Origins and History of Movement
Although the Stonewall riots in 1969 in New York are popularly remembered as the spark that produced a new movement, the origins predate this iconic event. Certainly, militant resistance to police bar-raids was nothing new — as early as 1725, customers fought off a police raid at a London homosexual/transgender molly house. Organised movements, particularly in Western Europe, have been active since the 19th century, producing publications, forming social groups and campaigning for social and legal reform. The movements of the period immediately preceding Gay lib, from the end of World War II to the late 1960s, are known collectively as the Homophile movement. The homophile movement has been described as "politically conservative", although their calls for social acceptance of same-sex love and transsexuality were seen as radical fringe views by the dominant culture of the time.
Read more about this topic: Gay Liberation
Famous quotes containing the words origins and, origins, history and/or movement:
“Lucretius
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smiling carves dreams, bright cells
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—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)
“The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“An actor rides in a bus or railroad train; he sees a movement and applies it to a new role. A woman in agony of spirit might turn her head just so; a man in deep humiliation probably would wring his hands in such a way. From straws like these, drawn from completely different sources, the fabric of a character may be built. The whole garment in which the actor hides himself is made of small externals of observation fitted to his conception of a role.”
—Eleanor Robson Belmont (1878–1979)