Stonewall

Hard to believe that there's anything, anything at all, which isn't intertwined with everything else. It seems that there's nothing which can be separated and labeled as completely independent.

I can't think of anything.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. Seriously.

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So yesterday I was in a class about human sexuality, and I was struck by how sanitized our history is in the teaching environment, and how ironic that really is. The professor mentioned Stonewall, referencing it as a riot which kick-started the gay rights movement. Then we went on.

I would be willing to bet that with the exception of maybe three of us in that room, nobody understood the significance of what led to Stonewall. Why did the patrons of the Stonewall Inn riot? In the bland textbook-version of things, gays were just fed up with being discriminated against in the work place, or teased by bullies. So few Americans realize, it seems, that people who weren't heteronormative - and couldn't  pass as such - were being beaten and raped by police officers, during nationally reoccurring and unprovoked raids on so-called 'gay bars'. Yes, raped. By police. Pray you weren't also an ethnic minority. Who do you go to, when the police rape you? The hospital? There, you may or may not be treated for your wounds, but you could count on being treated as a leper - contagious and disgusting.

That is our history; our ignorance of our own history is the real contagion.

This is all entwined.

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Fractals are enlightening.