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June's Subject of the Month
Queer Resistance & Liberation
photo credit: Boston Preservation Alliance
"In trans women's eyes, I see a wisdom that can only come from having to fight for your right to be recognized as female, a raw strength that only comes from unabashedly asserting your right to be feminine in an inhospitable world."
-Julia Serano
Queer Liberation is a movement that challenges systemic queer oppression, amplifies the voices and needs of marginalized LGBTQIA2S+ communities, and rejects corporate sponsorship and police involvement. From Stonewall roots to house down boots, Queer Liberation's influence can be seen all over the world, even in Detroit! The purpose of this guide is to illustrate some of the works, core tenets, and history of the movement.
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eBooks
Whipping Girl by ISBN: 1478971711Publication Date: 2016-10-25Julia Serano shares her experiences and insights--both pre- and post-transition--to reveal the ways in which fear, suspicion, and dismissiveness toward femininity shape our societal attitudes toward trans women, as well as gender and sexuality as a whole. Serano's well-honed arguments and pioneering advocacy stem from her ability to bridge the gap between the often-disparate biological and social perspectives on gender.
Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by ISBN: 9781452955865Publication Date: 2017-12-05In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence. Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials--early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, Hollywood films--Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable.
Resisting Borders and Technologies of Violence by ISBN: 9798888901410Publication Date: 2024-02-13The border regimes of imperialist states have brutally oppressed migrants throughout the world. To enforce their borders, these states have constructed a new digital fortress with far-reaching and ever-evolving new technologies. This pathbreaking volume exposes these insidious means of surveillance, control, and violence.
Abortion Beyond the Law by ISBN: 9781804292068Publication Date: 2023-11-14Drawing on years of research with activists around the world, sociologist Naomi Braine describes the strategies, politics, and tactics of direct action feminists bringing abortion pills, information, and support to people seeking to end unwanted pregnancies. From combatting the legal strictures of Bolsonaro's Brazil, to navigating the NGO-dominated landscape of Kenya and Nigeria, feminist activists are making safe, accessible abortion care available against the odds.
Unshaved: Resistance and Revolution in Women's Body Hair Politics by ISBN: 9780295750293Publication Date: 2022-06-14Gross. Dirty. Monstrous. Manly. Authentic. Beautiful. Natural. Powerful. Body hair, especially on women, provokes, disrupts, and, at times, offends. It is tangled up with culture itself--in art, families, workplaces, relationships, sex, the beauty industry, governments, and capitalism. Fahs presents body hair not just as a personal grooming choice but as a connection to broader cultural stories about women's reproductive rights, feminist battlegrounds about autonomy, neoliberal intrusions into beauty regimens, and even global tensions around women's place in society.
Justice after Stonewall by ISBN: 1003286291Publication Date: 2023-01-31The Stonewall riots (sparked by a police raid in New York City) are a milestone in LGBT history. Within a short time, a new feeling of confidence emerged, manifested in new LGBT organisations and the first Pride marches. Legal and social change followed: from the decriminalisation of homosexual activities to anti-discrimination laws and the legalisation of same-sex marriage. This makes it tempting to think of modern LGBT history as an unequivocal success story. But progress was not achieved everywhere: in seventy States, same-sex relations are still criminalised; violence against LGBT persons still occurs, and transgender people still struggle to have their rights recognised. This book breaks new ground by bringing together experts from politics, sociology, law, education, language, medicine and religion to discuss fields as diverse as same-sex marriage, transgender students, the LGBT movement in Uganda and LGBT migrants in the Arab peninsula, conversion 'therapy' and approaches to LGBT matters in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. What emerges is a rich tapestry of LGBT life today and its consideration from numerous perspectives.
Articles
- Queer liberation, not rainbow capitalism
Achilles Frangos discusses the current state of pride parades, the optics of heteronormativity, pinkwashing, and the relationship to police. - 'It's easy to mistrust police when they keep on killing us': A queer exploration of police violence and LGBTQ+ Victimization.
Almost 50 years after the Stonewall riots, queer liberation and police resistance are still inextricably intertwined. International hate crime statistics around the globe show increasingly high rates of LGBTQ+ victimization and criminalization by law enforcement. This qualitative research aims at evaluating whether queer theories of visibility and performativity could serve as useful tools to investigate the problematic dynamics between police and young queer individuals. - A queer therapist’s guide to surviving 2025
A treatise on the importance of knowing history, building and fostering material community, and the role resistance plays in survival.
