Related Research Articles
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 trans people, particularly trans women, and drag queens. The incident was one of the first LGBTQ-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.
Elliott R. Blackstone was a sergeant in the San Francisco Police Department, known as a longtime advocate for the lesbian, gay and transgender community in that city.
The Tenderloin is a neighborhood in downtown San Francisco, in the flatlands on the southern slope of Nob Hill, situated between the Union Square shopping district to the northeast and the Civic Center office district to the southwest. Encompassing about 50 square blocks, it is historically bounded on the north by Geary Street, on the east by Mason Street, on the south by Market Street and on the west by Van Ness Avenue. The northern boundary with Lower Nob Hill has historically been set at Geary Boulevard.
The transgender rights movement is a movement to promote the legal status of transgender people and to eliminate discrimination and violence against transgender people regarding housing, employment, public accommodations, education, and health care. A major goal of transgender activism is to allow changes to identification documents to conform with a person's current gender identity without the need for gender-affirming surgery or any medical requirements, which is known as gender self-identification. It is part of the broader LGBT rights movements.
Megan Wilson is an American visual artist, writer, and activist based in San Francisco. Known for her large-scale installations, public projects, and street art, she incorporates a broad range of pop culture methodologies and aesthetics to address conceptual interests that include home, homelessness, social and economic justice, anti-capitalism, impermanence and generosity. Wilson's art practice is influenced by Buddhism and Vipassanā meditation, often creating work that is conceptually rooted in elements of these practices and that is intentionally ephemeral or given away.
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.
Christopher Statton is an American artist and arts administrator, community activist, and philanthropist, and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Statton is best known for his role in establishing San Francisco's oldest continuously running theater, the Roxie Theater as a non-profit during his four-year tenure as executive director, 2010 – 2013. In 2013 he was awarded the Marlon Riggs Award by the San Francisco Film Critics Circle for “his significant contribution to San Francisco’s film community through the Roxie Theater over the past four years.” Ryan Coogler also received the award for his film Fruitvale Station. In 2013, San Francisco District 9 Supervisor David Campos awarded Statton with a Certificate of Honor for his “important and tireless work with the Roxie.” Statton resigned from the Roxie in 2013 due to health concerns.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQ) 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.
Nikki Calma, better known as Tita Aida, is a social activist from San Francisco, California. She is a long-time advocate for HIV/AIDS awareness, particularly among Asian American communities, and for transgender people.
Adela Vázquez is a Cuban-American transgender activist and performer. Hailing from Cuba during a time of political uprising, Vázquez was one of 125,000 people who sought asylum and migrated in the Mariel Boat lifts in 1980. Local to San Francisco's gay scene, Vázquez began to organize with HIV prevention organization Proyecto ContraSIDA Por Vida and became a community activist for transgender rights.
Aleshia Brevard was an American author and actress of stage, screen, and television. She worked as an entertainer, actress, model, Playboy bunny, professor of theater, and author. She also underwent one of the early sex reassignment surgery procedures performed in the United States. Brevard lived her life outside of the wider transgender community, and as a result, she was not publicly identified as transgender until publishing her memoirs in her later years.
Felicia Elizondo was an American transgender woman with a long history of activism on behalf of the LGBT community. She was a regular at Gene Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco during the time of the Compton's Cafeteria riot, a historic LGBT community uprising.
Alexis Marie Rivera was a transgender advocate and the first Case Manager and first Program Director for the Children's Hospital's transgender youth services program in Los Angeles. Rivera helped develop social services for the transgender community in Los Angeles in the 1990s and early 2000s, and later statewide programs in the late 2000s.
The Transgender District, formerly known as Compton's Transgender Cultural District, is the first legally recognized transgender district in the world. Named after the first documented uprising of transgender and queer people in United States history, the Compton's Cafeteria riot of 1966, the district encompasses six blocks in the southeastern Tenderloin, San Francisco, and crosses over Market Street to include two blocks of Sixth Street. It was co-founded by Honey Mahogany, Janetta Johnson, and Aria Sa'id.
