Bitch On Wheels: Sylvia Rivera and STAR

‘I was a radical, a revolutionist. I am still a revolutionist. I was proud to make the road and help change laws and what-not. I was very proud of doing that, and proud of what I’m still doing, no matter what it takes.’ – Sylvia Rivera

Sometimes you have to look backwards to go forward. Socialists understand that history is a vital tool in our fight for a better world. That is not to say that we simply treat revolutionaries and moments of the past as relics, to be held up and admired. Nor do we want to copy what has been done in the past. Instead, history shows us that often our struggles aren’t all that new. Not only against the grain of rising global transphobia and homophobia, but in a period where the relationship between strategy, identity and class is at the core of much debate, knowing your history is crucial. History shows that retreating into crude politics which counterpose class and ‘social’ issues, such as race or gender, has never succeeded in building socialist politics. Instead, this approach reasserts the same oppressive ideas that socialists have fought against for centuries.

The fight against racism, the fight against transphobia, and the fight against homophobia cannot be sidelined in our fight for a better world. The working class and socialist struggle has always taken these fights to its core. As Lenin wrote in ‘What is to be Done’ at the turn of the twentieth century:

Stonewall and STAR

Many will be familiar with the activists, Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson, for their involvement in the Stonewall Uprising, and their subsequent organisation STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), a short-lived collective which aimed to house, support and empower gender non-conforming youth. Other activists involved in its formation were Bambi L’Amour, Bubbles Rose Lee, and Bebe Scarpinato.

Rivera, a Puerto Rican, and Johnson, an African American, both worked the streets throughout their lives, facing not only transphobia but also racist discrimination. Both have been credited with building the politics of trans liberation as they exist today, as well as tirelessly pushing the broader movement for gay rights in a more radical direction. Their organising, speeches, and writings can inform not only the fight against transphobia but also reveal the interconnectedness of issues in our world today. Crucially, they tell us that we don’t have to let the establishment or the far-right set the limits on our politics or our freedom.

In 1998, Sylvia Rivera was interviewed by author of ‘Stone Butch Blues’, Leslie Feinberg, reflecting on her part in the Stonewall uprising of 1969. In this piece, Rivera recounted that it was the most obviously gender-nonconforming people who suffered the worst of police brutality in the late 60s. This was a time of contradiction. On the one hand, society was marked by greater openness, freedom, and demands for change. On the other hand, the US government and state police were introducing more and more punitive laws against the gay community. This period also saw the return of archaic ‘anti-cross-dressing’ laws, where the police were entitled to arrest individuals found wearing the clothes of the ‘wrong’ gender, reminiscent of the ‘drag bans’ we have seen today.

However, it was the broad swathe of gender-nonconforming people who were often the glue between the different, entwined social movements of that period: the civil rights movement, the fight for women’s liberation, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and more. The STAR manifesto explicitly connected these issues, with its first demand being bodily autonomy for all and its last a call for a radical people’s government. It was the awareness of the interconnectedness of these issues which brought radicalism to the forefront. As Rivera remarked:

‘Bitch on Wheels’

There was serious debate across these movements, but especially in the gay liberation movement, about what the goal was to be. For many, such as the Mattachine Society or the Daughters of Bilitis, the goal was to ‘normalise’ gay people into broader society, and to assimilate into ‘respectable society’. Other groups which emerged in the wake of Stonewall, such as the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA – not that one), the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), and Radicalesbians all felt short-changed by this politically mainstream objective. However, their attitudes towards their trans comrades were mixed, despite the fact that trans people had so prominently spurred the fight for gay liberation into a more radical, transformative direction. There were exceptions to this, showing that solidarity was what spurred on the most effective actions. The Weinstein Hall Occupation in 1970, held to protest the cancellation of a GAA dance, has been remembered as a moment where trans and lesbian activists fought together against police repression.

For many years, Rivera and Johnson chose to continue to work with these groups, as it gave them access to broader audiences. In her final essay, ‘Queens in Exile’, published posthumously, Rivera reflected on this choice:

Though willing to work in broad fronts, Sylvia Rivera, a self-described ‘bitch on wheels’, was uncompromising about her principles. In the face of jeers and even assault, both Johnson and Rivera continued to fight, not only to help show the gay community that it was the same state brutalising and rejecting both the gay and trans communities, but also that the movement should ask for more than just acceptance from that same state.

This persistence was shown at the infamous 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day rally. At this event, Rivera had to fight, quite literally, to take her allotted time to speak to the assembled crowd. The transphobic ‘activist’ Jean O’Leary had previously taken to the stage condemning the presence of people like Rivera in the movement. Against this backdrop, Rivera’s speech offered an impassioned critique not only of those who sought to marginalise the gender non-conforming people for the sake of ‘respectability’, but of the system that had kept all of the movement down.

Embracing the ‘controversial’

Today, more than ever, we have to take this message to heart. Firstly, transphobia does nothing to advance any feminist cause; rather, it sets it back generations. As well, we have seen how ‘corporate pride’ has dispensed with the rainbow logos and slogans, bowing to the new Trumpist mood and exposing how superficial their commitment to LGBTQI rights was in the first place. Moreover, we must understand that the fight for trans liberation is not something socialists can afford to leave behind or defer.

Throwing the people most marginalised under the bus will not advance our politics or win more people to the movement. It is the task of socialists to relate to the struggles people face in their lives, and also to advance the politics of these struggles. When we fight for housing maintenance, we aren’t only talking about a mouldy window, but a system which puts profit ahead of human dignity. Similarly, avoiding the ‘controversial’ in our campaigns takes away their potential for achieving radical change before they have even begun.