Shakur's ex-girlfriend Carol, to talk to John C. Knoebel, and so many more, for my book THE WOMEN'S HOUSE OF DETENTION
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Here's a little of Bird's description of life in the House of D, where she was held for over a year. (From Ain't I A Woman journal, 1972)
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Identity categories are not permanent over time, and I think for many of us, they're not even permanent across our own life experience.
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All this and so much more has been left out of our traditional telling of the Stonewall narrative. If anywhere in America should be a dry well for queer history, it's Greenwich Village. Yet look how much there is we still don't talk about.
40% of people in women's prisons identify as LBTQ. For , I explored a central theme of THE WOMEN'S HOUSE OF DETENTION: that our criminal legal system targets women who are "improperly" feminine, disproportionately queer women and trans men
ATTENTION: With Pride just ten days away, surge pricing has been activated on all queer authors. Do not contact us to do your Pride event now unless you are literally going to shower us with gay money
In the same media cycle where a woman was murdered for a pride flag in CA, a queer person was killed for voguing in NYC, and multiple people were queerbashed in the UK, these guys are here to save us from…GLAAD for using Billboards and recommending speakers? So aggressive!
Is there anything more fabulous than late 60s/early 70s communist lit? How to become a fugitive, a guide to dropping out, and some highlights from the first NYC pride !
PLEASE READ AND SHARE: I've been appalled by the recent (anti-)trans coverage, particularly in this time of rising transphobia, which is why I've signed on to this open letter by Times contributors and other authors nytletter.com
I’ve seen letters from men in the ‘40s complaining about “gay” being forced on them - why couldn’t they stay homosexuals? This debate is perennial & boring. Language evolves. Keep up. Also: no one called you LGBTQ, that’s a term for the community which (surprise!) is not just you
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Humorist David Sedaris has some thoughts about the term "queer" and how people today (or perhaps just humanities professors) identify themselves. cbsn.ws/3T28ohM
1:42
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Here, John C. Knoebel, another of the GLF members there that day, discusses the meeting:
I’m so excited to share the cover for my next book, THE WOMEN'S HOUSE OF DETENTION: A QUEER HISTORY OF A FORGOTTEN PRISON! (THREAD) boldtypebooks.com/titles/hugh-ry
A few folks have questioned my use of the terms “transgender” and “trans masculine” in THE WOMEN’S HOUSE OF DETENTION - mostly dismissing the book for using these lenses they deem ahistorical. A few things: 1st, my history is largely materialist, not identarian; I’m not… 🧵
Iconic queer artist, author, and agitator #DavidWojnarowicz died 30 years ago today. He's been a major influence in my work since the mid-90s, and the direct inspiration for the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, so I thought I'd do a little thread of my work about his work!
This community note on Marsha P. Johnson is absolute bullshit. First off, in the linked video, she says she tells johns who are looking for sex work that she's "a boy" so they understand she's not a cis woman. That's not her identity, it's what straight men can understand
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Eventually, I realized they were never going to respond again, and decided to rewrite the piece, with an editor I trusted, for a publication that has shown, over and over again, their commitment to great queer writing:
For Pride, I wanted to introduce a few of the incredible queer pioneers from the 1930s whose stories I included in THE WOMEN'S HOUSE OF DETENTION - folks who are now deceased and for whom I was able to find rare, publicly shared photos.
THE WOMEN'S HOUSE OF DETENTION comes out in paperback on May 9th - with this shiny new "Stonewall Book Award" emblem on it!
"Thus, the Gay Liberation Front was born: one foot in the bar, the other in the prison; one mostly white and male and cis, the other largely Black and female and gender-expansive..."
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I'd be worried about their threats to blackball those of us on to the letter, but the opinion page already commissioned a piece from me on queer issues, accepted it, and ghosted me (while claiming they cared so much about it that they felt it didn't have to run during Pride)
It’s not every day the The New York Times calls your “boisterous, motley new history” an “entertaining and insightful chronicle!”
Right now, all around the country, corporate dumpsters are being filled with rainbows
If I could have any super power, it would be the ability to restore the burned love letters, the destroyed diaries, and the tossed photos of all the queer folks who thought their history was too dangerous to keep or not worthy of being remembered
Some personal news: I've joined the non-fiction faculty at the program, starting in June! Bennington is where I learned wtf I was doing as a writer, and it has nurtured me ever since. I'm overjoyed to return!
