title: George Takei

text: Takei guest-starred in an episode of "" during that show's first season in 1966. He also appeared in two Jerry Lewis comedies, "The Big Mouth" (uncredited, 1967) and "Which Way to the Front?" (1970). Takei narrated the documentary "The Japanese Sword as the Soul of the Samurai" (1969).


title: George Takei

text: In 1965, producer Gene Roddenberry cast Takei as astrosciences physicist Sulu in the second pilot for the original television series. When the series was accepted by NBC, Takei continued in the role of Sulu, who was now the ship's helmsman.


title: George Takei

text: It was intended that Sulu's role be expanded in the second season, but Takei's role in "The Green Berets" (1968) as Captain Nim, a South Vietnamese Army officer alongside John Wayne's character, took him away from "Star Trek" filming and he only appeared in half the episodes of that season. Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov substituted for him in the other episodes. When Takei returned, the two men had to share a dressing room and a single episode script. Takei admitted in an interview that he initially felt threatened by Koenig's presence, but later grew to be friends with him as the image of the officers sharing the ship's helm panel side-by-side became iconic.


title: George Takei

text: Takei has since appeared in numerous television and film productions, reprising his role as Sulu in "" from 1973 to 1974, and in the first six "Star Trek" films, the last of which promoted his character to captain of his own starship. Meanwhile, he became a regular on the science fiction convention circuit throughout the world. He has also acted and provided voice acting for several science fiction computer games, including "Freelancer" and numerous "Star Trek" games. In 1996, in honor of the 30th anniversary of "Star Trek", he played Captain Sulu in an episode of "".


title: George Takei

text: Takei has spoken about personal difficulties with William Shatner. However, in an interview in the 2004 DVD set for the second season of "", Takei said of Shatner: "He's just a wonderful actor who created a singular character. No one could have done Kirk the way Bill did. His energy and his determination, that's Bill. And that's also Captain Kirk." He appeared alongside Shatner on the 2006 Comedy Central "Roast of William Shatner" in which the two mocked each other in good humor and embraced, Takei noting that he was "honored" to be there "despite our past tensions".


title: George Takei

text: Takei is also one of six actors (the others being Jonathan Frakes, Kate Mulgrew, Michael Dorn, Avery Brooks and Majel Barrett) to lend his voice to the 1997 video game "Star Trek: Captain's Chair", reprising his role of Captain Hikaru Sulu when the player visits the bridge of the original "Enterprise". In the summer of 2007, Takei played Sulu in the fan-made Internet based series "" episode "".


title: George Takei

text: Takei's autobiography, "To the Stars", was published in 1994. At one point, he had hoped to do a movie or telefilm based on chapters dealing with the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, of which he had personal experience.


title: George Takei

text: In January 2007, Takei began appearing on "Heroes", as Kaito Nakamura, a successful Japanese businessman and father to one of the main characters, time/space-travelling Hiro Nakamura, who also happens to be an obsessive fan of "Star Trek". In the first episode in which Takei appears, "Distractions", the license plate of the limo he arrives in is NCC-1701, another reference to the "Star Trek" series. He appeared in all four seasons of the show.


title: George Takei

text: Takei appeared on the first episode of "Secret Talents of the Stars", singing country music, but was not selected to proceed to the next stage. However the point became moot as the series was abruptly cancelled after the opening episode.


title: George Takei

text: In 2008 he appeared on the 8th season of the reality TV series "I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!" on the British ITV television network. He lived in the Australian bush for 21 days and nights, doing tasks along with fellow campers in order to gain better meals and survive eviction from the show. His politeness and calmness made him popular with the other campers. Out of 12 participants the British public voted him into 3rd place behind 2nd placed Martina Navratilova and winner Joe Swash.


title: George Takei

text: In 2009, Takei appeared in an episode of "" as the Neimoidian general, Lok Durd, the first time a leading actor from "Star Trek" worked in a "Star Wars" production. In April that year, he voiced a fictitious version of himself in the NASA animated short "Robot Astronomy Talk Show: Gravity and the Great Attractor", part of the web-series "IRrelevant Astronomy" produced by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Takei (and his husband Brad Altman) appeared in a documentary short titled "George & Brad in Bed" (2009) that profiled their relationship and was a guest on NPR's "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!".


title: George Takei

text: In 2010, Takei recorded a series of public service announcements for the Social Security Administration to help promote applying online for benefits.


title: George Takei

text: In 2011, he appeared with husband Brad Altman in "All Star Mr & Mrs", a show on ITV in Britain presented by Phillip Schofield and Fern Britton.


title: George Takei

text: Takei was one of the celebrities in the 12th season of "The Apprentice". He was fired in the third episode, which aired on March 4, 2012.


title: George Takei

text: Takei was featured with Martin Sheen and Jamie Lee Curtis in a performance of Dustin Lance Black's play "8"—a staged reenactment of the federal trial "Perry v. Brown" that overturned California's Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage—as William Tam. The production was held at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre and broadcast on YouTube to raise money for the American Foundation for Equal Rights.


title: George Takei

text: In 2012, Takei starred in the musical "Allegiance", which Takei described as his legacy project. The show is based on Takei's own experiences and research into the Japanese American internment of World War II and premiered at the Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park in San Diego, California. "Allegiance" debuted on Broadway on November 8, 2015, to mixed reviews. "The Guardian" said it was "unexceptional though often affecting"; "Deadline" called it "a triumph of a rare sort, shedding light in a dark corner of our history with uncommon generosity of spirit". "The New York Times" praised the "well-intentioned and polished" play for tackling a difficult subject while trying at the same time to entertain its audience, but said "Allegiance" "struggles to balance both ambitions, and doesn't always find an equilibrium". The Associated Press said "Allegiance" tries to tackle internment camps, discrimination and war, "but does so unsuccessfully in a bombastic and generic Broadway musical". "Variety" wrote, "In their sincere efforts to 'humanize' their complex historical material, the creatives have oversimplified and reduced it to generic themes." "The Hollywood Reporter" said "the powerful sentiments involved are too often flattened by the pedestrian lyrics and unmemorable melodies of Jay Kuo's score". "USA Today" called "Allegiance" "as corny as Kansas in August and as obvious as Lady Gaga on a red carpet. But darned if it won't get a grip on your heartstrings."


title: George Takei

text: In 2013, Takei was a guest judge in the TBS reality show "King of the Nerds", in which he is one of three judges of the Cosplay Competition.


title: George Takei

text: Beginning September 17, 2013, Takei hosted "Takei's Take", a web series reviewing consumer technology in a manner for viewers over 50 years in age. The series is produced by AARP.


title: George Takei

text: Takei made an appearance in issue no. 6 of "Kevin Keller" where the titular character cites Takei as one of his heroes. Upon reading about Kevin with his partner, Takei decides to travel to Riverdale and surprise Kevin. Takei also wrote the foreword for the second volume of the "Kevin Keller" comics.


title: George Takei

text: Takei appeared in the viral video for Bonnie McKee's song "American Girl" lip syncing the lyrics to her song.


title: George Takei

text: Starting in 2013, Takei became spokesperson for Rooms To Go, an American furniture retailer. He was seen in a series of television commercials where he used his famous "Oh Myyy!" tag line.


title: George Takei

text: In January 2014, Jennifer Kroot's documentary film about Takei, "To Be Takei", premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. He also participated in "Do I Sound Gay?", a documentary film by David Thorpe about stereotypes of gay men's speech patterns.


title: George Takei

text: In 2015, he produced a YouTube mini-series "It Takeis Two" featuring himself and Altman, described as a "parody-scripted reality series" that also includes Internet culture. The series ran for nine episodes.


title: George Takei

text: In 2019, Takei published "They Called Us Enemy", a 208-page graphic autobiography with a particular focus of his family's time in internment, co-written with Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott and illustrated by Harmony Becker. The novel received an American Book Award in 2020. He narrated the documentary "Who's on Top?" in 2020. In June 2021, dean of the United States Air Force Academy Brig. Gen. Linell Letendre announced that "They Called Us Enemy", which details both Takei's struggle with internment and understanding of American democracy, would be part of the Academy's new reading initiative for cadets. On February 23, 2022, George Takei was the NCLS Kickoff speaker at USAFA, elaborating on his book and how his past influences his future.


