0:01

Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff,

0:03

the podcast about history and stuff and

0:05

people and subjective qualities like coolness.

0:09

I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. My guest is

0:11

not subjectively cool because

0:14

she's objectively cool anymore.

0:19

After an introduction like that, anyone who gets introduced

0:22

is less cool. But it's not their fault. It's my fault.

0:24

Yeah, you really set me up for failure that one.

0:28

This is Sharid. I am back. You're

0:30

welcome. Yay. This

0:34

week we are running Rudderless

0:36

without our captain slash producer Sophie,

0:38

which means we can finally tell you about

0:41

the basement full of You

0:44

can't say that on Mike, Margaret,

0:47

I mean, you know who doesn't want you to know about it

0:49

is. But

0:53

also we can talk about

0:56

fucking gay rights, not because Sophie

0:58

would let us talk about this. Also, just to be clear, I'm

1:01

not trying to drive so for here. This is part

1:03

two of a four part series, so you're gonna

1:05

be a little bit confused. If you don't go back and listen to the part

1:07

one, you'll have missed out on the guy with the

1:09

leopard who founded funded like most of the transhit

1:11

in US for decades. You all got to listen to that. You

1:13

have to, you have to. You'll have

1:15

to learn about Henry, Henry,

1:18

gay rights, Henry the Leopard right

1:21

Henry. He also

1:23

funded the Dun Dun Dun, the

1:26

Daughters of Belitis. And if

1:28

you've been following along and listened

1:30

and did not google anything today,

1:33

you will learn what that name means.

1:35

I'm gonna learn what that name means because I was a good

1:38

listener and didn't google anything since Monday.

1:41

Thank you. Yeah, I'm going to make everyone

1:43

wait a little bit longer as we go on a side quest.

1:47

A tangent on this show that's unheard of, but

1:49

don't worry. It's about a lesbian crime lady, and

1:51

it's good that's allowed. The

1:54

Daughters of Belitis were a response to lesbian

1:56

bar culture in the Bay. And

1:59

which is the Bay of California? What

2:02

is the name of bay? San Francisco Bay.

2:06

I'm definitely well traveled. So

2:09

let's talk about lesbian bars because most

2:11

gay bars at the time were criminal enterprises

2:14

in plenty more ways than one, because it

2:16

was like illegal to be gay but also run

2:19

by criminals. Tommy Vassou

2:21

like cool criminals are like both,

2:24

Yeah, and sometimes people who are like both at

2:27

once and you're like, oh, I wish that didn't turn me

2:29

on. I do not feel good about myself, like

2:31

a big like anti hero kind of guy. Yeah,

2:33

person a lot of anti heroes. Gay

2:35

rights was brought to you by the anti hero. Yeah,

2:38

there's a couple unabashed

2:40

good people. But if you're

2:43

being faced with like terrible

2:46

shit, you know, at least like adopt some terrible

2:48

shit. I don't think gir survive. I really think that's

2:51

like my honest opinion. I think

2:53

so too. Tommy Vassou was

2:55

a butch lesbian gangster who

2:57

moved to San Francisco in the forties from

2:59

the Midwest. I'm gonna use she pronouns

3:02

because those

3:04

are very cool altogether. Yeah,

3:07

she she lived her life as a man,

3:10

but I believe identified with butch culture. Um.

3:14

She was born in Ohio. She lived in Michigan

3:16

for a while. She moved to San Francisco and immediately

3:18

set about living her best life, which means

3:20

that she had short hair. She wore double breasted suits

3:23

with Fedora's. She drove a fucking Catalac

3:25

convertible. She passed as a man

3:27

completely. She used the men's restrooms, and

3:30

she was big in the crime scene doing crime

3:32

stuff. Love all that for her. Yeah,

3:35

she was a pimp. She dated sex workers.

3:38

I don't know one way or the other about how she treated

3:40

them. I know that at least some of them she made her business

3:42

partners and such. That's a

3:44

good sign, I know. Yeah, it's

3:46

good as far as pimpsco. Yeah,

3:49

Like she could have been absolutely awful to

3:51

her other workers. I have no idea. Yeah, I know.

3:53

Later she was a drug dealer, selling emphetamine's,

3:55

weed and heroin. It's implied that that came later,

3:58

But I think people might have been implying that later

4:00

because people don't want any People

4:03

really want to whitewash gay history, even

4:06

when it comes like why is drugs the line

4:09

that's so interesting to me? You know, there's

4:11

a couple lines they see people like avoid a

4:13

lot um. The people who seem to be written

4:15

out of these stories are the mafia,

4:18

especially the gay members of the gay the gay

4:20

gangsters. Those are the people I want

4:22

to learn about. Are you kidding? I've got some more

4:24

in here, good, good good. The

4:26

sex workers, the drug dealers and

4:29

drug users and the prisoners are

4:31

the people who are all left out of this story. They're

4:33

not good for the image

4:36

what they think anyway. Yeah, and so then

4:38

they'll include people and be like, oh, this person

4:40

who was like a drag queen and be

4:43

like she was also on

4:45

heroin and selling sex. That

4:47

doesn't make her less cool, It makes

4:50

her more cool of anything.

4:52

Yeah, not the heroine's cool. Yeah

4:55

no, yeah, it's it's a I think

4:57

it just like makes someone layered

4:59

and more were interesting to know that, like they

5:01

weren't this one dimensional activist

5:04

person right totally. It's like when we

5:06

look back on the like fucking um opiate

5:09

crisis that we're still in, you know,

5:11

people will be like, oh and then these people who were

5:13

harm reduction volunteers

5:16

for no reason, You're like, because they were

5:18

fucking dealing with it themselves. Not

5:20

everyone, right, but like yeah,

5:22

yeah, it's like I honestly

5:24

think some of that stuff unfortunately,

5:27

Like whether it's like addiction or even

5:29

just like recovering from addiction, I think your empathy

5:31

goes like out the wind, like it just goes way up.

5:33

Like I think it just like kind of makes you a more

5:37

sometimes anyway, that's my experience,

5:39

but it makes you more. But if

5:41

you're someone who's dealing with that. You're saying, Yeah, sorry,

5:44

I was gonna say out the window, but I meant like

5:46

out like up and out the windows, the opposite

5:48

of what I meant. Yeah, But like I think, I really think it makes

5:50

you more empathetic and more like emotionally

5:52

aware and probably like I

5:54

don't know, not that I mean,

5:56

I don't think anyone should do heroin

5:59

just like to put it out their point play. Yeah,

6:01

but I do think that sometimes addiction

6:03

has like a human,

6:05

like a really human aspect to it that I don't

6:07

think is like talked about

6:10

enough. I don't know if that makes sense. Well. I think that

6:12

also, like it puts you into

6:16

understanding the needs for need of community,

6:18

you know, they need to like take care of each other

6:21

and like, yeah, the people who reverse the most

6:24

overdoses are our users, you

6:26

know whom And that gets

6:28

left out of the story. Yeah, go

6:30

ahead. I think it teaches you to depend

6:33

on people without shame,

6:35

like hopefully you know, and I think that's really

6:37

hard for people. Yeah.

