Saw this on the weekend and what I found interesting is that while loads of people will get down and litigate what happened at Stonewall, it’s weird saying all rights stem from that when homosexuality was legalised in the U.K. 2 years before the riot took place, and in some countries in Europe, 200! - ThreadSky

twlldun.bsky.social • 21 days ago

Saw this on the weekend and what I found interesting is that while loads of people will get down and litigate what happened at Stonewall, it’s weird saying all rights stem from that when homosexuality was legalised in the U.K. 2 years before the riot took place, and in some countries in Europe, 200!

Comments

jlharrison.bsky.social•21 days ago

I think both your point about stonewall being the start of gay rights and the union winning the weekend come from the fact that you have been reading too many posts from Americans, where both of those things are genuinely true, although they are obviously not here.

scottwortley.bsky.social•21 days ago

Don't people know their history? Did rinka die in vain?

celestialweasel.bsky.social•21 days ago

Someone not really that much younger than me (late 40s) and quite politically engaged had never heard of Rinka

twlldun.bsky.social•21 days ago

Bunnies can go to France

celestialweasel.bsky.social•21 days ago

Did Norman ever get his NI card?

lukemiddup.bsky.social•21 days ago

He got a replacement I think

jamesldouglass.bsky.social•21 days ago

can AND WILL

kieranu.bsky.social•21 days ago

It's specifically referring to the 60s civil rights movement in the US obviously. In France it was legal for 400 years before the Nazis came in.

twlldun.bsky.social•21 days ago

(It’s a post by a European man, not an American)

kieranu.bsky.social•21 days ago

Homosexuality was only fully legalized in Scotland about two decades ago

twlldun.bsky.social•21 days ago

Right. But was that because of the stonewall riots (which I’m not doubting had impacts on various elements of the liberalisation/rights and what have you!) or more to do with, say, England and Wales (and European) laws already having been passed?

kieranu.bsky.social•21 days ago

There's no Stonewall riot definitely and fewer LGBT+ rights (eg marriage equality) because I don't think UK was leap frogging off Iceland. Anyway point is moot cos expect a massive US and UK back slide incoming on all counts.

kieranu.bsky.social•21 days ago

Column A, column B. I think people's point is more that it's weird when a tiny subset of people try to deny trans people were involved in Stonewall at all or are now actively attacking trans people for no apparent reason when they have a history of being gay allies

n1david.bsky.social•21 days ago

Not the UK, England & Wales. Scotland and NI came much later.

stephenbc.bsky.social•21 days ago

Did the pivot to trans rights happen because activists were getting bored?

marstrina.bsky.social•21 days ago

More because fundraisers got worried about their charities' future funding streams.

stephenbc.bsky.social•21 days ago

I remember gay rights being a big things all through the 80s/90s, but ai don't recall anyone mentioning Trans rights then, but maybe that's just me not remembering well...🤷

shmmeee.bsky.social•21 days ago

Pick your theory: post 2012 social media making tumblr theories real things adults thought, post equal marriage charities needing more donations. Probably a bit of both.

nondairycanary.bsky.social•21 days ago

The pivot to trans rights happened because Stonewall's last big battle - the fight for gay marriage - had been fought and won. They had two options available - shut down gracefully, or find a new cause. And no big organisation surrenders power, money or influence willingly. So they pivoted.

curiousiguana.bsky.social•21 days ago

There is definitely school of thought that says once gay marriage was legalised the battle was won. And so... what next?

stephenbc.bsky.social•21 days ago

Yes, I don't know if it's true, but feels like there is something to that. Don't remember people describing themselves as an "activist" as their profession when I was a kid in the 80s, but you hear it a lot now. And activists need work like anyone else...🤷

cooraysmith.bsky.social•21 days ago

Americans are always going to American.

excelpope.net•21 days ago

Part of it must be that this story is commonly spread by the left, so it's easy to see why US history (the common people rise up and demand change) is preferable to the UK version (blimey, pillars of the establishment keep getting convicted, maybe we should do something about that).

stephenkb.bsky.social•21 days ago

'Edward John Barrington Douglas-Scott-Montague threw the first brick' lacks a certain something. It's similar to people wanting to make Rosa Parks An Angry Lady Who Had Just Had Enough and not The Result Of A Committee Deciding That Rosa Was The Most Respectable One.

excelpope.net•21 days ago

I do think, however, that there's a certain British charm to setting up a committee to look at the regulation of homosexuality, and having it chaired by someone who'd been headmaster at two public schools.

twlldun.bsky.social•21 days ago

Tbh I am pretty sure “Rosa Parks was an angry lady who had just had enough” was being taught in school fairly recently. And maybe that is part of it, that people’s engagement doesn’t stretch past the necessarily didactic and simplified stuff we teach 9 year olds.

stephenkb.bsky.social•21 days ago

Absolutely the compulsory bit of the school curriculum tends to teach it as 'and one day Rosa Parks had just had enough!' still.