title: George Takei

text: In October 2005, Takei revealed in an issue of "Frontiers" magazine that he is gay and had been in a committed relationship with his partner, Brad Altman, for 18 years; the move was prompted by then California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's veto of same-sex marriage legislation. He said, "It's not really coming out, which suggests opening a door and stepping through. It's more like a long, long walk through what began as a narrow corridor that starts to widen." Nevertheless, Takei's sexuality had been an open secret among "Star Trek" fans since the 1970s, and Takei did not conceal his active membership in LGBT organizations, including Frontrunners, where he developed public friendships with openly gay couples such as Kevin and Don Norte. In an on-air telephone interview with Howard Stern in December 2005, Takei explained, "[We (gay people)] are masculine, we are feminine, we are caring, we are abusive. We are just like straight people, in terms of our outward appearance and our behavior. The only difference is that we are oriented to people of our own gender." Takei also described Altman as "a saint" for helping to take care of Takei's terminally ill mother.


title: George Takei

text: Takei currently serves as a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign "Coming Out Project". In 2006 he embarked on a nationwide "Equality Trek" speaking tour sharing his life as a gay Japanese American, his 18-year relationship with Altman, Frontrunners, and "Star Trek", encouraging others to share their own personal stories. In the wake of the 2007 controversy over former NBA player Tim Hardaway, who had stated "I hate gay people", Takei recorded a mock public service announcement which began as a serious message of tolerance, then turned the tables on Hardaway by proclaiming that while he may hate gay people, gay people love him and other "sweaty basketball players", and promising Hardaway that "I will have sex with you". This was aired on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" Takei also appeared on the Google float at San Francisco Pride 2007.


title: George Takei

text: In 2014, Takei raised $100,000 for an adult Eagle Scout to start a web series, titled "Camp Abercorn", documenting his experiences in the Boy Scouts of America after he was forced to leave, due to their anti-gay adult policy. Takei stated, "As a former Boy Scout myself, it pains me deeply that the BSA still boots out gay Scouts when they turn 18. This web series will help educate and inform, as well as entertain. That gets a big thumbs up from me. Let's make this happen."


title: George Takei

text: In 2015, after the announcement of the U.S. Supreme Court same-sex marriage decision, "Obergefell v. Hodges", Takei was critical of Clarence Thomas's dissent and called Thomas "a clown in blackface". After defending his comments for over a week, Takei apologized for his wording.


title: George Takei

text: Takei was criticized for his response on Twitter to the shooting of Steve Scalise in June 2017. Calling Scalise "bigoted" and "homophobic", Takei criticized his previous opposition to same-sex marriage and commented that Crystal Griner, the officer who saved Scalise, was a lesbian. Takei's response was widely criticized, with Jake Tapper calling it "unfathomable".


title: George Takei

text: On May 16, 2008, Takei announced that he and Altman would be getting married. They were the first same-sex couple to apply for a marriage license in West Hollywood. On June 17, shortly after Takei and Altman obtained their marriage license, they spread the news by holding a press conference outside the West Hollywood city auditorium. They were married on September 14, 2008, at the Democracy Forum of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, of which Takei is one of the founders and serves as a member of its board of trustees. Walter Koenig was his best man, and Nichelle Nichols, eschewing the title "matron of honor", was "best woman". Reverend William Briones of the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple of Los Angeles presided.


title: George Takei

text: Takei and Altman appeared in a celebrity edition of "The Newlywed Game" TV show, which the GSN cable network aired October 13, 2009. They were the first same-sex couple to be featured on the show. Takei and Altman won the game, winning $10,000 for their charity, the Japanese American National Museum.


title: George Takei

text: In February 2010, Takei and Altman became the second same-sex couple to appear on the British game show "All Star Mr & Mrs", losing to rugby star Phil Vickery and wife Kate.


title: George Takei

text: Takei was an alternate delegate from California to the 1972 Democratic National Convention. The following year he ran for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council, finishing second of five candidates in the special election and losing by 1,647 votes; the winner, David Cunningham Jr., received 42% of the votes cast and Takei received 33%. During the campaign, Takei's bid for the city council caused one local station to stop running the repeats of the original "Star Trek" series until after the election and KNBC-TV to substitute the premiere episode of the scheduled by the network with another in which his character did not appear, in attempts to avoid violating the FCC's equal-time rule. The other candidates in the race complained that Takei's distinctive and powerful voice alone, even without his image on television every week, created an unfair advantage.


title: George Takei

text: Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley later appointed Takei to the board of directors of the Southern California Rapid Transit District, making him part of the team that initiated and planned the Los Angeles subway system. Takei was called away from the set of "" in 1978 to cast the tie-breaking vote for the creation of the Los Angeles subway system. He served on the board from 1973 to 1984.


title: George Takei

text: In 1980, Takei began a campaign for California State Assemblyman (District 46) from the greater Los Angeles area. However, he chose to withdraw after his opponent challenged the airing of episodes of "Star Trek" on local television under the Federal Communications Commission's Fairness Doctrine "equal time" regulations, saying also that "this is the wrong time to interrupt my career as an actor and author." He also appeared as a sadistic Japanese POW camp commander in the World War II film "Return from the River Kwai" (1989).


title: George Takei

text: In November 2010, Takei released a PSA blasting Clint McCance, who was at the time the vice president of the school board for the Midland School District in southern Independence County, Arkansas. In the video, Takei repeatedly called McCance "a douchebag". Takei's video was made as a response to McCance making blatantly homophobic remarks, stating that he "enjoys the fact that [gay people] give each other AIDS and die". McCance went on to encourage gay people to commit suicide, and stated that he would disown his children if they were gay. McCance later resigned his seat on the Midland school board. Takei was praised for his response to McCance and garnered much media attention with the PSA.


title: George Takei

text: In May 2011, in response to a Tennessee State Legislature bill that prohibited school teachers or students from using any language that alludes to the existence of homosexuality, Takei released another PSA in which he offered up his name, suggesting that people could just substitute that for 'gay'. For example, they could support "Takei Marriage" or watch "Takei Pride Parades"; or even use slurs such as "That's so Takei".


title: George Takei

text: Takei marked the 70th anniversary of the internment of Americans of Japanese descent, including himself as a child, by asking his readers to contact the US Congress to block S. 1253, the National Defense Authorization Act, that "would authorize a similar sweeping authority, granted to the President, to order the detention – without charge or trial – of any person even suspected of being associated with a 'terrorist organization.


title: George Takei

text: On December 8, 2015, following Donald Trump's call to ban all Muslims from traveling to the United States, Takei appeared on MSNBC to denounce him: "It's ironic that he made that comment on December 7, Pearl Harbor Day – the very event that put us in those internment camps", Takei said. "[A congressional commission] found that it was three things that brought that about. One was racial hysteria, second was war hysteria and third was failure of political leadership. Donald Trump is the perfect example of that failure. ... What Donald Trump is talking about is something that's going to make his logo 'America disgraced again'." During the transition following Trump's election, Carl Higbie cited the internment of Japanese Americans as a historical precedent for a register of Muslims. Takei described Higbie's comments as "dangerous" and went on to say on "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" that "[r]egistration of any group of people, and certainly registration of Muslims, is a prelude to internment."


title: George Takei

text: On March 31, 2017, Takei announced his intent to challenge Devin Nunes, Republican incumbent House Representative for the 22nd District of California. A few hours later, he acknowledged that it had all been an April Fools' joke and instead announced his support for Jon Ossoff, who was running in Georgia's 6th congressional district special election, 2017. While Ossoff did not win the House seat, he did become Georgia's Senator in 2021.


title: George Takei

text: Takei formerly served as chair of the Council of Governors of East West Players, one of the pioneering Asian Pacific American theaters in the United States, until 2018. That same year, he played the parts of Sam Kimura and Ojii-San in East West Players' and the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center's joint production of "Allegiance". Throughout the press tour of the production, he spoke openly about parallels he saw between the WWII-setting of the musical and the current political climate of the United States.


title: George Takei

text: Takei and his husband Brad Altman own a New York City-based digital publication called Second Nexus which publishes "news with commentary from a progressive perspective".


title: George Takei

text: Takei is a Buddhist. His father practiced Zen Buddhism and his mother practiced Shin Buddhism. He kept a small shrine when the family was incarcerated at an internment camp during World War II. After the war, Takei attended Sunday school at Senshin Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles, California. Takei and husband Brad Altman were married in 2008 at a Buddhist ritual performed by the Reverend William Briones.


title: George Takei

text: Takei is an avid Anglophile. On his personal website he said: "Those who know me know that I am an inconvertible Anglophile – or more broadly, a Britanophile, which includes my affection for Scotland and Wales as well. I love things British. My car is British. My wardrobe, to a good extent, is British. I even love the food in London – I think British food has shaken its prevailing perception as indigestible and become quite wonderful. I try to get to Britain for holidays as often as I can. I love things British."