6:40

Anyway, So Tommy, Tommy

6:43

and her girlfriend owned a bar called Tommy's Place.

6:46

They had a different bar before that and it moved, but

6:49

Tommy's Place was next door to and basically the

6:51

same bar as another lesbian bar they also

6:53

owned, called twelve Adler Place. The

6:56

liquor license was in her girlfriend's name, which

6:58

is how I know that her her girlfriend slash

7:01

client, was a business

7:03

partner. The local license

7:05

was in her girlfriend's name because Tommy's criminal record

7:07

meant she couldn't get one, and Tommy

7:10

is the first openly lesbian bar owner in the

7:12

city. San Francisco

7:14

is the place to be gay in the fifties, and

7:16

there's other La Chicago,

7:20

New York, a bunch of other places, some cool shit going on

7:22

too, but San Francisco

7:24

had a lot going on for it to be gay in the fifties,

7:26

partly because the Beat generation had been pretty

7:28

openly pro gay and or written

7:30

about how great gay sex is all the time. And

7:33

there are a ton of these gay bars. But of

7:35

course, because it's all these gay bars, there's

7:37

the forces of reaction. The cops and the boring

7:40

people didn't like all these homos moving to town.

7:42

I love that you said cops and boring people. They

7:45

are they're fucking boring. Yeah,

7:48

And you get this moral panic right, because it's

7:50

like, because straight people aren't boring. Homophobes

7:53

are boring? Yeah kidding?

7:58

Is they get this moral panic because

8:00

nothing ever changes. Some parents got freaked

8:03

out that their daughters were going to Tommy's place and

8:05

getting involved in the butch and fem culture,

8:08

and how some of them wore mannished clothes and called

8:10

themselves either butch or fem. This is the thing I don't quite

8:12

have time to go into. I would recommend everyone read the

8:14

book Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

8:16

to talk about what it meant to

8:18

be pre Stonewall going to gay bars

8:21

and like what the lesbian culture around butch and fem

8:23

was basically kind of created these two genders

8:25

where they would date and things like that. That's

8:27

interesting, Okay, very quick,

8:30

very quick side note. There's

8:32

a book called Hejab Butch

8:34

Blues, a memoir. Ooh and

8:37

I directed the audio book if y'all want to

8:39

listen. I think it's a really amazing

8:41

book. It was one of those like there's

8:43

so many things that I was just like, wow, this puts

8:46

into words what I felt. But talks

8:48

about how like like for her

8:50

as a Muslim person, like God was like a

8:52

non binary like entity

8:56

versus just like a he or a she, and the

8:58

way she describes it as like he's

9:00

both or God is both, the

9:02

same way she is both. I think

9:04

it's just like there's a really beautiful way she says it

9:06

that I can't articulate, But if

9:09

you're interested in that kind of stuff, I really do recommend

9:11

it. And I directed the audiobook, so that's fun. That

9:14

fucking rules. I'm actually gonna

9:16

most of the stuff I read that as in a history book. I listened to

9:18

an audiobook, so hell yeah, and

9:20

Stone which blues like shaped

9:23

so much of my like young queer life by

9:26

coming to understand like some stuff. And yeah,

9:28

I mean if I had red cut stuff like that growing

9:30

up, it would have really helped me not feel like a

9:32

fucking freak, you know. Yeah, yeah, I

9:35

believe it. So you get

9:37

this moral panic nineteen

9:39

fifty four, the police is like, the police chief

9:41

is like, we gotta stop all these homosexuals. So

9:43

they started arresting people in bars and parks

9:45

and shit like that. On

9:47

September eighth, nineteen fifty four, the

9:50

SFPD raided Tommy's Place in twelve

9:52

Adler Place, and the charges are around

9:54

drugs. A heroine kid was found.

9:56

People claim as planted. I literally don't

9:58

know or care. The media

10:01

refers to the place as a vice academy because

10:03

it's convincing young girls to act manish

10:05

and do drugs and shit. And

10:09

I know you're thinking, you're like, you know, the police are raiding

10:12

this place. I bet there's some way that

10:14

they can arrest a straight black man and pin everything

10:16

on him. Oh no, uh

10:20

yeah. The media was also

10:22

like, it's a way to lure young white girls

10:24

into sleeping with black men, to go to this

10:26

wow gay bar. That's

10:29

one way to really get some

10:31

bigots up in arms. Oh

10:33

god, huh. And they referred to it

10:35

as white slavery and

10:37

that's so fun. Sorry. Yeah, it's kind

10:40

of been repeated in recent times, just the idea

10:42

of white oppression, and it's just laughable

10:44

every time. But I know, I like,

10:47

there's so many things wrong with the words white

10:50

white slavery. Yeah, because some

10:53

of them include the word

10:55

for that is slavery.

10:58

Yeah, like, it's not worse

11:00

when it happens to white people. Another

11:02

thing wrong with it is it's often code

11:05

for we hate sex workers. There's

11:07

anyway, Yeah, yeah,

11:09

there's a lot that's that's a that's a loaded thing.

11:12

I mean, yeah, implying that slavery

11:14

means black enslavement

11:16

by saying white in front of I mean that's already like

11:19

a yeah, yeah, a can of worms

11:22

so canceled nineteen fifties

11:24

media in San Francisco.

11:27

Um, but I mean, actually, yeah, fuck

11:29

them. But then okay, you're

11:31

gonna have some listeners being like my

11:35

ancestors were Irish and they were enslaved,

11:37

and they were white. So there's always

11:39

that person that's like reminds you of the

11:41

white people that were slaves, uh yeah,

11:44

which does not include the Irish and the United States

11:46

of America as someone

11:48

of Irish descent, it does include Now,

11:50

if you're saying that because your family is

11:53

in like fourteenth century Iceland,

11:56

you might be telling the truth. There

11:59

was a lot of Irish slave very, and like some

12:01

port the founding of Iceland was like I

12:03

think forty Irish slaves. Anyway,

12:07

I mean, I just I have

12:11

genuinely had a person I know that looked

12:13

like the most aryan person I've ever met

12:15

in my life, with like a very like just a

12:18

bunch of privilege, kind of like counteract

12:20

an argument I made about racism, because he was like,

12:23

my family were slaves, and I'm like, what the fuck are

12:25

you talking about? And that was my first experience, like fifteen

12:27

years ago with the idea that people genuinely

12:30

cling to that as far as like I was oppressed

12:32

too, because people why why people just

12:34

like want to be oppressed so bad they do because

12:38

whiteness is the eradication of culture in

12:41

exchange for privilege. And people on

12:45

a gut level. Don't get

12:47

me wrong, these people are doing bad when they say shit like

12:49

this, But on a gut level, people

12:51

are like, I want to have a culture instead

12:54

of this privilege, and so like

12:56

they want to trade it, and it's just

12:58

like we don't get to make that decision, right,

13:01

but we can like whatever.