stephenkb.bsky.social•21 days ago

In general, there's an interesting trend to make moderate reformers more radical and radical ones more moderate, it is amusingly commonplace to see, e.g. Nelson Mandela described as non-violent.

simonparker.bsky.social•21 days ago

Big fan of the Suffragettes as an example. We want to see them as being on the right side of history so we whitewash the fanaticism and violence even as we celebrate Emily Davidson.

rhysneedham.bsky.social•21 days ago

How Martin Luther King has been turned into a secular saint as well, largely?

copperbird.bsky.social•21 days ago

And the Doctor Who episode with Rosa Parks is right there ...

stephenkb.bsky.social•21 days ago

'What if a time traveller delayed the bus by one day?!' - answer, she would have done in the next day, and history would have proceeded as planned. (Which IMO would have been a much stronger episode.)

mrtrellis.bsky.social•21 days ago

Described by one chum as "Parks and Appropriation" and I think about that a lot.

cooraysmith.bsky.social•21 days ago

“Testing three times is enough for a scientifically rigorous and statistically valid sample.”

twlldun.bsky.social•21 days ago

(See, when I volunteered in a primary school a decade or so ago, the books on world war 2 saying “Hitler picked on the Jews as a method to get into power as people didn’t trust them because they were different” and I’m like really? Is that what we are teaching them, that?)

rhysneedham.bsky.social•21 days ago

The reality of being an indigent wannabe painter with an unhealthy relationship with his parents in a Vienna run by a populist antisemite Mayor, World War One, and the aftermath of the Munich Soviet Republic and the military takeover mightn't be that hard to relate in simply, if time-consuming?

ariehkovler.com•21 days ago

I was taught that the claim Rosa Parks was chosen and planned her action was, itself, a racist lie against the Angy Lady who Made a Stand. So yeah.

cooraysmith.bsky.social•21 days ago

“Not many badgers in the House of Lords”

celestialweasel.bsky.social•21 days ago

That really needs to be a book title

celestialweasel.bsky.social•21 days ago

twlldun.bsky.social•21 days ago

It’s just interesting to me because there are regularly two schools of history - one, we could call “the radical heroic” and one “the prosaic”. I remember that Facebook meme - don’t know whether you recall - something about thanking unions for the weekend and good Union man that I am, that’s balls

rossfootball.bsky.social•21 days ago

Saturday morning working was compulsory in some jobs as late as the 1980s. And I don't mean just public transport or retail. In the 60s Ready Steady Go proclaimed: The weekend starts here' on Friday evenings but for me and many others it was noon on Saturday.

twlldun.bsky.social•21 days ago

(Maybe it was imported Americanism in that case - certainly I suspect unions had more to do with it in the land of the free than in the U.K. but even so, I think any study of “how we go the weekend” that doesn’t start with “religion” is…as I say, balls)

twlldun.bsky.social•21 days ago

Also recall having an argument with a music journalist type ages back, about the extension of the franchise. I’m a Bennite, he says, everything happened because of the protest of working men like me The Chartists the Diggers blah blah and I’m like no the story is *regularly* more boring than that

twlldun.bsky.social•21 days ago

Some stuff really did happen because of the protest movement. Other stuff happened because of elite men (because up till v recently it was always men) sitting in boring committee meetings and reading boring reports. Other stuff happened because individuals brought court cases.

cjmckeon.bsky.social•21 days ago

And, when it comes to suffrage stuff, the definitely-not-at-all-heroic motivation of partisan gain through increasing the franchise.

rhysneedham.bsky.social•21 days ago

A lot of it wasn't leftists, socialists, and Marxists either? Mostly Liberals, Methodists, Labourites, and the odd Conservative more often that not - maybe trying to ward off revolution?

twlldun.bsky.social•21 days ago

Change absolutely does not happen merely because of some heroic march or riot or whatever. Stuff is complicated.

joprcomms.bsky.social•21 days ago

It’s nearly always a bit of column a, a bit of column b, and a bit of noone saw this [insert unexpected, external policy driver here] coming.

darksatanicmills.bsky.social•21 days ago

I'm happy to accept that version of history, particularly as we see currently with the almost entirely counter-productive environmental protests.