title: George Takei

text: Takei has also gained attention for his Facebook page where his daily posts of humorous pictures (many of which are related to science fiction, LGBT culture and political satire) have attracted over 9 million followers, some of whom are unfamiliar with Takei or "Star Trek". He has been lauded as "the funniest guy on Facebook". In September 2013, Takei used his Facebook page to defend Nina Davuluri, who was targeted by a backlash of racist and xenophobic comments after being named Miss America 2014. He later appeared in a joint ABC interview with Davuluri, in which she revealed that she is a Trekkie. Takei told her, "In "Star Trek" we have this creed: 'Infinite diversity in infinite combinations'. That's what Starfleet was all about so you're a part of that." Davuluri ended the interview by stating, "I have to say 'Live Long and Prosper at which point Takei offered her the Vulcan salute, which she returned. However, Takei also attracted criticism from some people with disabilities in 2014 for his posting of a meme on Facebook and Twitter which shows a wheelchair-using woman standing up to reach something from the top shelf in a store and is captioned "there has been a miracle in the alcohol isle" ["sic"]. Disabled people responded that people need not be paralyzed to need wheelchairs; Takei then removed the post and apologized on Facebook for his comments.


title: George Takei

text: In November 2017, former actor and model Scott R. Brunton told "The Hollywood Reporter" that Takei drugged and groped him in Takei's condo in 1981, when Brunton was 23 years old. Takei denied the allegation, writing on Twitter: "I have wracked my brain to ask if I remember Mr. Brunton, and I cannot say I do. ... Non-consensual acts are so antithetical to my values and my practices, the very idea that someone would accuse me of this is quite personally painful."


title: George Takei

text: On May 24, 2018, the "New York Observer"s Shane Snow reported that Brunton had "changed his story", describing his encounter with Takei as a "great party story" and confessing to "not remembering any touching" of his genitalia. Snow also consulted toxicologists, who suggested Brunton likely had postural hypotension rather than a drugged drink, and a former Senior Deputy District Attorney, who contended "there's nothing to prosecute" if it was the case that Takei stopped physical contact with Brunton after being denied consent. That same month, Takei posted Snow's article on his social media platforms while publicly forgiving Brunton for his actions, stating: "despite what he has put us through, I do not bear Mr. Brunton any ill will, and I wish him peace."


title: George Takei

text: In 1986, Takei was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a star at 6681 Hollywood Boulevard for his work in television.


title: George Takei

text: In 2004, the government of Japan conferred upon Takei the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, which represents the fourth highest of six classes associated with the award. This decoration was presented in acknowledgment of his contributions to US–Japanese relations.


title: George Takei

text: Upon learning of the decision to name the asteroid after him, he said, "I am now a heavenly body. I found out about it yesterday. ... I was blown away. It came out of the clear, blue sky—just like an asteroid."


title: George Takei

text: In May 2014, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation honored Takei with the GLAAD Vito Russo Award, which is presented to an openly LGBT media professional who has made a significant difference in promoting equality for the LGBT community.


title: George Takei

text: In May 2015, the Japanese American National Museum honored Takei with the Distinguished Medal of Honor for Lifetime Achievement and Public Service at the Japanese American National Museum's 2015 Gala Dinner in Los Angeles.


title: George Takei

text: On June 10, 2016, California State University, Los Angeles presented Takei with an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters for his contributions. In 2019, he was awarded the Inkpot Award.


title: George Takei

text: On April 1, 2020, it was announced that Takei would be the final torchbearer for the delayed 2021 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games. On April 2, he announced it was an April Fools' joke.


title: George Takei

text: On September 28, 2022, Takei was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of South Australia in recognition of his distinguished service to the community.


title: Sex industry

text: The sex industry (also called the sex trade) consists of businesses that either directly or indirectly provide sex-related products and services or adult entertainment. The industry includes activities involving direct provision of sex-related services, such as prostitution, strip clubs, host and hostess clubs and sex-related pastimes, such as pornography, sex-oriented men's magazines, sex movies, sex toys and fetish or BDSM paraphernalia. Sex channels for television and pre-paid sex movies for video on demand, are part of the sex industry, as are adult movie theaters, sex shops, peep shows, and strip clubs. The sex industry employs millions of people worldwide, mainly women. These range from the sex worker, also called adult service provider (ASP) or adult sex provider, who provides sexual services, to a multitude of support personnel.


title: Sex industry

text: The origins of the term "sex industry" are uncertain, but it appears to have arisen in the 1970s. A 1977 report by the Ontario Royal Commission on Violence in the Communications Industry (LaMarsh Commission) quoted author Peter McCabe as writing in "Argosy": "Ten years ago the sex industry did not exist. When people talked of commercial sex they meant "Playboy"." A 1976 article in "The New York Times" by columnist Russell Baker claimed that "[M]ost of the problems created by New York City's booming sex industry result from the city's reluctance to treat it as an industry", arguing why sex shops constituted an "industry", and should be treated as such by concentrating them in a single neighborhood, suggesting the "sex industry" was not yet commonly recognized as such.


title: Sex industry

text: Prostitution is a main component of the sex industry and may take place in a brothel, at a facility provided by the prostitute, at a client's hotel room, in a parked car, or on the street. Often this is arranged through a pimp or an escort agency. Prostitution involves a prostitute or sex worker providing commercial sexual services to a client. In some cases, the prostitute is at liberty to determine whether she or he will engage in a particular type of sexual activity, but forced prostitution and sexual slavery does exist in some places around the world. Reasons as to why an individual may enter into prostitution are varied. Socialist and radical feminists have cited poverty, oppressive capitalistic processes, and patriarchal societies that marginalizes people based on race and class as reasons for the continued presence of prostitution, as these aspects all work together to maintain oppression. Other reasons include displacement due to conflict and war. Institutionalized racism in the United States has been cited as a reason for the prevalence of sex workers who are Black or other people of color, as this leads to inequality and a lack of access to resources.


title: Sex industry

text: The legality of prostitution and associated activities (soliciting, brothels, procuring) varies by jurisdiction. Yet even where it is illegal, a thriving underground business usually exists because of high demand and the high income that can be made by pimps, brothel owners, escort agencies, and traffickers.


title: Sex industry

text: A brothel is a commercial establishment where people may engage in sexual activity with a prostitute, though for legal or cultural reasons they may describe themselves as massage parlors, bars, strip clubs or by some other description. Sex work in a brothel is considered safer than street prostitution.


title: Sex industry

text: Prostitution and the operation of brothels are legal in some countries, but illegal in others. For instance, there are legal brothels in Nevada, USA, due to the legalization of prostitution in some areas of the state. In countries where prostitution and brothels are legal, brothels may be subject to many and varied restrictions. Forced prostitution is usually illegal as is prostitution by or with minors, though the age may vary. Some countries prohibit particular sex acts. In some countries, brothels are subject to strict planning restrictions and in some cases are confined to designated red-light districts. Some countries prohibit or regulate how brothels advertise their services, or they may prohibit the sale or consumption of alcohol on the premises. In some countries where operating a brothel is legal, some brothel operators may choose to operate illegally.


title: Sex industry

text: Some men and women may travel away from their home to engage with local prostitutes, in a practice called sex tourism, and can have a variety of different socio-economic effects on the destinations. Male sex tourism can create or augment demand for sex services in the host countries, while female sex tourism tends not to use facilities that are specifically devoted to that purpose. Like tourism in general, sex tourism can make a significant contribution to local economies, especially in popular urban centers and places particularly known as sex tourism destinations. Sex tourism may arise as a result of stringent anti-prostitution laws in a tourist's home country, and although it may contribute to the destination economy, it can create social problems in the host country.


title: Sex industry

text: Businesses that offer prostitution services tend to cluster around military bases. The British naval port of Portsmouth had a flourishing local sex industry in the 19th century, and until the early 1990s there were large red light districts near American military bases in the Philippines. The Monto red-light district of Dublin, one of the largest in Europe, gained most of its custom from the British soldiers stationed in the city; indeed it collapsed after Irish independence was achieved and the soldiers left. The notorious Patpong entertainment district in Bangkok, and the city of Pattaya, Thailand, started as R&R locations for US troops serving in the Vietnam War in the early 1970s.