13:04

Yeah, as a whole other fucker, I mean, I just like what you

13:06

said. I'm gonna remember that whiteness is the eradication

13:08

of culture because you've put into words something

13:10

that is very true. Maybe it's been said before

13:12

and I just haven't been paying attention, but I like that you

13:15

said it because now I know it. Thanks.

13:17

Yeah, And that's like part of the whole like thing about

13:20

like you know, when we say like get rid of whiteness,

13:22

we don't mean get rid of white people. We

13:25

mean, get rid of whiteness. We get get rid of this

13:27

like weird Devil's bargain where suddenly

13:29

you don't have an ethnicity, you're just privileged,

13:31

and like get rid of white privilege and like I

13:34

don't know whatever. Um, okay, very

13:36

quick side note. Actually, though, I'm

13:38

gonna get hate for that everybody. Okay, well,

13:40

I'm already gonna hate for what I yep. Well,

13:43

okay, there's a Vastard's episode

13:45

that I was on. Was it on Bastards? Okay,

13:48

there's a whole thread on Reddit that says

13:51

that I hate white people, that I'm racist against white

13:53

people, and I want all white people to die because

13:55

I said that white people ruined yoga

13:58

or like something like that, and

14:01

that just like became a whole beast on its

14:04

own where I

14:06

don't know how that happened, but there's like people

14:09

are defensive about that stuff. As what I'm trying to say,

14:12

the fact that like you can say whiteness and kind

14:14

of try to equate it to like this eradication,

14:16

and then someone jumps on that and

14:19

like thinks, I want to like genocide white people.

14:21

Just an interesting point in men

14:24

genocide white people and men. That's the that's

14:26

what the threat is about. I think, yeah,

14:28

that's anyways, that's such a funny, funny,

14:30

good story that I put through. I'm

14:33

sorry, that's okay, that's

14:36

funny. Though. After this

14:38

raid, patrons were forced

14:40

to testify against the bar or go to jail

14:42

themselves. Um. One of the

14:44

bartenders, a white woman, got six months

14:46

for serving beard of miners, a black

14:48

man who was a regular there. This is the this is the

14:50

person that the whole scare was around.

14:53

He got five years for supplying marijuana

14:55

to a miner um so ten

14:58

times the sentence and the

15:00

bar's liquor license was revoked and the bar

15:02

closed. And the whole thing was

15:04

this, like, but young people

15:06

come here and drink. There was this girl

15:08

who claimed that she'd been drinking here since she was thirteen,

15:12

which is probably true.

15:14

She was drinking at every bar in

15:16

San Francisco when she was thirteen, and she said

15:18

as much, and they closed

15:20

this one down because it was gay. Wow,

15:23

Tommy. The rest of to

15:26

fast forward her life, And if you fast forward anyone's

15:28

life, it sounds bad because then you're like, and then they'd die,

15:30

you know, right right, right right, Tommy, got

15:32

arrested nineteen sixty eight, so ten years later

15:34

for dealing. Fourteen years later,

15:37

got arrested for dealing, spent five years in prison,

15:39

and then was murdered in nineteen seventy nine.

15:41

And I could not find out. Someone knows,

15:44

but I did not was. Now they will find out whether it's a hate

15:46

crime thing or a europe A

15:48

gangster. And you do prom for a

15:50

living and terrible way to

15:52

go either way. Yeah, totally. Her

15:55

spot wasn't the only gay bar in San Francisco,

15:58

not in the slightest. You have a diner called the

16:00

Paper Doll, which is mostly a lesbian spot

16:02

that was so crowded they cramped strangers into

16:04

the booths with you, which sounds like hell

16:06

to me, but it was a good way for people to meet each other.

16:10

You had Gordon's, a mostly gay male spot

16:12

opened by a guy who had worked for the Paper Doll. Because

16:15

LGBT people, but we belong

16:17

together. We care for each other, you know, we help each other start

16:19

our own things. You had the Beige

16:21

Room, which was a drag theater

16:23

with trapeez swings hanging from the ceiling, and

16:26

tourist buses stopped at this place, which

16:28

was actually apparently a common source of income for

16:30

fifties and sixties gay bars across the country,

16:32

as tourists would come and be like, hell yeah,

16:34

drag because drags fucking cool. Yeah,

16:38

And then you had the front, another lesbian

16:40

owned bar, and the front was really interesting.

16:42

It's kind of the inverse of Tommy's Place because

16:45

Charlotte Coleman she had

16:47

been in the Coastguard and then she was an auditor for

16:49

the IRS. So she's like normy right

16:52

until the lavender scare got her fired

16:55

from working as an auditor for the IRS.

16:57

That's gonna turn you, that's gonna turn

16:59

you. In the end, she was glad she was fired.

17:02

I mean, you know, I doubt she was like man, the lavender scare

17:04

rules, but she certainly was happier as a

17:06

bar owner in San Francisco instead of an

17:08

auditor for the I R. S. And when

17:11

she opened the front, she ran the entire

17:13

thing herself, with no employees noon till

17:15

close, seven days a week. And

17:18

in order to avoid what Tommy's Placed did,

17:20

I assume Tommy's Places paid off the cops. I couldn't

17:22

promise you that, but what

17:24

she did in order to avoid attention was she

17:26

opened it in the industrial district, like in a warehouse

17:28

somewhere, and what that meant was that

17:31

working class men would stop by and

17:33

get a drink on their way home from work, and

17:35

they were all buds. This part so heartwarming.

17:39

The working classmen, they never

17:42

disparagingly, like they weren't harassing them. But

17:44

they called the lesbians the fruit. So

17:46

the lesbians called them the vegetables.

17:49

Oh my god, and that

17:51

is the most precious thing

17:53

you've ever said on this rock. And

17:56

then when ship would break, the like worker

17:59

dudes would just like go fix shit for free

18:01

at their favorite bar, the lesbian

18:03

bar in the warehouse district, and

18:06

yeah, a vegetable is going to help them

18:08

out. That is so funny.

18:11

You know that one guy walked in there and was like, I'm

18:13

the meat and people are like get out, yeah,

18:18

or one person was like, I'm a tomato and

18:20

then they were like that actually means you're a fruit, and

18:23

just the long pause that they were like, yeah,

18:25

he got wrong. And then she came out as a trans exactly

18:31

so. And one of the front's first

18:33

events was a benefit for

18:36

the lesbian organization. I've twenty

18:39

minutes in this episode promised, I'm gonna

18:41

tell you about

18:45

that's how my braid works. It's just like

18:47

I was on a ride. I was on a different ride. But yes,

18:49

I can't wait. Well, you're gonna have to wait after

18:52

these ads and

18:58

we're back. In

19:01

nineteen fifty five, there was a Filipino

19:04

lesbian named Rose Bamburger

19:06

and she decided with her partner that they needed a lesbian

19:08

social club. They were tired of only hanging

19:10

out in bars. I really can't blame them,

19:13

and they got together with three other lesbian couples

19:15

because lesbians, yeah, And

19:17

on September twenty first, nineteen fifty five, they

19:20

were like, what is the gayest name we

19:22

could possibly imagine for our new social club.