Further Links
- Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in U.S. State Legislatures in 2025
View each US state on a map and see the different bills targeting LGBTQ Rights and take action. While not all of these bills will become law, they all cause harm for LGBTQ people. - Mapping Trans Joy
Mapping Trans Joy is a collaborative mapping project that allows transgender and gender non-conforming community members to share short personal narratives of the places in which they have felt accepted, supported, comforted, empowered, or otherwise at peace in their identity and community. - InReach
InReach lists verified service providers focused on LGBTQ+ asylum seekers, refugees and other immigrants, Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities, the transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) community, youth and their caregivers, and more. - The Gay Liberation Movement
A brief history of the struggle that queer people faced leading to the gay liberation movement. - Thousands of Homosexuals Hold A Protest Rally in Central Park
Digitized New York Times article from 1970 describing an early queer protest.
Books in Print
Revolting Prostitutes by ISBN: 9781786633606Publication Date: 2018-11-06Do you have to endorse prostitution in order to support sex worker rights? Should clients be criminalized, and can the police deliver justice? In Revolting Prostitutes, sex workers Juno Mac and Molly Smith bring a fresh perspective to questions that have long been contentious.
American Homo: Community and Perversity by Call Number: HQ 76.3 .U5 E83 1998ISBN: 0520206320Publication Date: 1998-09-30From the development of a camp sensibility in popular culture--inspired by the erotic exhibitionism of drag queens--to the public reformation of safer-sex guidelines, Escoffier demonstrates how the gay movement has gradually acquired both social authority and recognition as a booming market.
Come Together: Years of Gay Liberation by Call Number: HQ76.8 .G7 C65 1980ISBN: 9781788732376Publication Date: 1980-01-01Come Together tells the incredible story of the emerging radicalism of the Gay Liberation Front, providing a vivid history of the movement, as well as the new ideas and practices it gave rise to across the United Kingdom.
Sexed Up by ISBN: 9781541674806Publication Date: 2022-05-17Feminists have long challenged the ways in which men tend to sexualize women. Many view sexualization as a mere component of sexism, racism, or queerphobia, but Serano argues that liberation from sexual violence comes through collectively confronting sexualization itself.
Bad Gays by ISBN: 9781839763274Publication Date: 2022-05-31What can we learn from the homosexual villains, failures, and baddies of our past? We all remember Oscar Wilde, but who speaks for Bosie? What about those 'bad gays' whose unexemplary lives reveal more than we might expect? Many popular histories seek to establish homosexual heroes, pioneers, and martyrs but, as Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller argue, the past is filled with queer people whose sexualities and dastardly deeds have been overlooked despite their being informative and instructive.
Marsha P. Johnson
"Marsha P. Johnson was one of the most prominent figures of the gay rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s in New York City. Always sporting a smile, Johnson was an important advocate for homeless LGBTQ+ youth, those effected by H.I.V. and AIDS, and gay and transgender rights."
"Johnson’s life changed when she found herself engaging with the resistance at The Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969. In the early morning hours, police raided the bar and began arresting the patrons, most of whom were gay men. Johnson and Rivera arrived at Stonewall around 2am where, Johnson said in a later interview, “the place was already on fire, and there was a raid already. The riots had already started.” There are many competing stories about what Johnson did during the raid on the Stonewall Inn, but it is clear she was on the front lines. Johnson, like many other transgender women, felt they had nothing to lose. They were not only angered by the police raid but also the oppression and fear they experienced every day. In the wake of the raid, Johnson and Rivera led a series of protests."
Full biography here (from the National Women's History Museum)
Sylvia Rivera
"A veteran of the 1969 Stonewall Inn uprising, Sylvia Rivera was a tireless advocate for those silenced and disregarded by larger movements. Throughout her life, she fought against the exclusion of transgender people, especially transgender people of color, from the larger movement for gay rights."
"Rivera resisted arrest and subsequently led a series of protests against the raid. Yet this was not the first time Rivera was directly involved in activism. She said in a 1989 interview that, “Before gay rights, before the Stonewall, I was involved in the Black Liberation movement, the peace movement...I felt I had the time and I knew that I had to do something. My revolutionary blood was going back then. I was involved with that.”"
Full biography here (from the National Women's History Museum)
Stonewall Uprising
"June 28, 1969 marks the beginning of the Stonewall Uprising, a series of events between police and LGBTQ+ protesters which stretched over six days. It was not the first time police raided a gay bar, and it was not the first time LGBTQ+ people fought back, but the events that would unfold over the next six days would fundamentally change the discourse surrounding LGBTQ+ activism in the United States. While Stonewall became well known due to the media coverage and the subsequent annual Pride traditions, it was a culmination of years of LGBTQ+ activism. Historians have noted that the shift in activism, if Stonewall truly represented one at all, was a shift primarily for white cisgender people, as people of color and gender non-conforming people never truly had the benefit of concealing their marginalized identities."
"While the events of Stonewall are often referred to as "riots," Stonewall veterans have explicitly stated that they prefer the term Stonewall uprising or rebellion. The reference to these events as riots was initially used by police to justify their use of force."
Full piece here (Library of Congress LGBTQIA+ Studies research guide)