title: Sex industry

text: Prostitution is extremely prevalent in Asia, particularly in Southeast Asian nations such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand. Due to the longstanding economic instability of many of these nations, increasing numbers of women have been forced to turn towards the sex industry there for work. According to Lin Lim, an International Labour Organization official who directed a study on prostitution in Southeast Asia, "it is very likely that women who lose their jobs in manufacturing and other service sectors and whose families rely on their remittances may be driven to enter the sex sector." The sex industry of some destinations has consequently grown to become their dominant commercial sector. Conversely, the sex industry in China has been revived by the nation's recent economic success. The nation's liberal economic policies in the early 1980s have been credited with revitalizing the sex industry as rural communities rapidly expand into highly developed urban centers. A typical example of this can be found in the city of Dalian. The city was declared a special economic zone in 1984; by the twenty-first century what had been a small fishing community developed an advanced commercial sector and a correspondingly large sex industry. A large portion of China's sex workers are immigrants from other Asian nations, such as Korea and Japan. In spite of these circumstances, most Asian countries do not have strong policies regarding prostitution. Their governments are challenged in this regard because of the differing contexts that surround prostitution, from voluntary and financially beneficial labor to virtual slavery. The increasing economic prominence of China and Japan have made these issues a global concern. As a result of Southeast Asia's lax policies regarding prostitution, the region has also become a hotbed for sex tourism, with a significant portion of this industry's clients being North American or European.


title: Sex industry

text: Pornography is the portrayal of explicit sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction. A "pornographic model" poses for pornographic photographs. A "pornographic film actor" or "porn star" performs in pornographic films. In cases where only limited dramatic skills are involved, a performer in pornographic films may be called a "pornographic model". Pornography can be provided to the consumer in a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video, or video game. However, when sexual acts are performed for a live audience, by definition it is not pornography, as the term applies to the depiction of the act, rather than the act itself. Thus, portrayals such as sex shows and striptease are not classified as pornography.


title: Sex industry

text: The first home-PCs capable of network communication prompted the arrival of online services for adults in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The wide-open early days of the World Wide Web quickly snowballed into the dot-com boom, in-part fueled by an incredible global increase in the demand for and consumption of pornography and erotica. Around 2009, the U.S. porn industry's revenue of $10–15 billion a year was more than the combined revenue of professional sports and live music combined and roughly on par or above Hollywood's box office revenue.


title: Sex industry

text: There is mixed evidence on the social impact of pornography. Some insights come from meta-analyses synthesizing data from prior research. A 2015 meta-analysis indicated that pornography consumption is correlated with sexual aggression. However, it is unknown if pornography promotes, reduces or has no effect on sexual aggression at an individual level, because this correlation may not be causal. In fact, counter intuitively, pornography has been found to reduce sexual aggression at a societal level. A 2009 review stated that all scientific investigations of increases in the availability of pornography show no change or a decrease in the level of sexual offending. The question of whether pornography consumption affects consumers' happiness was addressed by a 2017 meta-analysis. It concluded that men who consume pornography are less satisfied with some areas of their lives, but pornography consumption does not make a significant difference in other areas, or to the lives of women. Additionally, a sample of Americans revealed in 2017 that those who had viewed pornography were more likely to experience romantic relationship breakup than their non-pornography watching counterparts, and that the effect was more pronounced with men.


title: Sex industry

text: Adult entertainment is entertainment intended to be viewed by adults only, and distinguished from family entertainment. The style of adult entertainment may be ribaldry or bawdry. Any entertainment that normally includes sexual content qualifies as adult entertainment, including sex channels for television and pre-paid sex films for "on demand", as well as adult movie theaters, sex shops, and strip clubs. It also includes sex-oriented men's magazines, sex movies, sex toys and fetish and BDSM paraphernalia. Sex workers can be prostitutes, call girls, pornographic film actors, pornographic models, sex show performers, erotic dancers, striptease dancers, bikini baristas, telephone sex operators, cybersex operators, erotic massagers, or amateur porn stars for online sex sessions and videos. Other specialists in the wider industry include courtesans and dominatrixes, some of whom may hope to earn more by specialising in these niche markets.


title: Sex industry

text: Other members of the sex industry include the hostesses that work in many bars in China. These hostesses are women who are hired by men to sit with them and provide them with company, which entails drinking and making conversation, while the men flirt and make sexual comments. A number of these hostesses also offer sexual services at offsite locations to the men who hire them. Although this is not done by every woman who works as a hostess in the bars of China, the hostesses are all generally labeled as "grey women". This means that while they are not seen as prostitutes, they are not considered suitable marriage partners for many men. Other woman who are included in the "grey women" category are the permanent mistresses or "second wives" that many Chinese businessmen have. The Chinese government makes efforts to keep secret the fact that many of these hostesses are also prostitutes and make up a significant part of the sex industry. They do not want China's image in the rest of the world to become sullied. Hostesses are given a significant degree of freedom to choose whether or not they would like to service a client sexually, although a refusal does sometimes spark conflict.


title: Sex industry

text: In addition, like any other industry, there are people who work in or service the sex industry as managers, film crews, photographers, website developers and webmasters, sales personnel, book and magazine writers and editors, etc. Some create business models, negotiate trade, make press releases, draw up contracts with other owners, buy and sell content, offer technical support, run servers, billing services, or payroll, organize trade shows and various events, do marketing and sales forecasts, provide human resources, or provide tax services and legal support. Usually, those in management or staff do not have direct dealings with sex workers, instead hiring photographers who have direct contact with the sex workers.


title: Sex industry

text: The sex industry is controversial, and there are people, organizations and governments that have objections to it, and, as a result, pornography, prostitution, striptease and other similar occupations are illegal in many countries. This is typically the case in countries with strong religious traditions.


title: Sex industry

text: The term anti-pornography movement is used to describe those who argue that pornography has a variety of harmful effects on society, such as encouragement of human trafficking, desensitization, pedophilia, dehumanization, exploitation, sexual dysfunction, and inability to maintain healthy sexual relationships.


title: Sex industry

text: Feminism is divided on the issue of the sex industry. In her essay "What is wrong with prostitution", Carole Pateman makes the point that it is literally the objectification of woman. They are making their bodies an object that men can buy for a price. She also makes the point that prostitution and many other sex industries reinforce the idea of male ownership of a woman. On the other hand, some other feminists see the sex industry as empowering women. They could be seen as simply jobs. The woman who is working them are breaking free from social norms that would previously keep their sexuality under wraps as immoral.


title: Sex industry

text: Based on these arguments, Sweden, Norway and Iceland have criminalized the buying of sexual services, while decriminalizing the selling of sexual services. (In other words, clients and pimps can be prosecuted for moneyed sexual transactions, but not prostitutes). Supporter of this model of legislation claim reduced illegal prostitution and human trafficking in these countries. Opponents dispute these claims. Women’s rights organisations and sex workers have opposed the Nordic model and attempts to criminalise those paying for sex, saying that it pushes the industry underground and makes work more dangerous for sex workers and increases violence against women, instead supporting the full decriminalisation or legalisation of sex work.


title: Sex industry

text: Some feminists, such as Gail Dines, are opposed to pornography, arguing that it is an industry which exploits women and which is complicit in violence against women, both in its production (where they charge that abuse and exploitation of women performing in pornography are rampant) and in its consumption (where they charge that pornography eroticizes the domination, humiliation, and coercion of women, and reinforces sexual and cultural attitudes that are complicit in rape and sexual harassment). They charge that pornography contributes to the male-centered objectification of women and thus to sexism. However, other feminists are opposed to censorship, and have argued against the introduction of anti-porn legislation in the United States—among them Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, Karen DeCrow, Wendy Kaminer and Jamaica Kincaid.


title: Sex industry

text: While the legality of adult sexual entertainment varies by country, the use of children in the sex industry is illegal nearly everywhere in the world.


title: Sex industry

text: Commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) is the "sexual abuse by the adult and remuneration in cash or kind to the child or a third person or persons. The child is treated as a sexual object and as a commercial object".


title: Sex industry

text: CSEC includes the prostitution of children, child pornography, child sex tourism and other forms of transactional sex where a child engages in sexual activities to have key needs fulfilled, such as food, shelter or access to education. It includes forms of transactional sex where the sexual abuse of children is not stopped or reported by household members, due to benefits derived by the household from the perpetrator. CSEC is prevalent in Asia and parts of Latin America.


title: Sex industry

text: Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil and Mexico have been identified as the primary countries where the commercial sexual exploitation of children takes place. Certain places around the world are recognized for child sex tourism.


title: Sex industry

text: Castes are largely hereditary social classes often emerging around certain professions. Lower castes are associated with professions considered "unclean", which has often included prostitution. In pre-modern Korea, women from the lower caste Cheonmin, known as Kisaeng, were trained to provide entertainment, conversation, and sexual services to men of the upper class. In South Asia, castes whose females are involved in prostitution by tradition, sometimes called "Intergenerational prostitution", include the Bedias, the Perna caste, the Banchhada, the Nat caste and, in Nepal, the Badi people.