19:25

I don't know if that's actually what they said, but they came up with

19:27

the gayest name. They picked Daughters

19:30

of Belitis, based on a book called

19:32

the Songs of Belitis, which is a French

19:34

nineteenth century lesbian poetry book

19:37

written by a guy named Pierre Louis,

19:40

who probably banged Oscar

19:42

Wilde but was definitely friends with Oscar Wilde,

19:46

yeah probably, and who wrote

19:48

about pagan sexuality aka gay

19:50

sex all the time. But he also wrote

19:52

this book Songs of Belitis, which he

19:54

claimed weren't written by him,

19:56

but instead were ancient Greek lesbian

19:59

poetry that would

20:01

found on the walls and of a tomb in

20:03

Cyprus, written up by a made

20:05

up ancient Greek lesbian poet named Belitis,

20:08

who was contemporaries with Sappho,

20:10

the ancient Greek Greek penn sexual

20:12

whose life is the reason we have the word safik

20:15

and lesbians because she lived on the island of Lesbos.

20:18

So the book when it came out,

20:20

Songs of Belitis, it was so successful

20:22

that people thought it was actually an ancient Greek

20:25

poetry thing for a while. I don't

20:27

know whether eventually it was like surprise, bitch, is this to

20:29

me? Or like, yeah,

20:31

but I already had made it smart at that point. Yeah.

20:34

And because the nineteenth century rules in weird interconnected

20:37

ways, Claude Debussy, one of my favorite composers,

20:39

wrote a bunch of songs from those Songs of Belitis

20:41

into actual songs, and his dad

20:44

fought in the Paris Commune, which you can listen about with my

20:46

episode with Miriam Roscheck about

20:48

the Paris Everything Connected. I

20:50

know, Daughters of

20:52

Belus, Yeah, which just sounds

20:55

like they belong in Vampire the Masquerade, and I'm

20:57

not convinced they aren't vampires. They

20:59

formed a dads of belitis. I mean, I just

21:01

imagined like a bunch of badass

21:03

like Joan of Arc people, you know what I mean. That's

21:05

that's where my head goes. Oh yeah, yeah,

21:07

like like chainmail and shit. Yeah, just like

21:10

fucking into it. And

21:13

they about their weird name. Some of the founders

21:15

said, quote, if anyone asked us, we could always say

21:17

we belong to a poetry club. And

21:21

they had four goals besides socializing. One

21:25

education of the variant, which was their word

21:27

for temperamental love it. Two

21:30

education of the public. Three participation

21:32

in research projects. They were into the idea that they

21:34

would all go volunteer for these like human sexuality

21:36

subjects and studies in order to

21:38

prove that they're normal, you know, and

21:41

for investigation of the California penal

21:43

code. And they got support from the Matachine

21:45

Society and I believe also One Incorporated. They

21:48

shared an office with them on Mission Street. Madaschine

21:50

not one, and they

21:52

kind of similarly to Madachine, took their super

21:54

cool name and mission and went really assimilationist

21:57

with it, no say

22:00

so. They encourage people to dress and

22:02

act normal. Several of the founders

22:04

left when they shifted away from their original purpose.

22:07

But in this case, the original purpose was social club

22:09

and then it became more activist. So a lot of the founders left,

22:13

and they

22:16

they made a magazine called The Ladder starting

22:18

nineteen fifty six, using machines mimeograph

22:21

machine. The Ladder like a like

22:23

a climate of tools. Yeah, yeah,

22:26

it's not a tool. What am I saying? It's

22:28

just sort of a what is

22:30

it called? What would you what are the massive

22:33

objects? Yeah? I know, it's the Ladder. And

22:35

they made this magazine and like, as far

22:38

as I could tell, the point of making this

22:40

magazine at first was to convince like lonely

22:43

rural queer ladies to come move to

22:45

San Francisco to expand their dating pool.

22:47

I mean, I love that. Love

22:50

that's that was thought about, because I'm

22:53

sure there were so many of those people

22:55

that were just like waiting for the correct thing to just like

22:57

jump on. But also fact

23:00

I respect the effort. I respect the effort for sure.

23:02

Yeah. Here's a quote from

23:04

their first issue, What

23:06

will be the Lot of the Future Lesbian Fear

23:08

scorn. This need not be if lethargy

23:11

is supplanted with an energized constructive program,

23:14

if cowardice gives way to the solidarity

23:16

of a cooperative front. Wait,

23:18

can you repeat that? I want to hear that poetry?

23:21

Yeah, what will be the loss of the future

23:23

lesbian fear scorn? This need

23:25

not be if lethargy is supplanted

23:27

by an energized constructive program, if

23:30

cowardice gives way to the solidarity of

23:32

a cooperative front. M Basically,

23:34

it's like, we fucking work together, we can

23:37

fucking do this shit. Yeah, that

23:39

sounds like it would be like from the Daughters of Belitas,

23:42

just like the way it is worded. Yeah,

23:44

I know, I know. And the art

23:46

on this magazine rules and it's worth looking

23:48

at. It was eventually subtitled

23:50

a Lesbian Review, the first time in a magazine

23:52

in the US used the word lesbian like in its titling,

23:56

and they ran a mail order for her to find lesbian

23:58

books. They held the first lesbian

24:00

convention in the US, though cops came and made

24:02

sure no one was cross dressing. That's

24:04

the weirdest whatever, fucking cops. Yeah,

24:07

and they organized lesbians

24:09

to participate in psychological studies, and

24:12

then in the latter one of the things that they did was spread

24:14

information on how to handle arrests. Quote,

24:16

don't plead guilty, call your attorney, don't volunteer

24:19

information. In fact, don't talk to anyone about

24:21

anything that holds up. That's good

24:23

advice. I was gonna say, that's like,

24:26

that's what we tell people now. Yeah, And

24:28

they had listicles like imagine

24:30

this on the check outstand, thirteen

24:33

ways a woman can assert her rights in case of

24:35

arrest. Wow, their

24:39

numbers, but that's just like, that's

24:41

those are the tabloids that I want

24:43

back, you know what I mean? I want those instead

24:46

of Star. Yeah, like, yeah,

24:48

anyways, I respect them. I

24:50

respect that well. In episode four, we're gonna

24:52

talk about a queer organization called Star Don't worry,

24:55

Oh Street Trensvestite Action

24:57

Revolutionaries. Wow.

25:00

Oh, it's like a good acronym. Yeah, that's

25:02

fucking sick. Yeah, I love an acronym. Their

25:05

numbers never get really high. The daughter's politism.

25:08

A bunch of different explanations are offered not

25:10

by them, but by like future historians or whatever.