Janetta Louise Johnson is an American transgender rights activist, human rights activist, prison abolitionist, and transgender woman. She is the Executive Director of the TGI Justice Project. She co-founded the non-profit TAJA's Coalition in 2015. Along with Honey Mahogany and Aria Sa'id, Johnson is a co-founder of The Transgender District, established in 2017. Johnson's work is primarily concerned about the rights and safety of incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated transgender and gender-non-conforming people. She believes that the abolition of police and the prison industrial complex will help support the safety of transgender people, and she identifies as an abolitionist.
Donna Personna is a transgender rights activist and fine art artist, who focuses in photography, painting, and mixed media. Personna was friends with The Cockettes and she played a part in Elevator Girls in Bondage. Personna co-wrote a play about the Compton Cafeteria riot, one of the first recorded LGBT-related riots in United States history, and marking the beginning of transgender activism in San Francisco.
Lorena Borjas was a Mexican-American transgender and immigrant rights activist, known as the mother of the transgender Latinx community in Queens, New York. Her work on behalf of immigrant and transgender communities garnered recognition throughout New York City and the United States. She lived for many years in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, where she was a community figure and leader.
Louise Lawrence (1912–1976) was an American transgender activist, artist, writer and lecturer. During the mid-20th century, she organized a network of gender non-conforming people across the US and abroad, and advocated for transgender issues. She was an early founder of the magazine, Transvestia. Academic and historian Susan Stryker wrote, "If there is an unheralded founder of the transgender community in the United States, it’s Louise Lawrence.".
The San Francisco Trans March is an annual gathering and protest march in San Francisco, California, that takes place on the Friday night of Pride weekend, the last weekend of June. It is a trans and gender non-conforming and inclusive event in the same spirit of the original gay pride parades and dyke marches. It is one of the few large annual transgender events in the world and has likely been the largest transgender event since its inception in June 2004. The purpose of the event is to increase visibility, activism and acceptance of all gender-variant people.
The National Transsexual Counseling Unit (NTCU) was the first peer-run advocacy and counseling program for transgender individuals. Founded in 1968 following the Compton's Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco, it was funded by the Erickson Educational Foundation. While previous efforts had been made to establish similar organizations, funding and support from the Erickson Educational Foundation helped the NTCU to enjoy significantly more success than previous organizations. This funding allowed for the NTCU to rent an office space and pay two full time peer counselors. These counselors provided street outreach, walk-in counseling, and answered mail from around the world. They would also frequently direct clients to the Center for Special Problems for additional support, such as identification cards that indicated transsexual status. The NTCU served as a place where transgender individuals could find services related to employment, mental health, legal problems, and more.
References
- 1 2 "The Bay Area Reporter Online | Elder conference to focus on trans issues" . Retrieved 2015-05-30.
- 1 2 Donohue, Caitlin (October 24, 2012). "Trans activists honored in Clarion Alley mural". San Francisco Bay Guardian Online. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved May 30, 2015.
- 1 2 Pasulka, Nicole (5 May 2015). "Ladies In The Streets: Before Stonewall, Transgender Uprising Changed Lives". NPR. Retrieved 2015-05-30.
- ↑ "San Francisco and Prop K". www.dailykos.com. Retrieved 2015-05-30.
- ↑ "Transgender Activists Honored in SF Mural | Transgender Law Center". transgenderlawcenter.org. 2012-10-31. Retrieved 2015-05-30.
- 1 2 3 4 5 "Clarion Alley". Fedoras and Feathers. May 19, 2014. Archived from the original on April 25, 2019. Retrieved May 30, 2015.
- ↑ "Hagiography (Tribute to Activists for the Transgender Community) – Clarion Alley, Mission District, San Francisco, California". ipernity. Retrieved 2015-05-30.
- ↑ "Screaming Queens | KQED". KQED Public Media. Retrieved 2015-05-30.
- ↑ Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria, 18 Jun 2005, retrieved 2015-05-30
- ↑ Eng, David L.; Hom, Alice Y. (1998). Q & A: Queer in Asian America. Temple University Press. p. 430.
- ↑ Meyerowitz, Joanne J.; Meyerowitz, Joanne J. (2009). How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Harvard University Press. p. 325.