It’s finally happened: I’m sitting on the train across from someone reading my book! This + Fresh Air = the culmination of my writing career. I will diminish and go into the west now
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In a condescending email that fills me with rage every time I think about it, the editor told me "Let's do it for next week. For me, the importance of the subject is not tied to Pride."
She never responded to an email or phone call again.
A 1965 report about conditions at the Women’s House of Detention, where they recommend getting a prison cat to cut down on vermin - and prevent lesbianism! As if I needed any more proof that these people had never spoken to an (out) lesbian in their lives...
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For months, I chased the NYT - it was a big get for me, and I was excited to have my ideas solicited, and to have someone interested after Pride (my inbox is full of requests, every year, that magically dissipate come July).
Shout out to the lesbian illustrator-turned-forger, arrested in 1936 because her GF’s mother caught them in bed at NYU. After serving time, she got back with her GF & repaired things with the mom... so that she could rob her blind while over for dinner, then hightail it to Boston
In 1970, 5 folks from the Gay Liberation Front took a road trip through the South in a beat VW van, to recruit queer folks to attend the Black Panther Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention. Want to know what happened? Check out my latest piece:
Hence why queer politics and abolition need to go hand in hand
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“Once we <LGBTQIA people> have no support, once we are vulnerable, once we are mentally ill, or homeless, or without a job, once you're living on the street, then the carceral system sweeps in and scoops us up” - @Hugh_Ryan
Episode 132 #cjreform #podcast buff.ly/3OV8bKq
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They accepted the op-ed and we started working on it, but they were very hard to get a hold of - repeatedly setting deadlines and then ignoring them, without ever saying anything to me. Pride weekend rolled around, and we had only just finalized the piece, so they bumped it...
Once again this Pride I am asking you to listen to Marsha P. Johnson's own words, not just share every random meme or product with her face on it. A few great places to start: makinggayhistory.com/podcast/episod
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What’s going on here? You might have heard TERFs freaking out about “social contagion” and “disappearing lesbians” – as though lesbian identification wasn’t also rising (science isn’t their strong suit).
So many LGB terfs are operating from a place of absolute historical ignorance about queer identity, and fighting to lock us into some imaginary time (usually, around when they came out) where there were the "right" number of lesbians and trans people. [small thread]
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(Also if any of the Times “reputable journalists” would like to write about their treatment of freelancers I keep all my emails!)
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I think we are seeing a fundamental realignment in what it means to be queer. To understand it, we have to go back to the middle of the 19th century: the creation of the city, the death of the invert, and the birth of the homosexual.
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First, something to keep in mind as we go: this Gallup poll from February, which saw upticks in every category of queer identification among Gen Z, but in particular, bi and trans identities
You can now pre-order my next book THE WOMEN'S HOUSE OF DETENTION: A QUEER HISTORY OF A FORGOTTEN PRISON! Pre-orders are incredibly important - they help determine how many copies to publish. But here's a few other reasons you might want to order (THREAD)
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Remember that Gallup poll? Conceptually, they’re losing. There are now more pathways to articulate queerness than ever, and so there are more queer people than ever.
For too long, the story of Greenwich Village, of Stonewall, of queer America, has left out these formerly incarcerated queer women & trans men, who were trailblazers in so many ways. It is an honor to have had the chance to dig into the archives and restore some of their stories
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Or maybe you’ve been perplexed by the sudden alliances between white fascists and TERFs/gender critical “feminists,” teaming up to attack trans and queer youth. They’re allying to preserve a system of knowledge that has structured their lives by rigid gender/sexuality rules.
Any time I get complacent about the progress the queer community has made, I remember this paragraph from Caroline Ware’s study of life in Greenwich Village in the Twenties, and how quickly and utterly this history was forgotten (GREENWICH VILLAGE, Caroline Ware, 1935)
🧵 My latest for : As public schools, colleges, libraries, & statehouses come under attack for simply acknowledging the existence of queer people, independent LGBTQ archives are more critical than ever - and yet...
What an absolute honor! So many books I've loved have been Stonewall Book winners, I feel like I'm entering into history. And to receive this award along with Cecilia Gentili's magnificent FALTAS makes it even sweeter
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Congratulations to @hugh_ryan, published by @boldtypebooks: WOMEN'S HOUSE OF DETENTION was named a Stonewall Book Award Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award Winner! #LibLearnX23 #StonewallAward
Me when I give edits: editing is an essential part of writing, we are working together to make this great.
Me when I get edits: they hate me and I should burn the computer I wrote this on.