25:13

It was mostly for middle class folks, predominantly

25:15

white, but not overwhelmingly, so there's

25:17

very explicit racial inclusion.

25:20

Many of its founders were Filipino, or at least one of

25:22

the founders of Filippine. I've heard that two of them were. It's

25:24

some of its leaders were people of color. They had a black

25:26

president for a while. They

25:29

were trying yeah, most Yeah,

25:31

and frankly ahead of the curve for fifties and sixties

25:34

for sure. Yeah. I have to remind myself

25:36

that that's that's the decade it was in, because in my

25:38

head it was like, without

25:41

realizing it, I'm like, oh, seventies or like eighties

25:43

or whatever. But the fact that it was so long ago is even

25:45

more impressive. Yeah, but

25:48

the assimilationist model of it just

25:50

didn't really light a spark in people. And they talk

25:52

a bunch of shit on butches and gay bars, which

25:55

is like where more of the lesbian cultures is

25:57

happening. By the mid sixties,

26:00

both the Daughters of Bilitis and Matachine are both getting

26:02

a little bit more Actually society needs serious

26:05

changing, and so they do start getting a little bit

26:07

more radical in nineteen sixty four,

26:09

or they get more political. I guess it's a better way to

26:11

say it. In nineteen sixty four, the

26:13

daughters picketed a cathedral because a church guy

26:15

inside had yelled at another church

26:17

guy for supporting queers, because

26:20

actually religion has never been united

26:22

on the issues of gay people in one direction or the other.

26:25

And these groups all together they

26:28

get called the homophile movement movement.

26:30

They used the word homophile to emphasize that it was

26:32

about love, which is sweet, But could

26:35

you imagine the fucking discourse, like if this was on Twitter?

26:37

Like right, so you've

26:40

got another one of these groups around at this time. I'm

26:43

sure there's more, but this one also

26:45

had a really metal name, the Janis

26:47

Society JA and U Jis.

26:50

Could you imagine showing up at the

26:52

like the big group, the big thing

26:55

that collected all the homophile groups is called Echo. I

26:57

think the East Coast homophile organizations

26:59

are least the eascast ones were. But could you imagine

27:01

showing up as like the Delaware Association of

27:03

Guys who like fucking other guys and everyone

27:05

else is like Obliviator, the Society

27:08

of Destroyers. First of their name, you're

27:12

Janis. Yeah. So

27:15

the Janis Society was a Philly area group

27:17

that had both men and women and They got their name from

27:19

the Roman god Janis, who had two

27:21

faces, and as the god of dualities and beginnings

27:24

and endings and just all kinds of metal shit. In

27:28

nineteen sixty five, Janus societal with a

27:30

you yeah, Janis like ja

27:33

and you ask like the fucking movie logo. Okay,

27:36

finally I put together saying with that

27:38

reference, I'm an idiot. I

27:40

was thinking of the white woman's name Janis this whole

27:43

time. But Janis is a really

27:45

cool god. Yeah you say that, and it's the

27:47

fucking logo from that really cool company. So anyway,

27:50

but yeah, I don't know a company. It's

27:52

a it's a like a restoring or like film

27:55

company that like just do some really cool shit

27:58

and like helps restore old films. But logo

28:00

itself is like a two headed like a

28:02

coin that has like two heads on it. I'm pretty

28:04

sure. Yeah. Cool. In

28:07

nineteen sixty five, they held us sit in just

28:10

like straight up at a lunch counter in Philly.

28:13

We're queer people and cross dressers. We were being refused

28:15

service. After about one hundred

28:17

and fifty queer people had been denied service at

28:19

this lunch counter. Three teenagers,

28:22

two boys, and one girl. Just sat the fuck down

28:24

and refused to leave, and they were arrested.

28:27

So then the president of the Janis Society, Clark

28:29

Pollack, he's a gay Jewish man and

28:32

we're talking more about him in a second. He got arrested

28:34

next. During this he just went and was like, all right, you're gonna arrest

28:36

these kids, You're gonna arrest me. So then

28:39

three more people come in and sit down, and

28:41

this time the cops refused to arrest them, and eventually

28:44

the place had to start serving queers, I think. But

28:46

if nothing else, they stopped arresting them, stopped kicking them

28:48

out right. Janis

28:50

Society, in particular, that guy, Clark Pollak.

28:52

They published a magazine called Drum, which

28:55

was a gay magazine that got its name just

28:57

like the sources of all their names. No, fascinating,

29:00

Yeah, I want to know. It got its name from

29:02

that book Walden by Throw, and it

29:04

includes this quote in every issue from that

29:06

book. If a man does not keep pace

29:09

with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears

29:11

the beat of a different drummer. And

29:14

in this case, the beat that this magazine

29:16

heard was hot naked guys.

29:22

I love that these names have these

29:24

like very deep meanings that

29:26

like you only know if you were in on it. Yeah,

29:29

I love that, And I don't know the latter's meaning.

29:31

I looked a little bit, but I couldn't find it. I'm

29:34

sure if I read an entire book

29:36

about the Daughters Blow to Right, I would know. So

29:39

this becomes the most popular game magazine in the country

29:42

because has hot naked guys in it. It

29:45

also gets in a lot of trouble. Its other

29:47

motto was less poetic and just as cool, put

29:50

the sex back into homosexuality. So

29:53

you know where they would have been in the Twitter discourse. Yeah,

29:56

yes, yes, yes, that's amazing. This scot

29:59

Clark pullack A rested and sent to prison, as

30:01

did him running a peep show, and

30:03

the magazine disbanded because

30:05

once again, sex work and gay

30:09

stuff do. It's not

30:11

the same history, but it's a fucking huge ven diagram.

30:14

Yeah, and not everything

30:16

that happened during this era happened in the name of various

30:18

organizations, in particular what

30:20

was called transvestites at the time. They're

30:23

left out a lot of the assimilations rhetoric because

30:25

we're harder to grapple with and explain something

30:28

that's happening now. But while organizations

30:31

were more like trying to be respectable, the street queers

30:33

and LGBT across the spectrum, we're just

30:35

fucking willing to get rowdy. So now we get

30:37

to talk about some of the riots. Hell yeah,

30:40

Los Angeles nineteen fifty nine, there was

30:42

a thriving queer community and scene, and

30:44

the cops kept fucking with it. They would arrest

30:47

people and they would print their names in the paper

30:49

as queers as a big scare

30:51

tactic. It's like doxing back

30:53

then. Yeah, basically, that's so stupid. Yeah.

30:57

In May nineteen fifty nine, some queer folks

30:59

were hanging out at a twenty four hour donuts shop called

31:01

Cooper Donuts on skid Row. And

31:03

this place was right between two different gay bars and

31:06

was totally fine with this clientele. It was

31:09

a twenty four hour donut shop between two gay bars.