But: e.g. strikes are more than just marches or protests

outeast.bsky.social•21 days ago

It's easier to find examples of activism directly leveraged against change, at least in the short term (in the UK: Fenianism, Suffragettes, 1926 General Strike, Winter of Discontent...). But would change happen without the activism? The forward march of history seems dubious as a thesis right now.

gabrielmilland.bsky.social•21 days ago

An extra complication. Much change did arrive through working class action. But *very boring* working class action. Like composite meetings.

mrfw17thc.bsky.social•21 days ago

There's also the 'stuff can be two things' approach to history, which is that weekends were formalised through union action but had existed as informal arrangements with (the more sympathetic) employers and among artisans for some time before that.

invalid-handle.com•21 days ago

The same trap on the left as the right. The heroic individual or act which changed history because they cared enough

michael-fox.bsky.social•21 days ago

I’m always astounded by the leftist complete refusal to acknowledge that most the early victories they claim total credit for were actually being delivered by Liberal politicians slowly grinding out progress for a hundred years.

pheasant.bsky.social•21 days ago

Sure the implementation. But what is the motivation? At the end of the day people in power share power because of the threat (however distant) of violence, perhaps combined with enlightened self interest of a more general kind. That's more clearly seen in predemocratic warlord societies.

twlldun.bsky.social•21 days ago

I think “because of the implicit threat of violence” is under examined in some cases (non-violence like King or Gandhi contains within it at least the hint of the threat “now, imagine if we weren’t being reasonable”) but in other cases - say, loads of factory acts in the 1800s - there is also

binaryape.bsky.social•21 days ago

We should thank Ian McKellen's grandfather

fornbirkibeinn.bsky.social•21 days ago

I think it's an Australian argument originally?

coffee-cat.bsky.social•21 days ago

V much agree it's complicated. Sure labour orgs helped, but one of my great grand uncles owned+ran a successful factory business, and voluntarily introduced a 48hr working week *without reduction in pay*! Enlightened chap, he published a book in 1893 called "a new chapter in the history of labour"

jamesdaustin.bsky.social•21 days ago

Not really - if anything many Unions in the states are even more socially conservative

rchrdbkr.bsky.social•21 days ago

This canard annoys me beyond belief. No shade on Marsha P. Johnson, but arguably Dirk Bogarde had more impact on UK legislation changing.

dorianlynskey.bsky.social•21 days ago

Roy Jenkins threw the first brick at Stonewall

radiobeartime.com•21 days ago

My aunt cooked for him and told him that if he wanted dessert he needed to legalise the LGBTQ massive.

joshuamurraynevill.bsky.social•21 days ago

Reader, I laughed

jamesldouglass.bsky.social•21 days ago

I've always wondered about the role played by National Service. And because it's a long and slightly convoluted theory I'm just going to cryptically leave it there.

alasdaircameron.bsky.social•21 days ago

I suspect that this is more to do with US campaigners, and much of the English speaking world, thinking history begins and ends in the US.. as much as the radical/prosaic theory you discuss below (although the radical is often underplayed, even in my own lifetime of campaigning this is the case)

nondairycanary.bsky.social•21 days ago

Whether across society as a whole - eg. claiming LGB rights were first won by a vanguard of trans heroes - or at the level of the individual - eg. amending birth certificates to validate gender identity - gender identity ideology relies on shamelessly rewriting history.

timoconnorbl.bsky.social•21 days ago

Even in North America, the 1967 Act’s provisions on homosexual activity were copied and received Royal assent in Canadian legislation literally the day before Stonewall.

mrtrellis.bsky.social•21 days ago

Shades of Caitlin Moran claiming on actual telly that without Russell T Davies' Doctor Who there would be no civil partnerships in the UK. Royal Assent for Civil Partnerships Act: Nov 2004. First episode of New Who: March 2005.

voodooroy.bsky.social•21 days ago

You are ignoring the obvious time travel implications on timely-wimey stuff.
Tsk!

mrtrellis.bsky.social•21 days ago

...which is probably one of the reasons why the Dr Who 50th anniversary documentary in which she made that idiotic statement was not released in the DVD boxed set with the other anniversary stuff.

iaincoleman.bsky.social•21 days ago

Yeah but Dr Who can travel in time, so

dhothersall.bsky.social•21 days ago

It's part US cultural hegemony and part that while '67 delivered decriminalisation in E&W it didn't *liberate* anyone. UK LGBT rights is a chequered history of disparate campaigns and protests but the Stonewall riots did inspire the UK (Anglosphere) *liberation* movement, if not the equality one.

twlldun.bsky.social•21 days ago

Oh I absolutely don’t believe in collapsing the story into simply “legalising”, no. And I’m not saying the impact of stonewall wasn’t there after. But at the same time, the post did say “no rights”, and that obviously isn’t true and yet people do think it is.

dhothersall.bsky.social•21 days ago

Yeah, sorry, I was accepting your premise and riffing, rather than challenging it, but I didn't make that clear. People on all political sides like simple stories. "Stonewall created a movement" is true *enough* that it is an effective story, but "Without Stonewall there are no LGBT rights" is not.

markwindmill.bsky.social•21 days ago

I gather there were *more* prosecutions of gay men in the first few years after decriminalisation, as the unreconstructed police vindictively looked for cases they could still prosecute.

rajacexplains.bsky.social•21 days ago

Was having a similar conversation with a friend yesterday about how people look at Gandhi, MLK and the Suffragettes as, "did some speeches, bit of protest, then political change."

Wildly underplays the Suffragists' often boring but considerably more effective campaigning and MLK's political nous.

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