Inside Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Riviera’s Friendship
Lengthy uncredited, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera have been the vanguard of the fashionable transgender motion, preventing for the suitable to gender self-identify when social and prison persecution of homosexual folks was nonetheless frequent within the state of New York within the Nineteen Fifties and ’60s. Bars have been banned from promoting alcoholic drinks…
Lengthy uncredited, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera have been the vanguard of the fashionable transgender motion, preventing for the suitable to gender self-identify when social and prison persecution of homosexual folks was nonetheless frequent within the state of New York within the Nineteen Fifties and ’60s. Bars have been banned from promoting alcoholic drinks to homosexuals, and the act of cross-dressing might lead to being charged with “sexual deviancy.”
David France, director and producer of the documentary The Demise and Lifetime of Marsha P. Johnson, instructed the Los Angeles Blade that Johnson and Rivera helped begin at the moment’s dialog about gender nonconformity and civil rights, and have been the primary individuals who “conceptualized the concept the trans group was a definite group,” with its personal objectives and wishes. France believes Johnson and Rivera have been “real revolutionaries.”
Johnson and Rivera first bonded by their shared feeling of being outsiders
The fifth of seven kids in a non secular, working-class household, Johnson was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1945. Johnson stated she started carrying clothes round age 5, however stopped resulting from pressure from other children. After graduating highschool in 1963, Johnson moved to New York Metropolis with solely a bag of garments and $15. Usually homeless, she engaged in intercourse work and carried out as a drag artist to outlive. First going by the identify “Black Marsha,” she ultimately settled on Marsha P. Johnson, the “P” standing for “Pay it no thoughts,” the response given when she was questioned about her gender.
Rivera was born in New York Metropolis in 1951. Her mom died by suicide when Rivera was 3, and he or she was subsequently raised by her Venezuelan grandmother. She started experimenting with clothes and make-up at a younger age, which resulted in verbal and bodily abuse at residence and in school. Rivera left residence at age 11 and was quickly hustling round 42nd Road.
Johnson met Rivera in 1963. The pair fashioned a detailed bond as outsiders not solely to the social norms of the time, however throughout the burgeoning homosexual group itself. Johnson, a self-identified drag queen (the time period transgender was not generally utilized in Johnson’s lifetime), had by then develop into a distinguished determine within the downtown LGBTQ+ group, revered for her distinctive, ethereal, typically scavenged apparel and for her position as a gracious, caring “drag mom” serving to struggling and homeless youth. “I used to be nobody, no one, from Nowheresville, till I grew to become a drag queen,” Johnson said in a 1992 interview. “That’s what made me in New York, that’s what made me in New Jersey, that’s what made me on the earth.”
Marsha P. Johnson
Patsy Lynch / Alamy Inventory Picture
Collectively they created STAR which advocated for transgender rights
Rivera’s fiery demeanor and less complicated look contrasted Johnson’s, however the two grew to become fixtures of the Christopher Road homosexual group and have been distinguished figures within the Stonewall Inn riots of 1969, when neighborhood residents and patrons of the bar fought again towards a police raid. The general public rebellion served as a catalyst for the homosexual rights motion, with Johnson and Rivera on the front lines. A 12 months later, the primary homosexual pleasure parade was held in New York Metropolis, and Johnson joined Rivera in founding STAR: Road Transvestite Motion Revolutionaries, which advocated for the rights of younger transgender folks and provided meals and sanctuary to homeless youth. On the time, Johnson said her objective was “to see homosexual folks liberated and free and to have equal rights that different folks have in America.”
As a part of the Homosexual Activists Alliance, Rivera labored to go a homosexual rights invoice in New York Metropolis, even being arrested when she climbed the partitions of Metropolis Corridor in a costume and heels. However inside a couple of years, the GAA had dropped transgender issues from its agenda, in favor of extra outward assimilation. “When issues began getting extra mainstream, it was like, ‘We don’t want you anymore,’” Rivera instructed the Village Voice of how transgender people had become a subculture within a subculture. Galvanized to fight even harder, Rivera warned: “Hell hath no fury like a drag queen scorned.”
A visible presence at gay liberation marches and political action protests, Johnson, Rivera and the growing trans community were banned from participating in the 1973 gay pride parade by the gay and lesbian organizing committee, reportedly due to the notion that drag queens did not shine a favorable light on the movement. In defiance, Johnson and Rivera marched ahead of the parade.
The pair grew apart over time due to distance
Their friendship faded when Rivera moved to Tarrytown, New York in the mid 1970s and Johnson remained in New York City, where she continued to be a fixture of the gay activist community. Though she suffered mental breakdowns, arrests and continued homelessness, Johnson joined street activist groups such as ACT UP in the 1980s to raise awareness of the growing AIDS epidemic. During a 1992 interview, Johnson revealed she had been HIV-positive for two years. “They call me a legend in my own time, because there were so many queens gone that I’m one of the few queens left from the ‘70s and ’80s,” she said.
That same year, Johnson’s body was discovered floating in the Hudson River near the Christopher Street piers. Originally classified as suicide, Johnson’s cause of death was changed to drowning from undetermined causes. Though authorities reexamined the case in 2012, it remains open.
Returning to New York City soon after her friend’s death, Rivera took up residence on the Christopher Street Piers and continued her advocacy for homeless members of the gay community. In 1997, Rivera founded Transy House in Park Slope, Brooklyn to honor Johnson’s reminiscence, and in 2001 Rivera resurrected STAR as an lively political group, with the phrase Transvestite within the title being modified to the extra lately coined Transgender. Nonetheless angered by what she noticed because the minimization of drag queens and transgender folks by the mainstream assimilationist homosexual rights agenda, Rivera and STAR fought for the New York Transgender Rights Invoice.
Rivera died in 2002 resulting from issues associated to liver most cancers. In 2015, Rivera grew to become the primary transgender activist to have her picture seem within the Nationwide Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC., and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project continues her legacy to ensure “all persons are free to self-determine their gender identification and expression, no matter earnings or race, and with out going through harassment, discrimination or violence.”