31:11

That's who you know. Probably who

31:13

fucking worked there, I don't know. So the cops came in,

31:15

which were fucking with people one night, and one night

31:17

they came in, they were fucking with two drag queens, two male

31:19

sex workers, and a guy who was just outlook to get laid

31:22

and So the cops arrest a bunch of people, including

31:24

this Mexican American author John Retchie, and

31:28

people watching this are like, no,

31:31

no, you're just you're just not actually gonna do that. So

31:34

they start throwing coffee

31:36

and donuts and trash at the cops. Oh

31:39

my god, that is

31:42

incredible. That's the right that I want to enjoy.

31:44

That's great. That's so good. Coffee

31:47

and donuts particularly at cops, which

31:49

is like they have that whole fucking stereotype because

31:54

and then it works. They drive the cops

31:56

off with no one getting arrested. And

31:58

it's usually presented as the first gay riot, And U

32:00

asked, I don't have any counter argument, and I

32:03

yeah, I love that it's throwing down. It's a cops are

32:05

trying to arrest a Mexican man and some cross dressers

32:07

and sex workers, and they fucking what and

32:09

they fucking won. That's amazing.

32:12

I'm so glad you told me about that. The visuals

32:14

in my brain are so beautiful. Yeah, okay,

32:16

this next one's real good too. Hell yeah, Okay.

32:19

August fifth, nineteen sixty one in Milwaukee,

32:22

which I misspelled in my script, nied you

32:25

know who cares? Yeah, no One. Four

32:28

Navy assholes. They show up at a dare at an

32:30

illegal gay bar called Black Night. It

32:32

was illegal asn't it didn't bother having a liquor license.

32:36

The four Navy guys they refused to show idea

32:38

to the bouncer, so the bouncer was like, sorry,

32:41

buds, you're leaving. You might enough hraise

32:43

it that politely. I don't know, so

32:45

all four of them jumped the bouncer. What

32:48

they didn't take into account was that the bouncer

32:50

happened to be married to Josie fucking Carter,

32:53

a black drag queen who was ex Navy herself,

32:56

who was there to perform. She actually

32:58

lived full time as a woman, but it didn't identify as

33:00

trends. She had a parrot with her, just

33:02

to set the scene. Know that she always went to the

33:04

bar with her parrot. This is incredible.

33:08

Josie fucking Carter, I'm

33:10

adding that middle name, walks

33:12

out of a walks out with a beer bottle on each

33:14

hand, and just fucks up the Navy guys.

33:18

To quote her, this man turned

33:20

on me. I thought, I can't let him put his hands on me.

33:22

He was big and he kept coming at me. I thought

33:24

he would kill me in that moment, I could fight off an

33:27

army in a bathrobe. I let him have everything

33:29

that was in that bottle. He went down. That's

33:32

amazing. So the Navy guys fuck

33:34

off and take the bottled guy to the hospital.

33:38

So a dozen more navy fucks show up.

33:41

They like, go and get their friends. They're like, well,

33:43

we're gonna go up these quarters. Yeah.

33:46

In the bar, everyone's like, oh shit, what do we do? Do

33:48

we run? Josie says about it later

33:51

a quote, But we did not run

33:53

from a fight. We did not run from nothing.

33:57

What a badess. Huh beer

34:00

bottle? Yeah,

34:02

it's probably at the bar, but you know, yeah yeah,

34:05

I mean yeah yeah. So twelve

34:07

Navy guys show up and they just start literally tearing

34:09

the bar apart, like I think it's like a makeshift bar

34:11

or something, and seventy five gay patrons

34:13

just fuck them up. Um, a bunch

34:16

of people on both sides get hospitalized. The

34:19

cops kind of miraculously they arrest

34:21

the Navy guys and not the bar patrons. Wow,

34:23

but the charges are dropped the time I know,

34:26

I know, but the charges are dropped immediately. Say yeah,

34:29

um, but at least the gay folks defending

34:31

themselves don't go to jail. Yeah, all

34:34

right, another riot San

34:36

Francisco. Now are all amazing. I think there's

34:38

always something that makes it like crazy,

34:41

and I know that the parrot,

34:43

the donuts, yeah, like yeah, yeah. Just

34:45

the fact that she was like a Navy X person,

34:48

just like yeah, totally next

34:51

ride on the list, San Francisco, nineteen sixty

34:53

six. It's in the Tenderloin district, which apparently

34:55

gets his name from basically being the district where cops

34:57

can get bought off through like old timey slang. I've

35:00

always wondered that that's what it's from. It's from

35:02

a New York thing, um,

35:06

tender Loin. I've always wondered the origin of that,

35:08

that's you know, And now I'm like, I can't. I like looked

35:10

up the exact origin and then like summarized it

35:12

that way, and I'm like, yeah, but that doesn't Oh well, whatever,

35:14

my bad memory. Whatever, let's go with it. Yeah.

35:17

Tenderloin In in San Francisco

35:19

the center of LGBT community in San Francisco

35:22

at the time. It was also home to a large number

35:24

of trans women doing sex work there. Weren't a lot

35:26

of jobs available to non passing trans women then,

35:29

unlike now. It is better now,

35:31

but it's not fucking easy as a slightly

35:33

yeah, like you know, it's like it's still a

35:35

point of contention unfortunately. Yeah, totally.

35:39

Um. And also trans women and cross dusters

35:41

often weren't welcome at gay bars, and we're gonna

35:43

talk more about that later when we talk about Stonewall.

35:45

But like basically a lot of bars were like no, this

35:47

is for you know, there

35:49

is also like a discrimination

35:52

with the same community that's sucks.

35:55

And it's hard to tell how much is like a no,

35:58

we're respectable, and how much is a know, what

36:00

you're doing illegal and we don't want the heat. So

36:02

it's hard to know whether it was like bigotry or cowardice or

36:04

some combination of the two. You know, it's

36:07

either way. Yeah, stupid. Neither

36:10

are words that I like ascribed to me, you know,

36:13

I mean, like, just you're ostracizing and like, yeah,

36:16

singling out a group it's already so in

36:18

need of defense

36:21

or like I don't know whatever totally,

36:24

and if you're in need of defense is

36:27

one of our ads Sometimes simply safe. I'm

36:29

just I'm trying to make it. I don't know. Maybe

36:32

let's ads are a thing

36:35

that support this podcast. Um, you

36:37

don't have to listen to them. I don't care. There's

36:40

a forward button on your thing that's

36:43

a secret. Oh right, No, I mean you

36:45

must listen. Keep

36:49

wondering if I remember, gonna get in trouble. So he's not a

36:51

sop. He's never stopped me either. And

36:56

we're back from those ads that we all

36:59

care deeply about, and you listen

37:01

to the whole way through. That's right. So

37:06

no one cared about the street workers in the Tenderloin,

37:08

at least no one at an institutional level. They

37:11

were a combination of everything cops don't care about.

37:13

They were poor people, people of color, trans people, gay

37:15

people, sex workers, homeless people.