title: Sex industry

text: Some researchers have claimed that sex workers can benefit from their profession in terms of immigration status. In her essay "Selling Sex for Visas: Sex Tourism as a Stepping-Stone to International Migration" anthropologist Denise Brennan cited an example of prostitutes in the Dominican Republic resort town of Sosúa, where some female prostitutes marry their customers in order to immigrate to other countries and seek a better life. The customers are, however, the ones that hold the power in this situation as they can withhold or revoke the sex worker's visa, either denying them the ability to immigrate or forcing them to return to their country of origin. Sex workers are also at risk of judgement from family members and relatives for having been associated with the sex tourism industry. It also must be noted that migrant sex work happens due to globalization. Globalization has produced growth both in sex tourism and in the migration of women to places where the sex industry thrives.


title: Sex industry

text: Dolf Zillmann asserts that extensive viewing of pornographic material produces many sociological effects which he characterizes as unfavorable, including a decreased respect for long-term, monogamous relationships, and an attenuated desire for procreation. He claims that pornography can "potentially undermine the traditional values that favor marriage, family, and children" and that it depicts sexuality in a way which is not connected to "emotional attachment, of kindness, of caring, and especially not of continuance of the relationship, as such continuance would translate into responsibilities".


title: Sex industry

text: Additionally, some researchers claim that pornography causes unequivocal harm to society by increasing rates of sexual assault, a line of research which has been critiqued in "The effects of Pornography: An International Perspective" on external validity grounds, while others claim there is a correlation between pornography and a decrease of sex crimes.


title: Sex industry

text: Some customers see sex workers from other countries as exotic commodities that can be fetishized or exploited. Many producers and proponents of pornography featuring gay actors claim that this work is liberating and offers them a voice in popular media while critics view it as a degradation of the eroticization of inequality and that advocates for this new line of cinema are only creating a new barrier for homosexuals to contend with.


title: Stonewall riots

text: The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, or simply Stonewall) were a series of spontaneous protests by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Patrons of the Stonewall, other Village lesbian and gay bars, and neighborhood street people fought back when the police became violent. The riots are widely considered the watershed event that transformed the gay liberation movement and the twentieth-century fight for LGBT rights in the United States.


title: Stonewall riots

text: As was common for American gay bars at the time, the Stonewall Inn was owned by the Mafia. While police raids on gay bars were routine in the 1960s, officers quickly lost control of the situation at the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969. Tensions between New York City Police and gay residents of Greenwich Village erupted into more protests the next evening and again several nights later. Within weeks, Village residents organized into activist groups demanding the right to live openly regarding their sexual orientation, and without fear of being arrested. The new activist organizations concentrated on confrontational tactics, and within months three newspapers were established to promote rights for gay men and lesbians.


title: Stonewall riots

text: A year after the uprising, to mark the anniversary on June 28, 1970, the first gay pride marches took place in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. Within a few years, gay rights organizations were founded across the US and the world. Today, LGBT Pride events are held annually in June in honor of the Stonewall riots.


title: Stonewall riots

text: The Stonewall National Monument was established at the site in 2016. An estimated 5 million participants commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, and on June 6, 2019, New York City Police Commissioner James P. O'Neill rendered a formal apology for the actions of officers at Stonewall in 1969.


title: Stonewall riots

text: Very few establishments welcomed gay people in the 1950s and 1960s; those that did were often run by organized crime groups, due to the illegal nature of gay bars at the time, and bar owners and managers were rarely gay. The homophobic legal system of the 1950s and 1960s prompted early homosexual groups in the US to prove gay people could be assimilated into society, and such early groups favored non-confrontational education for homosexuals and heterosexuals alike. However, the last years of the 1960s saw activity among many social/political movements, including the civil rights movement, the counterculture of the 1960s and the anti-Vietnam War movement. Such influences served as catalysts for the Stonewall riots.


title: Stonewall riots

text: Following the social upheaval of World War II, many people in the United States felt a fervent desire to "restore the prewar social order and hold off the forces of change", according to historian Barry Adam. Spurred by the national emphasis on anti-communism, Senator Joseph McCarthy conducted hearings searching for communists in the US government, the US Army, and other government-funded agencies and institutions, leading to a national paranoia. Anarchists, communists, and other people deemed un-American and subversive were considered security risks. Gay men and lesbians were included in this list by the US State Department on the theory that they were susceptible to blackmail. In 1950, a Senate investigation chaired by Clyde R. Hoey noted in a report, "It is generally believed that those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of normal persons", and said all of the government's intelligence agencies "are in complete agreement that sex perverts in Government constitute security risks". Between 1947 and 1950, 1,700 federal job applications were denied, 4,380 people were discharged from the military, and 420 were fired from their government jobs for being suspected homosexuals.


title: Stonewall riots

text: Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and police departments kept lists of known homosexuals and their favored establishments and friends; the US Post Office kept track of addresses where material pertaining to homosexuality was mailed. State and local governments followed suit: bars catering to gay men and lesbians were shut down and their customers were arrested and exposed in newspapers. Cities performed "sweeps" to rid neighborhoods, parks, bars, and beaches of gay people. They outlawed the wearing of opposite gender clothes and universities expelled instructors suspected of being homosexual.


title: Stonewall riots

text: In 1952, the American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality in the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual" ("DSM") as a mental disorder. A large-scale study of homosexuality in 1962 was used to justify inclusion of the disorder as a supposed pathological hidden fear of the opposite sex caused by traumatic parent–child relationships. This view was widely influential in the medical profession. In 1956, however, the psychologist Evelyn Hooker performed a study that compared the happiness and well-adjusted nature of self-identified homosexual men with heterosexual men and found no difference. Her study stunned the medical community and made her a hero to many gay men and lesbians, but homosexuality remained in the "DSM" until 1974.


title: Stonewall riots

text: In response to this trend, two organizations formed independently of each other to advance the cause of gay men and lesbians and provide social opportunities where they could socialize without fear of being arrested. Los Angeles area homosexuals created the Mattachine Society in 1950, in the home of communist activist Harry Hay. Their objectives were to unify homosexuals, educate them, provide leadership, and assist "sexual deviants" with legal troubles. Facing enormous opposition to their radical approach, in 1953 the Mattachine shifted their focus to assimilation and respectability. They reasoned that they would change more minds about homosexuality by proving that gay men and lesbians were normal people, no different from heterosexuals. Soon after, several women in San Francisco met in their living rooms to form the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) for lesbians. Although the eight women who created the DOB initially came together to be able to have a safe place to dance, as the DOB grew they developed similar goals to the Mattachine and urged their members to assimilate into general society.


title: Stonewall riots

text: One of the first challenges to government repression came in 1953. An organization named ONE, Inc. published a magazine called "ONE". The US Postal Service refused to mail its August issue, which concerned homosexual people in heterosexual marriages, on the grounds that the material was obscene despite it being covered in brown paper wrapping. The case eventually went to the Supreme Court, which in 1958 ruled that ONE, Inc. could mail its materials through the Postal Service.


title: Stonewall riots

text: Homophile organizations—as homosexual groups self-identified in this era—grew in number and spread to the East Coast. Gradually, members of these organizations grew bolder. Frank Kameny founded the Mattachine of Washington, D.C. He had been fired from the US Army Map Service for being a homosexual and sued unsuccessfully to be reinstated. Kameny wrote that homosexuals were no different from heterosexuals, often aiming his efforts at mental health professionals, some of whom attended Mattachine and DOB meetings telling members they were abnormal.


title: Stonewall riots

text: In 1965, news on Cuban prison work camps for homosexuals inspired Mattachine New York and D.C. to organize protests at the United Nations and the White House. Similar demonstrations were then held also at other government buildings. The purpose was to protest the treatment of gay people in Cuba and US employment discrimination. These pickets shocked many gay people and upset some of the leadership of Mattachine and the DOB. At the same time, demonstrations in the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War all grew in prominence, frequency, and severity throughout the 1960s, as did their confrontations with police forces.


title: Stonewall riots

text: On the outer fringes of the few small gay communities were people who challenged gender expectations. They were effeminate men and masculine women, or people who dressed and lived in contrast to their sex assigned at birth, either part or full-time. Contemporaneous nomenclature classified them as transvestites and they were the most visible representatives of sexual minorities. They believed the carefully crafted image portrayed by the Mattachine Society and DOB that asserted homosexuals were respectable, normal people. The Mattachine and DOB considered the trials of being arrested for wearing clothing of the opposite gender as a parallel to the struggles of homophile organizations: similar but distinctly separate.


