| Paresis Hall | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Alternative names | Columbia Hall |
| General information | |
| Address | 392 Bowery (now 32 Cooper Square) |
| Town or city | New York City |
| Country | United States |
| Coordinates | 40°43′41″N73°59′29″W / 40.728183°N 73.991400°W |
| Owner | James T. Ellison |
Columbia Hall, commonly known as Paresis Hall, was a brothel and gay bar located in the Bowery, in New York City, in the 1890s. [1] Located on the Bowery near Cooper Union, the Hall was owned by the gangster James T. Ellison. [1]
Paresis Hall took its common nickname from general paresis , a term for syphilitic insanity. [2]
Jennie June wrote that the name "Paresis Hall" was the popular name, but androgynes disliked that name, and instead referred to it as "the Hall". [3] June wrote that the term paresis was used as a general term for insanity, but also wrote that the name followed a superstition that androgynes could cause virile men to succumb to insanity, later discovered to be a side effect of advanced syphilis. [3]
On the ground floor, Paresis Hall had a small bar room in front, and a small beer garden behind it. [3] The two floors above the ground floor were rented out in small rooms. [3] At least ten rooms above the bar were used for private encounters. [1]
One space above the bar was permanently rented by the Cercle Hermaphroditos, an early transgender advocacy organization. They stored clothing there due to the illegality of and public hostility to dressing in women's clothing. [4]
According to historian Susan Stryker, the Cercle Hermaphroditos was the first group in the United States to be concerned with what today would be considered transgender social justice issues. [5]
Paresis Hall was particularly renowned and reviled even at the time, and was a common target for both police activity and religious protests. [6] Despite this, evidence suggests it was active until at least 1899. [1]
The Stonewall riots, also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, or simply Stonewall, were a series of protests by members of the LGBTQ community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Patrons of the Stonewall, other Village lesbian and gay bars, trans activists and unhoused LGBT individuals fought back when the police became violent. The riots are widely considered the watershed event that transformed the gay liberation movement and the twentieth-century fight for LGBT rights in the United States.
Heteronormativity is the concept that heterosexuality is the preferred or normal mode of sexual orientation. It assumes the gender binary and that sexual and marital relations are most fitting between people of opposite sex.
LGBT history dates back to the first recorded instances of same-sex love and sexuality of ancient civilizations, involving the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) peoples and cultures around the world. What survives after many centuries of persecution—resulting in shame, suppression, and secrecy—has only in more recent decades been pursued and interwoven into more mainstream historical narratives.
Male prostitution is the act or practice of men providing sexual services in return for payment. It is a form of sex work. Although clients can be of any gender, the vast majority are older males looking to fulfill their sexual needs. Male prostitutes have been far less studied than female prostitutes by researchers. Even so, male prostitution has an extensive history including regulation through homosexuality, conceptual developments on sexuality, and the HIV/AIDS, monkeypox, and COVID-19 epidemic impact. In the last century, male sex work has seen various advancements such as popularizing new sexual acts, methods of exchange, and carving out a spot in cinema.
Over the course of its history, the LGBT community has adopted certain symbols for self-identification to demonstrate unity, pride, shared values, and allegiance to one another. These symbols communicate ideas, concepts, and identity both within their communities and to mainstream culture. The two symbols most recognized internationally are the pink triangle and the rainbow flag.
The Compton's Cafeteria riot occurred in August 1966 in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. The riot was a response to the violent and constant police harassment of drag queens and trans people, particularly trans women. The incident was one of the first LGBT-related riots in United States history, preceding the more famous 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City. It marked the beginning of transgender activism in San Francisco.
Venus Xtravaganza was an American transgender performer. She came to national attention after her appearance in Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary film Paris Is Burning, in which her life as a trans woman forms one of the film's several story arcs.
Jennie June was an American writer from the Victorian and Edwardian era and activist known for advocating for the rights of people who did not conform to gender and sexual norms.
