From: jarvis@psych.toronto.edu (Brian Jarvis)
Subject: Re: Year of the Queer
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 22:31:43 GMT

In article <1ivf05INN9ti@mizar.usc.edu> adolphso@mizar.usc.edu (adolphson) writes:

>And I'm still trying to reconcile what possible difference
>to my life as a gay man in urban North America is the
>knowledge that in rural Latin America (and elsewhere),
>a man who often enjoy inserting his penis into another 
>man's anus would not ever consider himself to be "homosexual" 
>or "gay" or "queer", precisely because he's the one who's
>"acting like a man".  So the fuck what?  What does that
>have to do with "gay pride"?

Indeed, what does this have to do with anything we've been talking
about?  I'm open for suggestions.


>> >I find this argument astonishingly naive.  History has spoken, and it
>> >spoke at Stonewall.  If you or anyone else can suggest a single event
>> >that was even comparably significant with respect to gay liberation in
>> >the same way that Stonewall is, then we have a debate.  Otherwise,
>> >those 5000 years don't add up to bullshit.
>>
>> So that's it?  There was Stonewall and nothing else?  Anywhere?  At any
>> time?  Nothing before?  Nothing after?  Not a single victory worth 
>> celebrating or a loss worth mourning?  Just Stonewall?
>
>Stonewall is the event that radicalized gay men, first in
>New York, then elsewhere.  All contemporary gay political
>organizations, from Queer Nation to Lambda Legal Defense
>to the Log Cabin Club to ACT UP, find their origins in 
>Stonewall.

So these other groups can claim no pride in and of themselves?  They
have no right to self-identity and must pay homage to the Holy Day in
sacred rites?  And these groups had no other impetus but Stonewall
for their creation?  No other societal factors or trends?  What about the
groups not from North America?  Do they owe 100% of their existance
to Stonewall too, and nothing from their own culture and society?

>> No court cases?
>> No civil rights marches?
>> No civil disobedience events?
>
>Yes, there were isolated court cases and civil disobedience events,
>and even some picketing, but no *gay* civil rights marches that
>I'm aware of before 1969.  Can you provide an example or two?

If there were events which preceeded Stonewall, then how can we say
that gay civil rights marches are exclusively borne out of Stonewall?
We *know* there was a gay community before Stonewall and that it
was radically moved by the Stonewall catalyst:  you and I both agree
on this.  But doesn't Stonewall then owe anything to what happened before?
How can Pride Day be the sacred Holy Day of Genesis of Queerdom if
Queerdom predated the Genesis?

>> No AIDS crisis?
>
>No, the AIDS crisis began after Stonewall.

Yes, it happened after.  So did a lot of other things.  That's what
started this entire argument:  it was declared that Pride Day was all
about Stonewall itself and that the *entire* LGB planet owes its existance
to that event.  I say Pride Day includes that which happened before,
during and after Stonewall and that it is possible that there are areas
of the planet that are not obliged to have the same blind devotion to
The Blessed Event as we in North America might.

>> No election campaigns?

The elections and re-elections of openly gay politicians.  Maybe
you've heard of some of them.

>> No civil rights legislation?
>
>No.  (OK, the state of Illinois.  The Netherlands.)

Are these not worth celebrating?  Is there no pride in these things?

>> Nothing?
>
>Stonewall was the catalyst for what we have now.

Yes, it was a catalyst.  It was not the beginning and it was not the end.
If we're looking for a Holy Day of Genesis of Queerdom, this isn't it.

>Do you think there would have been all those Toronto
>bathhouses in the first place had it not been in
>the Canadian psyche to slavishly copy from the
>American example?

I'm going to ignore the slander in the latter part of your sentence, but
I must say that I had expected better from someone who professes to
be a human being.  As for the first part of your question, yes, I think
there would have been bathhouses here, with or without the existance
of the U.S..  Bathhouses have been common structures in many societies
predating the existance of the U.S. in areas where there was no knowledge of
North America.  I'm sure sex in bathhouses was not a uniquely American
invention.  Do you think it was?
-- 

Brian A. Jarvis,          Rm. 4026, Sidney Smith Hall, Dept. of Psychology,
jarvis@psych.toronto.edu  University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
System Administrator      M5S 1A1  (416) 978-3948