title: Stonewall riots

text: Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people staged a small riot at the Cooper Do-nuts cafe in Los Angeles in 1959 in response to police harassment. In a larger 1966 event in San Francisco, drag queens, hustlers, and trans women were sitting in Compton's Cafeteria when the police arrived to arrest people appearing to be physically male who were dressed as women. A riot ensued, with the cafeteria patrons slinging cups, plates, and saucers and breaking the plexiglass windows in the front of the restaurant and returning several days later to smash the windows again after they were replaced. Professor Susan Stryker classifies the Compton's Cafeteria riot as an "act of anti-transgender discrimination, rather than an act of discrimination against sexual orientation" and connects the uprising to the issues of gender, race, and class that were being downplayed by homophile organizations. It marked the beginning of transgender activism in San Francisco.


title: Stonewall riots

text: The Manhattan neighborhoods of Greenwich Village and Harlem were home to sizable gay and lesbian populations after World War I, when people who had served in the military took advantage of the opportunity to settle in larger cities. The enclaves of gay men and lesbians, described by a newspaper story as "short-haired women and long-haired men", developed a distinct subculture through the following two decades. Prohibition inadvertently benefited gay establishments, as drinking alcohol was pushed underground along with other behaviors considered immoral. New York City passed laws against homosexuality in public and private businesses, but because alcohol was in high demand, speakeasies and impromptu drinking establishments were so numerous and temporary that authorities were unable to police them all. However, police raids continued, resulting in the closure of iconic establishments such as Eve's Hangout in 1926.


title: Stonewall riots

text: The social repression of the 1950s resulted in a cultural revolution in Greenwich Village. A cohort of poets, later named the Beat poets, wrote about the evils of the social organization at the time, glorifying anarchy, drugs, and hedonistic pleasures over unquestioning social compliance, consumerism, and closed-mindedness. Of them, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs—both Greenwich Village residents—also wrote bluntly and honestly about homosexuality. Their writings attracted sympathetic liberal-minded people, as well as homosexuals looking for a community.


title: Stonewall riots

text: By the early 1960s, a campaign to rid New York City of gay bars was in full effect by order of Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr., who was concerned about the image of the city in preparation for the 1964 World's Fair. The city revoked the liquor licenses of the bars and undercover police officers worked to entrap as many homosexual men as possible. Entrapment usually consisted of an undercover officer who found a man in a bar or public park, engaged him in conversation; if the conversation headed toward the possibility that they might leave together—or the officer bought the man a drink—he was arrested for solicitation. One story in the "New York Post" described an arrest in a gym locker room, where the officer grabbed his crotch, moaning and a man who asked him if he was all right was arrested. Few lawyers would defend cases as undesirable as these and some of those lawyers kicked back their fees to the arresting officer.


title: Stonewall riots

text: The Mattachine Society succeeded in getting newly elected mayor John Lindsay to end the campaign of police entrapment in New York City. They had a more difficult time with the New York State Liquor Authority (SLA). While no laws prohibited serving homosexuals, courts allowed the SLA discretion in approving and revoking liquor licenses for businesses that might become "disorderly". Despite the high population of gay men and lesbians who called Greenwich Village home, very few places existed, other than bars, where they were able to congregate openly without being harassed or arrested. In 1966 the New York Mattachine held a "sip-in" at a Greenwich Village bar named Julius, which was frequented by gay men, to illustrate the discrimination homosexuals faced.


title: Stonewall riots

text: None of the bars frequented by gay men and lesbians were owned by gay people. Almost all of them were owned and controlled by organized crime, who treated the regulars poorly, watered down the liquor, and overcharged for drinks. However, they also paid off police to prevent frequent raids.


title: Stonewall riots

text: The Stonewall Inn, located at 51 and 53 Christopher Street, along with several other establishments in the city, was owned by the Genovese crime family. In 1966, three members of the Mafia invested $3,500 to turn the Stonewall Inn into a gay bar, after it had been a restaurant and a nightclub for heterosexuals. Once a week a police officer would collect envelopes of cash as a payoff known as a gayola, as the Stonewall Inn had no liquor license. It had no running water behind the bar—dirty glasses were run through tubs of water and immediately reused. There were no fire exits, and the toilets overran consistently. Though the bar was not used for prostitution, drug sales and other black market activities took place. It was the only bar for gay men in New York City where dancing was allowed; dancing was its main draw since its re-opening as a gay club.


title: Stonewall riots

text: Visitors to the Stonewall Inn in 1969 were greeted by a bouncer who inspected them through a peephole in the door. The legal drinking age was 18 and to avoid unwittingly letting in undercover police (who were called "Lily Law", "Alice Blue Gown", or "Betty Badge"), visitors would have to be known by the doorman, or look gay. Patrons were required to sign their names in a book to prove that the bar was a private "bottle club", but they rarely signed their real names. There were two dance floors in the Stonewall. The interior was painted black, making it very dark inside, with pulsing gel lights or black lights. If police were spotted, regular white lights were turned on, signaling that everyone should stop dancing or touching. In the rear of the bar was a smaller room frequented by "queens"; it was one of two bars where effeminate men who wore makeup and teased their hair (though dressed in men's clothing) could go. Only a few people in full drag were allowed in by the bouncers. The customers were "98 percent male" but a few lesbians sometimes came to the bar. Younger homeless adolescent males, who slept in nearby Christopher Park, would often try to get in so customers would buy them drinks. The age of the clientele ranged between the upper teens and early thirties and the racial mix was distributed among mainly white, with Black, and Hispanic patrons. Because of its mix of people, its location, and the attraction of dancing, the Stonewall Inn was known by many as ""the" gay bar in the city".


title: Stonewall riots

text: Police raids on gay bars were frequent, occurring on average once a month for each bar. Many bars kept extra liquor in a secret panel behind the bar, or in a car down the block, to facilitate resuming business as quickly as possible if alcohol was seized. Bar management usually knew about raids beforehand due to police tip-offs, and raids occurred early enough in the evening that business could commence after the police had finished. During a typical raid, the lights were turned on and customers were lined up and their identification cards checked. Those without identification or dressed in full drag were arrested; others were allowed to leave. Some of the men, including those in drag, used their draft cards as identification. Women were required to wear three pieces of feminine clothing and would be arrested if found not wearing them. Typically, employees and management of the bars were also arrested. The period immediately before June 28, 1969, was marked by frequent raids of local bars—including a raid at the Stonewall Inn on the Tuesday before the riots—and the closing of the Checkerboard, the Tele-Star, and two other clubs in Greenwich Village.


title: Stonewall riots

text: Historian David Carter presents information indicating that the Mafia owners of the Stonewall and the manager were blackmailing wealthier customers, particularly those who worked in the Financial District. They appeared to be making more money from extortion than they were from liquor sales in the bar. Carter deduces that when the police were unable to receive kickbacks from blackmail and the theft of negotiable bonds (facilitated by pressuring gay Wall Street customers), they decided to close the Stonewall Inn permanently.


title: Stonewall riots

text: Two undercover policewomen and two undercover policemen entered the bar early that evening to gather visual evidence, as the Public Morals Squad waited outside for the signal. Once ready, the undercover officers called for backup from the Sixth Precinct using the bar's pay telephone. Stonewall employees do not recall being tipped off that a raid was to occur that night, as was the custom. According to Duberman (p. 194), there was a rumor that one might happen, but since it was much later than raids generally took place, Stonewall management thought the tip was inaccurate.


title: Stonewall riots

text: At 1:20 a.m. on Saturday, June 28, 1969, four plainclothes policemen in dark suits, two patrol officers in uniform, Detective Charles Smythe, and Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine arrived at the Stonewall Inn's double doors and announced "Police! We're taking the place!" The music was turned off and the main lights were turned on. Approximately 205 people were in the bar that night. Patrons who had never experienced a police raid were confused. A few who realized what was happening began to run for doors and windows in the bathrooms, but police barred the doors. Michael Fader remembered,


title: Stonewall riots

text: Things happened so fast you kind of got caught not knowing. All of a sudden there were police there and we were told to all get in lines and to have our identification ready to be led out of the bar.


title: Stonewall riots

text: The raid did not go as planned. Standard procedure was to line up the patrons, check their identification and have female police officers take customers dressed as women to the bathroom to verify their sex, upon which any people appearing to be physically male and dressed as women would be arrested. Those dressed as women that night refused to go with the officers. Men in line began to refuse to produce their identification. The police decided to take everyone present to the police station, after separating those suspected of cross-dressing in a room in the back of the bar. Both patrons and police recalled that a sense of discomfort spread very quickly, spurred by police who began to assault some of the lesbians by "feeling some of them up inappropriately" while frisking them.