You know who absolutely doesn't "get a vote" on when to use queer? Pamela Paul
IfJKR really does have gay friends, one should talk to her about the history of calling gays and lesbians bathroom predators to oppose LGBT rights. Her assertion that the trans movement is "offering cover to predators like few before it" is straight out of Anita Bryant's playbook
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Ascribing specific identities, I’m describing specific practices. 2nd, language comes after practice - we name something in a widely accepted way only after it has been deemed worthy of notice, so modern trans language certainly developed after modern trans identity and culture
Sometimes these days I am very angry & sometimes I am very sad, but what keeps me going is my utter faith in the stupidity of my enemies. Thank you and for letting me vent my rigorous, historically-based queer indifference & contempt
I NEED YOUR HELP: I was honored to work with the DOE on these #HiddenHistory posters. As a kid, I never saw anyone like me in schools - certainly not on posters! These high-res images can be downloaded and put up anywhere.
Help me spread them far & wide?
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This really takes off in the 1990s, when we see an explosion in terms for, and uses of, trans terminology (very similar to what happened at the end of the 19th C).
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NOT ANY MORE. Before, an invert was recognizable, but now a gender-normative homosexual could be anywhere - anyone - and you had to be on guard at all times to prove you weren’t one (because it was now in the brain, not visible on the body). Enter modern homophobia.
Love these journalists who helicopter into the anti-trans grift for that front page Times prestige, claim to care about trans people SO much, but never write a front page article on the increasingly organized, successful & genocidal attacks on trans people their reporting fuels
Been waiting to share this info until everything was set but I’ll be on on Monday talking about THE WOMEN’S HOUSE OF DETENTION! Bucket list, check!
Today's #GoogleDoodle is Claude Cahun, my favorite anti-fascist surrealist gender queer artist (ok, top 10). I wrote about Cahun a few years ago for
Should I get a t-shirt that says “You can’t contain the gay?” Or just go full out and get it tattooed ?
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Before the urbanization of America in the 19th century, the most recognizable queer figure is what some termed “the invert.” Inverts combined/collapsed elements of what we call being trans, being intersex, and being gay.
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These were folks like Walt Whitman, who dubbed “them that love, the way I myself am capable of loving” his “comrades” or “comedados.” As a token of affection, he chose the calamus reed, which is named for a queer Greek legend & looks like a big dick. whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1
For years, I've been trying to verbalize something about queer history and what it means for our queer present & future; something fundamental that seems to be shifting in the essential nature of what it IS to be queer. (🧵, or just skip to the essay:
Turned 45 today and have decided the Stonewall award for THE WOMEN’S HOUSE OF DETENTION is my birthday present ❤️❤️ hachettebookgroup.com/titles/hugh-ry
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Before this, people understood they had different sexual desires, but homosocial love largely hid them - even from themselves. It was normal for men to love other men, women other women. Some people were just “excessive.”
🧵We are undergoing a seismic shift in sexuality and gender RIGHT NOW. For , I tried to make sense of how 200+ years of queer history got us to this moment & where we are headed from here; why TERFs & Christian fascists get along so well...
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We are currently seeing an explosion in laws aimed at trans youth - efforts to take control of this phenomenon, these people, their bodies, and the future. Efforts to divide LGB from T are desperate, reactionary attempts to hold back the future.…
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His terms, however, did not hold. Why? Because straight people got in the way. Eugenicists & sexologists rushed to study these new identities - often expressly for white supremacist reasons (Black people were the external threat to the white race; queers the internal).
1959 dictionary of queer women’s prison slang, from a woman incarcerated at the House of D. “Marge” meaning femme is a new one for me, as was “double-gaited!”
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2) people we call heterosexuals began to act differently. As examples of and knowledge about homosexuality spread, heteros stopped seeing homoSOCIAL love as the paragon of expression, something to be immensely proud of.
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On docks and in women’s schools, people we today would call “gender-normative homosexuals” began to find each other in great numbers, and in so doing, began to conceptualize themselves as a typology; a people - an IDENTITY.
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But particularly as we move further back in time, or more distant in cultural context, I think we are better served by an approach that says "These figures are neither gay nor trans in our modern sense, but have a part in both gay and trans histories."
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3rd, in the US in the 19th century and early 20th century, many people we today might think of as “gay” understood their identity primarily or partially as a manifestation of gender and/or sex, not as this separate thing we call sexuality. A trans lens is equally if not more…