New York state, a state in the northeastern United States, has one of the largest and the most prominent LGBTQ populations in the world. Brian Silverman, the author of Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day, wrote that New York City has "one of the world's largest, loudest, and most powerful" LGBT communities", and "Gay and lesbian culture is as much a part of New York's basic identity as yellow cabs, high-rises, and Broadway theatre". LGBT travel guide Queer in the World states, "The fabulosity of Gay New York is unrivaled on Earth, and queer culture seeps into every corner of its five boroughs". LGBT Americans in New York City constitute by significant margins the largest self-identifying lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities in the United States, and the 1969 Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village are widely considered to be the genesis of the modern gay rights movement.
This article addresses the history of transgender people in the United States from prior to Western contact until the present. There are a few historical accounts of transgender people that have been present in the land now known as the United States at least since the early 1600s. Before Western contact, some Native American tribes had third gender people whose social roles varied from tribe to tribe. People dressing and living differently from the gender roles typical of their sex assigned at birth and contributing to various aspects of American history and culture have been documented from the 17th century to the present day. In the 20th and 21st centuries, advances in gender-affirming surgery as well as transgender activism have influenced transgender life and the popular perception of transgender people in the United States.
Susan O'Neal Stryker is an American professor, historian, author, filmmaker, and theorist whose work focuses on gender and human sexuality. She is a professor of Gender and Women's Studies, former director of the Institute for LGBT Studies, and founder of the Transgender Studies Initiative at the University of Arizona, and is currently on leave while holding an appointment as Barbara Lee Distinguished Chair in Women's Leadership at Mills College. Stryker serves on the Advisory Council of METI and the Advisory Board of the Digital Transgender Archive. Stryker, who is a transgender woman, is the author of several books about LGBT history and culture. She is a leading scholar of transgender history.
Transgender pornography is a genre of pornography featuring transsexual or transgender actors. The majority of the genre features trans women, but trans men are sometimes featured. Trans women are most often featured with male partners, but they are also featured with other women, both transgender and cisgender.
Transgender History is a non-fiction book by professor Susan Stryker that provides a concise history of transgender people in the United States from the middle of the 19th century to the 2000s. The book was published in 2008 by Seal Press, with a revised edition released in 2017.
New York has a long history of LGBT community building, activism, and culture which extends to the early history of the city.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in San Francisco is one of the largest and most prominent LGBT communities in the United States, and is one of the most important in the history of American LGBT rights and activism alongside New York City. The city itself has been described as "the original 'gay-friendly city'". LGBT culture is also active within companies that are based in Silicon Valley, which is located within the southern San Francisco Bay Area.
New York City has been described as the gay capital of the world and the central node of the LGBTQ+ sociopolitical ecosystem, and is home to one of the world's largest LGBTQ populations and the most prominent. Brian Silverman, the author of Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day, wrote the city has "one of the world's largest, loudest, and most powerful LGBT communities", and "Gay and lesbian culture is as much a part of New York's basic identity as yellow cabs, high-rise buildings, and Broadway theatre". LGBT travel guide Queer in the World states, "The fabulosity of Gay New York is unrivaled on Earth, and queer culture seeps into every corner of its five boroughs". LGBT advocate and entertainer Madonna stated metaphorically, "Anyways, not only is New York City the best place in the world because of the queer people here. Let me tell you something, if you can make it here, then you must be queer."
The following outline offers an overview and guide to LGBT topics.
Queens Liberation Front (QLF) was a homophile group primarily focused on transvestite rights advocacy organization in New York City. QLF was formed in 1969 and active in the 1970s. They published Drag Queens: A Magazine About the Transvestite beginning in 1971. The Queens Liberation Front collaborated with a number of other LGBTQ+ activist groups, including the Gay Activists Alliance and the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.
Accounts of transgender people have been identified going back to ancient times in cultures worldwide. The modern terms and meanings of "transgender", "gender", "gender identity", and "gender role" only emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. As a result, opinions vary on how to categorize historical accounts of gender-variant people and identities.
The Cercle Hermaphroditos was the first known informal transgender advocacy organisation in the United States, founded in 1895 in New York City "to unite for defense against the world’s bitter persecution". The group first met at Paresis Hall, also called Columbia Hall or simply "the Hall," which was a center of homosexual nightlife in New York City. There, male sex workers would solicit men under an effeminate persona.
 | This sexuality-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