title: Stonewall riots

text: The police were to transport the bar's alcohol in patrol wagons. Twenty-eight cases of beer and nineteen bottles of hard liquor were seized, but the patrol wagons had not yet arrived, so patrons were required to wait in line for about 15 minutes. Those who were not arrested were released from the front door, but they did not leave quickly as usual. Instead, they stopped outside and a crowd began to grow and watch. Within minutes, between 100 and 150 people had congregated outside, some after they were released from inside the Stonewall and some after noticing the police cars and the crowd. Although the police forcefully pushed or kicked some patrons out of the bar, some customers released by the police performed for the crowd by posing and saluting the police in an exaggerated fashion. The crowd's applause encouraged them further.


title: Stonewall riots

text: When the first patrol wagon arrived, Inspector Pine recalled that the crowd—most of whom were homosexual—had grown to at least ten times the number of people who were arrested and they all became very quiet. Confusion over radio communication delayed the arrival of a second wagon. The police began escorting Mafia members into the first wagon, to the cheers of the bystanders. Next, regular employees were loaded into the wagon. A bystander shouted, "Gay power!", someone began singing "We Shall Overcome" and the crowd reacted with amusement and general good humor mixed with "growing and intensive hostility". An officer shoved a person in drag, who responded by hitting him on the head with her purse as the crowd began to boo. Author Edmund White, who had been passing by, recalled, "Everyone's restless, angry, and high-spirited. No one has a slogan, no one even has an attitude, but something's brewing." Pennies, then beer bottles, were thrown at the wagon as a rumor spread through the crowd that patrons still inside the bar were being beaten.


title: Stonewall riots

text: A scuffle broke out when a woman in handcuffs was escorted from the door of the bar to the waiting police wagon several times. She escaped repeatedly and fought with four of the police, swearing and shouting, for about ten minutes. Described as "a typical New York butch" and "a dyke–stone butch", she had been hit on the head by an officer with a baton for, as one witness claimed, complaining that her handcuffs were too tight. Bystanders recalled that the woman, whose identity remains unknown (Stormé DeLarverie has been identified by some, including herself, as the woman, but accounts vary), sparked the crowd to fight when she looked at bystanders and shouted, "Why don't you guys do something?" After an officer picked her up and heaved her into the back of the wagon, the crowd became a mob and became violent.


title: Stonewall riots

text: The police tried to restrain some of the crowd, knocking a few people down, which incited bystanders even more. Some of those handcuffed in the wagon escaped when police left them unattended (deliberately, according to some witnesses). As the crowd tried to overturn the police wagon, two police cars and the wagon—with a few slashed tires—left immediately, with Inspector Pine urging them to return as soon as possible. The commotion attracted more people who learned what was happening. Someone in the crowd declared that the bar had been raided because "they didn't pay off the cops", to which someone else yelled "Let's pay them off!" Coins sailed through the air towards the police as the crowd shouted "Pigs!" and "Faggot cops!" Beer cans were thrown and the police lashed out, dispersing some of the crowd who found a construction site nearby with stacks of bricks. The police, outnumbered by between 500 and 600 people, grabbed several people, including folk singer (and mentor of Bob Dylan) Dave Van Ronk—who had been attracted to the revolt from a bar two doors away from the Stonewall. Though Van Ronk was not gay, he had experienced police violence when he participated in antiwar demonstrations: "As far as I was concerned, anybody who'd stand against the cops was all right with me and that's why I stayed in... Every time you turned around the cops were pulling some outrage or another." Van Ronk was one of thirteen arrested that night. Ten police officers—including two policewomen—barricaded themselves, Van Ronk, Howard Smith (a column writer for "The Village Voice"), and several handcuffed detainees inside the Stonewall Inn for their own safety.


title: Stonewall riots

text: Multiple accounts of the riot assert that there was no pre-existing organization or apparent cause for the demonstration; what ensued was spontaneous. Michael Fader explained:


title: Stonewall riots

text: We all had a collective feeling like we'd had enough of this kind of shit. It wasn't anything tangible anybody said to anyone else, it was just kind of like everything over the years had come to a head on that one particular night in the one particular place and it was not an organized demonstration... Everyone in the crowd felt that we were never going to go back. It was like the last straw. It was time to reclaim something that had always been taken from us... All kinds of people, all different reasons, but mostly it was total outrage, anger, sorrow, everything combined, and everything just kind of ran its course. It was the police who were doing most of the destruction. We were really trying to get back in and break free. And we felt that we had freedom at last, or freedom to at least show that we demanded freedom. We weren't going to be walking meekly in the night and letting them shove us around—it's like standing your ground for the first time and in a really strong way and that's what caught the police by surprise. There was something in the air, freedom a long time overdue and we're going to fight for it. It took different forms, but the bottom line was, we weren't going to go away. And we didn't.


title: Stonewall riots

text: The only known photograph taken during the first night of the riots, taken by freelance photographer Joseph Ambrosini, shows the homeless gay youth who slept in nearby Christopher Park, scuffling with police. Jackie Hormona and Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt are on the far left.


title: Stonewall riots

text: The Mattachine Society newsletter a month later offered its explanation of why the riots occurred: "It catered largely to a group of people who are not welcome in, or cannot afford, other places of homosexual social gathering... The Stonewall became home to these kids. When it was raided, they fought for it. That and the fact that they had nothing to lose other than the most tolerant and broadminded gay place in town, explains why."


title: Stonewall riots

text: Garbage cans, garbage, bottles, rocks, and bricks were hurled at the building, breaking the windows. Witnesses attest that "flame queens", hustlers and gay "street kids"—the most outcast people in the gay community—were responsible for the first volley of projectiles, as well as the uprooting of a parking meter used as a battering ram on the doors of the Stonewall Inn.


title: Stonewall riots

text: The mob lit garbage on fire and stuffed it through the broken windows as the police grabbed a fire hose. Because it had no water pressure, the hose was ineffective in dispersing the crowd and seemed only to encourage them. Marsha P. Johnson later said that it was the police that had started the fire in the bar. When demonstrators broke through the windows—which had been covered by plywood by the bar owners to deter the police from raiding the bar—the police inside unholstered their pistols. The doors flew open and officers pointed their weapons at the angry crowd, threatening to shoot. Howard Smith, in the bar with the police, took a wrench from the bar and stuffed it in his pants, unsure if he might have to use it against the mob or the police. He watched someone squirt lighter fluid into the bar; as it was lit and the police took aim, sirens were heard and fire trucks arrived. The onslaught had lasted 45 minutes.


title: Stonewall riots

text: When the violence broke out, the women and transmasculine people being held down the street at The Women's House of Detention joined in by chanting, setting fire to their belongings and tossing them into the street below. The historian Hugh Ryan says, "When I would talk to people about Stonewall, they would tell me, that night on Stonewall, we looked to the prison because we saw the women rioting and chanting, “Gay rights, gay rights, gay rights."


title: Stonewall riots

text: The Tactical Patrol Force (TPF) of the New York City Police Department arrived to free the police trapped inside the Stonewall. One officer's eye was cut and a few others were bruised from being struck by flying debris. Bob Kohler, who was walking his dog by the Stonewall that night, saw the TPF arrive: "I had been in enough riots to know the fun was over... The cops were totally humiliated. This never, ever happened. They were angrier than I guess they had ever been, because everybody else had rioted... but the fairies were not supposed to riot... no group had ever forced cops to retreat before, so the anger was just enormous. I mean, they wanted to kill." With larger numbers, police detained anyone they could and put them in patrol wagons to go to jail, though Inspector Pine recalled, "Fights erupted with the transvestites, who wouldn't go into the patrol wagon." His recollection was corroborated by another witness across the street who said, "All I could see about who was fighting was that it was transvestites and they were fighting furiously."


title: Stonewall riots

text: The TPF formed a phalanx and attempted to clear the streets by marching slowly and pushing the crowd back. The mob openly mocked the police. The crowd cheered, started impromptu kick lines and sang to the tune of "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay": "We are the Stonewall girls/ We wear our hair in curls/ We don't wear underwear/ We show our pubic hair." Lucian Truscott reported in "The Village Voice": "A stagnant situation there brought on some gay tomfoolery in the form of a chorus line facing the line of helmeted and club-carrying cops. Just as the line got into a full kick routine, the TPF advanced again and cleared the crowd of screaming gay power[-]ites down Christopher to Seventh Avenue." One participant who had been in the Stonewall during the raid recalled, "The police rushed us and that's when I realized this is not a good thing to do, because they got me in the back with a nightstick." Another account stated, "I just can't ever get that one sight out of my mind. The cops with the [nightsticks] and the kick line on the other side. It was the most amazing thing... And all the sudden that kick line, which I guess was a spoof on the machismo... I think that's when I felt rage. Because people were getting smashed with bats. And for what? A kick line."