37:17

They any one of these things is enough

37:19

to get you treated like shit, and a lot of them

37:22

were all of these things. So

37:24

there's this chain store cafe called

37:27

Compton's Cafeteria, and

37:30

it had a location in the Tenderloin.

37:32

It's twenty four hours. It becomes

37:34

a social hangout for trans workers, for

37:36

trans sex workers in particular, and

37:38

the owners suck and they keep calling the cops

37:40

on them and getting them arrested for female impersonating

37:43

the law. That would have sounded old timey if

37:46

we'd written this only a year ago, but

37:48

is now back on the books. And I think I could get

37:50

arrested for going to the grocery store in Tennessee

37:53

right now. That is so scary,

37:57

genuinely, yeah, do

37:59

we ever? Humans don't change, society

38:02

never changes. It's genuinely the same.

38:04

It's like groundhog Day, it really is. I

38:07

think we've had moments, long

38:09

moments of good and there's so many

38:12

societies that aren't poisoned

38:14

by Western stuff.

38:16

Yeah, you know, Yeah, it's good to remember

38:18

that our world is not the world. I

38:21

guess that's a good point. Yeah, but

38:24

I no, I do agree that there has been stretches of

38:26

goodness. I just when when you're reminded

38:28

of like the badness that's still there,

38:30

it's just fucking upsetting. Yeah, of course

38:32

it is. I don't know. Yeah. In

38:36

August nineteen sixty six, the queens are hanging

38:38

out doing their thing at Compton's when the cops show up

38:40

and try and arrest this lady. So she throws

38:42

a cup of coffee in the CoP's face. People

38:45

just kind of fucking blew up all their pent up

38:47

rage. Tables are flying everywhere, cops

38:49

are getting pummeled with high heels and purses, the

38:52

windows are broken out, the fight

38:54

moves into the street, a cop car gets smashed

38:56

up, and at

38:58

the end of it, Compton's go on,

39:01

I'm just like smiling board. Yeah, I

39:03

know, it's great, it's great, you know, and

39:06

it's just like, yeah, I can imagine you've just been putting

39:08

up with a ship for so long. You know, there's

39:11

like purses at high heels and like, yeah,

39:13

starting it off with a cup of coffee. I'm the next

39:16

Ryan I go to. I will bring a company up a coffee

39:18

because I think that's the most amazing thing. A

39:20

donut. Just yeah, fuck you,

39:23

Oh my god. I think it was during

39:25

the altar globalization stuff. There's

39:27

these pictures of I think it's in Canada,

39:30

anarchists in black block with them donuts

39:33

on fishing polesh tangling

39:35

them in front of the cop That is so funny.

39:39

It was so funny. So

39:42

Compton's bans the trans community for good

39:44

after this, and so

39:47

no one went there anymore and it went

39:49

out of business. Hell m,

39:51

that's what you fucking get you assholes.

39:54

Wait, so I interrupted you. Unfortunately

39:57

I do that sometimes I pologize. But

40:00

you were talking about the car getting smash. Is that like

40:02

what happened after that? Yeah, they kind

40:04

of like the I don't have the like specifics about

40:07

how the riot, but were they like a like

40:10

I don't know, I don't know. Um,

40:12

I I found a bunch of I

40:15

don't know because I have a bad memory and I didn't

40:17

put it in the script. That is the ends. Well, I'm

40:20

going to believe that they drove the cops away,

40:22

so that yeah, that's my take. Yeah,

40:25

and I know that there was like, um, there's this whole other

40:27

part of this where this uh radical

40:30

queer group was also like picketing and stuff

40:32

at the place. I just it ended

40:35

up being like a level of complexity more than I was going

40:37

to include in the script. But and

40:39

all of this and the riot also it's spark change.

40:42

It's kind of like a it's funny, as I would say, mini

40:45

Stonewall, the riot was about the same size as stone Wall, as

40:47

I think maybe maybe it was smaller, but like it

40:49

had this like fairly major local impact

40:51

in that people knew that the queer

40:54

people fought back. Yeah, and

40:57

also more services and stuff started

41:00

appearing and being built and like not being

41:02

destroyed as part of trying to make

41:04

things better. Then one more. This

41:07

one's unfortunately a one sided

41:09

police riot. LA. The

41:11

next year, nineteen sixty seven,

41:13

the Black Cat Tavern, And

41:16

there's this new gay bar. It's doing this thing. It's

41:18

New Year's. As the year changes,

41:20

some gay people kissed each other. Just

41:23

terrible thing, be awful

41:26

gay kissing. Just don't just don't think

41:28

about that right now and smile. That would

41:30

be a terrible thing. Some gay people kissed

41:32

on fucking New Years. So undercover cops in the crowd

41:35

just started beating the shit out of everyone, beat

41:38

people unconscious, arrested people. Customers

41:41

fled to a nearby gay bar, where cops found

41:43

them and arrested them, being like, no, I

41:45

saw you two kiss I'm going to personally

41:48

track you through the streets. They

41:50

have nothing better to do than to go undercover

41:53

at a fucking New Year's party at a bar. Yeah,

41:56

Like, are you shitting me? Yeah,

41:58

they're all fucking clown I know.

42:01

I don't want to insult clowns. No, Yeah,

42:07

And two of the men who kissed on New year's

42:09

became registered sex offenders, and

42:11

the Supreme Court refused to hear their case. They

42:14

argued that they had the right to equal protection

42:16

under the law. The law did not agree

42:18

with them. In response,

42:22

this is the first group I found called Pride,

42:25

A group called Pride Personal Rights

42:27

in Defense and Education, which is

42:29

the most bullshit accurate the Personal Rights

42:31

and Defense or whatever. It's

42:33

Pride. A group called Pride. They

42:36

threw a protest and about two hundred

42:38

people showed up, and it was orderly because

42:41

there was it was way the fun contained by a very

42:43

militant lipd that Basically

42:45

they're like, oh my god, the homos are organizing

42:48

and like, and this is seen as one of

42:50

the first protests for gay rights. I mean there's other like small

42:53

pickets and stuff like that, you know, but this is

42:55

um yeah,

42:59

and organizational gay rights activists also

43:02

did a lot of stuff during this time. It goes a little bit uncredited

43:04

because it wasn't riots or

43:07

guess sort of dismissed as less radical because

43:09

it was less radical frankly, and I'm less interested

43:11

in it, but it's important. The Madachine Society,

43:14

for example, got the Mayor of New York to stop the policy

43:16

ofven trapping gay men for solicitation, and

43:18

that fucking matters, you know, it

43:20

really does. In April nineteen

43:22

sixty five, some folks from the Mach Society

43:25

led the first gay rights protest of the White House.

