Queer history did not start with Stonewall. That doesn’t make Stonewall unimportant but it is critical to realize that by only talking about queer history in context of Stonewall and America is erasure, and feeds into the attitude that queerness is somehow a recent development.
Even if it is not intentional, the impact of not directly addressing the fact that there are queer people and queer movements before Stonewall is harmful.
This. This times a million.
In fact, I have a special interest in pre-Stonewall queer history in America, but even I know that goes back further than my interests take me (usually to the beginning of the 1950s) and is an international thing.
(Wanna start somewhere? Research Frank Kameny and see where that takes you. Wanna read some historical fiction? Try Stone Butch Blues.)
And you wanna talk about erasing queer history? I never hear anyone talk about Canadian queer history. They’ve got a history of their own, which is part of greater queer history.
I never hear anyone talk about the Toronto Bathhouse Raids of 1981. I never hear anyone quote the famous ‘the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation’ quote that was coined in the late 1960s, when homosexuality became decriminalized (amongst many other sweeping leftist reforms).
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Mooncustafer 