The Transgender Activist Who Wasn’t
By: Melissa Ingle
Tags: History, LGBTQ, Transgender, Drag Queens

Sylvia Rivera was born on July 2, 1951, in New York City. Abandoned by her father at birth, and orphaned at the age of three by her mother’s suicide, Sylvia faced beatings and rejection for her effeminate behavior, especially once she began wearing makeup in the fourth grade. So, at the age of eleven, Sylvia ran away from home and turned to sex work in order to survive.

From these nightmarish beginnings, Rivera began a life of activism. She may, or may not, have participated in the Stonewall Riots, but she was definitely involved in the drag queen scene at the time. In 1970, at the age of 18, she joined the Gay Activist Alliance (GAA) and later the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) where she fought not just for gay rights, but for the rights of drag queens like herself to be included in the larger movement. She would go on to form Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) with fellow activist Marsha P. Johnson. This was a gay, gender non-conforming, and transgender street activist organization. Her advocacy efforts focused on those she saw being excluded from the mainstream gay and lesbian rights movement.

Clashes with the community

Almost immediately, Rivera, who was Latina, began to clash with the mainly white middle-class members of the GAA and GLF, whom she felt were not doing enough to support people like her and who tried to push her to the side and silence her. But Sylvia refused to be quiet. She was banned from New York’s Gay and Lesbian Community Center for, among other transgressions, destroying a desk in the lobby because she felt the center did not address the needs of transgender homeless youths who slept in front of it. She found herself booed at gay rights rallies and excluded or ignored from the larger gay rights community who saw her as a liability in their quest for assimilation and respectability.

The final straw came in 1986 when the Gay Rights Bill was passed in New York City. This bill was one of the first of its kind nationwide and Rivera had originally supported and campaigned for it. However, when the final bill was passed, any language supporting “transvestitism and drag” — her preferred language — had been stripped because its supporters, including the GAA, felt these elements were too “extreme.” Disgusted, she retreated from the scene, almost forgotten until her contributions were recognized by a younger generation who sought to lift her back up. She died on February 19, 2002, from complications due to liver cancer.

For her efforts, she eventually earned the nickname “the Rosa Parks of the Modern Transgender Movement.” She is considered one of the key figures who ensured the “T” was included in LGBTQ and remains, to this day, the only transgender person included in the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian.

Photo: Sylvia Rivera’s picture in the National Portrait Gallery. Rivera (center) sits with partner Julia Murray (right) and friend Christina Hayworth in New York City’s Bryant Park in June 2000 at the Saturday rally before the next day’s gay pride parade.

Gender Identity

Sylvia Rivera’s gender identity was complex and fluid throughout her life. At certain points, she referred to herself as a transvestite. Even then, her definition clashed with the mainstream, insisting the term only applied to gay men and women who dressed as members of the opposite sex. At various times, she referred to herself as a gay man, a gay girl, a drag queen/street queen, and once wrote an essay where she referred to herself as a “half-sister.” Despite the fact that she had a long-term female partner, when asked if she was a lesbian, she stated, “No. I’m just me. I’m not a lesbian.” She spoke openly about how she didn’t like the term transgender.

Sylvia Rivera is a monumentally important person, with law centers, food kitchens, and Broadway musicals dedicated to her memory. She never had much patience with respectability politics or the establishment, fighting instead for the most marginalized in the community. She did not fit into a neat box. The importance of her life is shown in the paths she blazed — not in the labels attached.

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