“Remember it was transgender people who gave you this liberation.”
“We were all involved in different struggles, including myself and many other transgender people. But in these struggles, in the Civil Rights movement, in the war movement, in the women’s movement, we were still outcasts. The only reason they tolerated the transgender community in some of these movements was because we were gung-ho, we were front liners. We didn’t take no shit from nobody. We had nothing to lose. You all had rights. We had nothing to lose. I’ll be the first one to step on any organization, any politician’s toes if I have to, to get the rights for my community.”
Sylvia Rivera (July 2, 1951 – February 19, 2002) was an American gay liberation and transgender rights activist. She was a passionate advocate for queer unhoused youth in New York and created the Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR) group together with her friend, Marsh P. Johnson. They occupied a building where they provided housing and support to unhoused trans and gay youth. They struggled to find funding and were not supported by the wider gay rights community. Later in her life Sylvia managed the food pantry at the Metropolitan Community Church of New York. The love she found with her partner, Julia, and her commitment to helping people, did actually save her life when she was drinking herself to death. She had to fight for someone. She had to fight for something.
With a later version of STAR, Sylvia fought for trans inclusion in New York State non-discrimination laws. The assimilationist mainstream gay rights leadership regularly neglected transgender rights as too extreme and off-putting to straight politicians. They claimed that trans rights could be added later. Sylvia demanded that transgender people be included in the discussions and their rights be included from the start. As a multiply marginalized person, she knew that inclusion needs to be there at the start, otherwise it is not inclusion at all. Because drag queens were at the front of the protests when cops were bashing heads, they clearly should be included in the laws establishing gay rights.
Born in New York City, Sylvia had a Puerto Rican father who abandoned her family, and a Venezuelan mother who died when Sylvia was three. She was raised by her grandmother who was severely ashamed of Sylvia’s effeminate behavior. Because of this, Sylvia began living on the streets in 1962, just shy of her 11th birthday, and supported herself with sex work. She was taken in by the local community of drag queens, who gave her the name Sylvia. She used mothering language to describe her relationship to her community.
Sylvia described herself as a woman trapped in a male body. She also identified herself as a drag queen. She was most active at a time when the language describing herself was fluid, and she grew tired of making distinctions: “I’m tired of being labeled. I don’t even like the label transgender. I’m tired of living with labels. I just want to be who I am. I am Sylvia Rivera. Ray Rivera left home at the age of 10 to become Sylvia. And that’s who I am.”
Sylvia was all over the gay rights movement and you can find a lot about her online.
Here are some useful things I found:
Wikipedia, as always. (Send them money! I do.)
https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sylvia-rivera
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEXmJL9nadc
https://wams.nyhistory.org/growth-and-turmoil/growing-tensions/marsha-p-johnson/#
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Rivera
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