43:28

And I think this includes that guy Frank we were talking about

43:30

way at the beginning. Now I said, just like woven into everything

43:32

that isn't a riot. In nineteen sixty seven,

43:35

a man named Jack Nichols was one of the first Americans

43:37

to get on TV and to be basically like, yeah, I'm gay,

43:39

what do you want? And he did

43:42

this like he was a bit of a

43:44

like there's some contentious stuff about him that I don't remember

43:46

well enough to go into, but he did this even

43:49

though his dad was a fucking FBI agent who

43:51

said he would kill his own son if the

43:53

government ever found out that he was gay, Like

43:55

if the son was gay, he was like, I will

43:58

fucking murder you if you come out, and

44:00

that Jack the son, he did

44:02

it anyway, and he got fired from the hotel he

44:04

worked out the next day. So people are like they'll

44:07

talk about they'll be like, oh, the first game in on TV,

44:09

the big Landmark or whatever, not. This

44:12

man could have been murdered by his

44:14

father and was fired from his job.

44:17

So Jack goes on to found

44:19

Gay Magazine in nineteen sixty nine, the first

44:21

weekly gay newspaper in the US, and

44:25

as protests in the US in general are starting to heat

44:27

up, especially around civil rights in the Vietnam

44:30

War. Basically like, you start seeing

44:32

shit change about what people think is how

44:35

people should protest in things, and

44:38

you start getting the first regular recurring marches,

44:40

the kind of thing that later becomes the Pride marches.

44:42

In a way, people like to argue about

44:44

the exact lineage because everyone wants to fucking own

44:47

pride. Everyone wants to be like, no, it was us, No, it

44:49

was them, No, it was fucking all

44:51

of us. What do you fucking want? I'm like,

44:54

can't we all be happy that we're gay and alive and

44:56

be proud of all the gay dead people who came before us

44:58

as fucking literal battering rams.

45:00

Yeah, I mean, in fighting is always just

45:03

what the bad guys always want.

45:05

You're doing the work for them basically over

45:09

yeah, yeah, but the hateful meetings wat, you're

45:11

doing their work for them. Yep. So

45:14

there's criminal gays and respectable gays and gay people

45:16

of every gender and every type involved in all this shit and

45:19

these early gay marches, and

45:22

they're called Annual Reminders, which is kind

45:24

of morbid and beautiful. They were held

45:26

every July fourth from nineteen sixty five to

45:28

nineteen sixty nine in Philiate Independence

45:30

Hall, which is the building that the Declaration of Independence

45:33

and the Constitution came from. And

45:35

they were organized by the Matachean Society, the Daughters

45:37

of Bolitis, and the Janis Society, coming

45:39

together as echo the East Coast homophile

45:42

organizations. The only modern

45:44

group I can think of with as good of a naming convention

45:47

is the Journal Baden, which is named after

45:49

the medieval English sort of third sex transwomen

45:51

or gay men anyway. Interesting these

45:54

Annual Reminders, they're very serious affairs.

45:56

A dress code was enforced, jackets and ties

45:59

for the boys, dresses for the women. Gays

46:01

were supposed to be presentable and employable.

46:04

They didn't have huge churnouts because they're

46:06

boring. Forty people

46:09

or so came the last one, July fourth,

46:11

nineteen sixty nine. Two women broke ranks

46:13

from it and held hands and one of the

46:15

organizers was like, no, you can't do that

46:17

and tried to like separate the women holding hands. That

46:22

this is why I talked shit assimilation

46:24

of stuff. It's silly. Oh, it's stupid. It's

46:26

like you're really doing

46:29

the work of your oppressors. That's through all it is. It's

46:31

really backwards that you lose

46:33

the plot. That's what happens. Yeah,

46:36

it's totally And by

46:39

nineteen sixty nine, this

46:42

time for solemn annual reminders was

46:44

over. The time for gay liberation had

46:46

begun because of something that had happened one week

46:48

earlier, from July fourth, nineteen sixty

46:50

nine, a thing that people remember more

46:52

than solemn picketing. People remember

46:55

when people threw fucking molotovs at cops who

46:57

tried to arrest them for cross dressing and kissing other

46:59

boys or ever. People remember the

47:01

stonewall fucking riots, which we will

47:03

talk about next

47:06

week. Who don't

47:08

google anything, Yeah, or

47:11

talk to any other person. Yeah,

47:14

no spoilers. Yeah, but

47:17

that was good. I always learned so

47:19

much, like not to not to

47:21

show on any other podcasts. But I I'm

47:24

always so engaged when you're explaining

47:26

stuff because I don't

47:28

know, you just do it. Well. Maybe it's because it's a good

47:30

stuff too. Maybe I just don't want to remember the bad stuff,

47:33

so I'm like to get out. But but

47:35

I really think I

47:37

don't know. I it's funny to be recorded

47:39

as I learned stuff. But I'm glad. I again,

47:42

I'm representing the dummies out there. I'm you and

47:44

you're me, and it's okay. Yeah, it's okay.

47:47

And I was a dummy about all of this last

47:49

week. You know. That makes me feel

47:52

like a less dummy. Yeah. Yeah.

47:54

People are like, wow, how do you know everything? I'm like this every

47:56

week I read like two rats and

47:58

like a ton of articles. I

48:00

am excited to learn how we upgraded

48:03

from coffee to Molotov cocktails because

48:05

that's pretty oh yeah, pretty nice. That is

48:08

That is an escalation, I do confess,

48:10

Yeah, which is why if you ever

48:13

need to now, we already did that joke about

48:16

making molotovs h But if people

48:18

want to make connection

48:20

with your work, that

48:23

was that was you stumbled. But I

48:25

will accept this. I will I will pick you back up.

48:27

Thank you. Um uh

48:30

yeah. You can follow me on the internet. My Twitter

48:32

is Shiro hero six six six because

48:36

fill in the blank, and then my Instagram

48:38

is just Shiro Hero And yeah,

48:41

I made like a video essay recently that if

48:43

you want to watch it. That's what my brain is on. It's

48:46

called how can I be present when photographs

48:48

exist? And that's what I've been

48:50

struggling with for the last several

48:53

months. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah,

48:55

it's also present. It's especially important

48:57

because Shiro Hero. The

49:00

six to sixty six comes from Shiro's birth

49:02

year six six six, because

49:06

Shiro here is actually one of the original

49:08

daughters of Politis the Vampire.

49:11

I was supposed to be revealed in the last episode.

49:13

But thank you for I mean, it's okay, it's okay.

49:16

It's good that they know, you know, it's good that they know. Um.

49:18

But yes, that is correct, Margaret, thank you. Yeah.

49:22

And if you want to follow me on the

49:24

internet, you can do so at Magpie Killjoy

49:27

on Twitter, or you can follow

49:29

me on Instagram, where I talk

49:31

less about history and politics and more

49:33

about why I like my dog at

49:36

Margaret Killjoy. And I have a book

49:38

out called Escape from Insul Island, and

49:41

I have a bunch of bands. One of them is called

49:43

Feminis School Band Camp, Feminist

49:46

black Metal. And we will see you all

49:48

next week when we when you all

49:50

listen to our first or partner, or

49:53

you already listened half of it, see

49:55

y'all soon. Yeahys, aren't sick of me yet,

49:58

just wait. Cool

50:02

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50:04

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