title: Stonewall riots

text: Marsha P. Johnson, an African-American street queen, recalled arriving at the bar around "2:00 [am]", and that at that point the riots were well under way, with the building in flames. As the riots went on into the early hours of the morning, Johnson, along with Zazu Nova and Jackie Hormona, were noted as "three individuals known to have been in the vanguard" of the pushback against the police.


title: Stonewall riots

text: Craig Rodwell, owner of the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, reported watching police chase participants through the crooked streets, only to see them appear around the next corner behind the police. Members of the mob stopped cars, overturning one of them to block Christopher Street. Jack Nichols and Lige Clarke, in their column printed in "Screw", declared that "massive crowds of angry protesters chased [the police] for blocks screaming, 'Catch them!


title: Stonewall riots

text: By 4:00 a.m., the streets had nearly been cleared. Many people sat on stoops or gathered nearby in Christopher Park throughout the morning, dazed in disbelief at what had transpired. Many witnesses remembered the surreal and eerie quiet that descended upon Christopher Street, though there continued to be "electricity in the air". One commented: "There was a certain beauty in the aftermath of the riot... It was obvious, at least to me, that a lot of people really were gay and, you know, this was our street." Thirteen people had been arrested. Some in the crowd were hospitalized, and four police officers were injured. Almost everything in the Stonewall Inn was broken. Inspector Pine had intended to close and dismantle the Stonewall Inn that night. Pay phones, toilets, mirrors, jukeboxes, and cigarette machines were all smashed, possibly in the riot and possibly by the police.


title: Stonewall riots

text: During the siege of the Stonewall, Craig Rodwell called "The New York Times", the "New York Post" and the "Daily News" to tell them what was happening. All three papers covered the riots; the "Daily News" placed coverage on the front page. News of the riot spread quickly throughout Greenwich Village, fueled by rumors that it had been organized by the Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers, or triggered by "a homosexual police officer whose roommate went dancing at the Stonewall against the officer's wishes". All day Saturday, June 28, people came to stare at the burned and blackened Stonewall Inn. Graffiti appeared on the walls of the bar, declaring "Drag power", "They invaded our rights", "Support gay power" and "Legalize gay bars", along with accusations of police looting and—regarding the status of the bar—"We are open."


title: Stonewall riots

text: The next night, rioting again surrounded Christopher Street; participants remember differently which night was more frantic or violent. Many of the same people returned from the previous evening—hustlers, street youths, and "queens"—but they were joined by "police provocateurs", curious bystanders, and even tourists. Remarkable to many was the sudden exhibition of homosexual affection in public, as described by one witness: "From going to places where you had to knock on a door and speak to someone through a peephole in order to get in. We were just out. We were in the streets."


title: Stonewall riots

text: Thousands of people had gathered in front of the Stonewall, which had opened again, choking Christopher Street until the crowd spilled into adjoining blocks. The throng surrounded buses and cars, harassing the occupants unless they either admitted they were gay or indicated their support for the demonstrators. Marsha P. Johnson was seen climbing a lamppost and dropping a heavy bag onto the hood of a police car, shattering the windshield.


title: Stonewall riots

text: As on the previous evening, fires were started in garbage cans throughout the neighborhood. More than a hundred police were present from the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Ninth Precincts, but after 2:00 a.m. the TPF arrived again. Kick lines and police chases waxed and waned; when police captured demonstrators, whom the majority of witnesses described as "sissies" or "swishes", the crowd surged to recapture them. Again, street battling ensued until 4:00 a.m.


title: Stonewall riots

text: Beat poet and longtime Greenwich Village resident Allen Ginsberg lived on Christopher Street and happened upon the jubilant chaos. After he learned of the riot that had occurred the previous evening, he stated, "Gay power! Isn't that great!... It's about time we did something to assert ourselves" and visited the open Stonewall Inn for the first time. While walking home, he declared to Lucian Truscott, "You know, the guys there were so beautiful—they've lost that wounded look that fags all had 10 years ago."


title: Stonewall riots

text: Activity in Greenwich Village was sporadic on Monday and Tuesday, partly due to rain. Police and Village residents had a few altercations, as both groups antagonized each other. Craig Rodwell and his partner Fred Sargeant took the opportunity the morning after the first riot to print and distribute 5,000 leaflets, one of them reading: "Get the Mafia and the Cops out of Gay Bars." The leaflets called for gay people to own their own establishments, for a boycott of the Stonewall and other Mafia-owned bars, and for public pressure on the mayor's office to investigate the "intolerable situation".


title: Stonewall riots

text: Not everyone in the gay community considered the revolt a positive development. To many older homosexuals and many members of the Mattachine Society who had worked throughout the 1960s to promote homosexuals as no different from heterosexuals, the display of violence and effeminate behavior was embarrassing. Randy Wicker, who had marched in the first gay picket lines before the White House in 1965, said the "screaming queens forming chorus lines and kicking went against everything that I wanted people to think about homosexuals... that we were a bunch of drag queens in the Village acting disorderly and tacky and cheap." Others found the closing of the Stonewall Inn, termed a "sleaze joint", as advantageous to the Village.


title: Stonewall riots

text: On Wednesday, however, "The Village Voice" ran reports of the riots, written by Howard Smith and Lucian Truscott, that included unflattering descriptions of the events and its participants: "forces of faggotry", "limp wrists" and "Sunday fag follies". A mob descended upon Christopher Street once again and threatened to burn down the offices of "The Village Voice". Also in the mob of between 500 and 1,000 were other groups that had had unsuccessful confrontations with the police and were curious how the police were defeated in this situation. Another explosive street battle took place, with injuries to demonstrators and police alike, local shops getting looted, and arrests of five people. The incidents on Wednesday night lasted about an hour and were summarized by one witness: "The word is out. Christopher Street shall be liberated. The fags have had it with oppression."


title: Stonewall riots

text: The feeling of urgency spread throughout Greenwich Village, even to people who had not witnessed the riots. Many who were moved by the rebellion attended organizational meetings, sensing an opportunity to take action. On July 4, 1969, the Mattachine Society performed its annual picket in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, called the Annual Reminder. Organizers Craig Rodwell, Frank Kameny, Randy Wicker, Barbara Gittings, and Kay Lahusen, who had all participated for several years, took a bus along with other picketers from New York City to Philadelphia. Since 1965, the pickets had been very controlled: women wore skirts and men wore suits and ties and all marched quietly in organized lines. This year Rodwell remembered feeling restricted by the rules Kameny had set. When two women spontaneously held hands, Kameny broke them apart, saying, "None of that! None of that!" Rodwell, however, convinced about ten couples to hold hands. The hand-holding couples made Kameny furious, but they earned more press attention than all of the previous marches. Participant Lilli Vincenz remembered, "It was clear that things were changing. People who had felt oppressed now felt empowered." Rodwell returned to New York City determined to change the established quiet, meek ways of trying to get attention. One of his first priorities was planning Christopher Street Liberation Day.


title: Stonewall riots

text: Although the Mattachine Society had existed since the 1950s, many of their methods now seemed too mild for people who had witnessed or been inspired by the riots. Mattachine recognized the shift in attitudes in a story from their newsletter entitled, "The Hairpin Drop Heard Around the World." When a Mattachine officer suggested an "amicable and sweet" candlelight vigil demonstration, a man in the audience fumed and shouted, "Sweet! "Bullshit!" That's the role society has been forcing these queens to play." With a flyer announcing: "Do You Think Homosexuals Are Revolting? You Bet Your Sweet Ass We Are!", the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was soon formed, the first gay organization to use "gay" in its name. Previous organizations such as the Mattachine Society, the Daughters of Bilitis and various homophile groups had masked their purpose by deliberately choosing obscure names.


title: Stonewall riots

text: The rise of militancy became apparent to Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings—who had worked in homophile organizations for years and were both very public about their roles—when they attended a GLF meeting to see the new group. A young GLF member demanded to know who they were and what their credentials were. Gittings, nonplussed, stammered, "I'm gay. That's why I'm here." The GLF borrowed tactics from and aligned themselves with black and antiwar demonstrators with the ideal that they "could work to restructure American society". They took on causes of the Black Panthers, marching to the Women's House of Detention in support of Afeni Shakur and other radical New Left causes. Four months after the group formed, however, it disbanded when members were unable to agree on operating procedure.


title: Stonewall riots

text: Within six months of the Stonewall riots, activists started a citywide newspaper called "Gay"; they considered it necessary because the most liberal publication in the city—"The Village Voice"—refused to print the word "gay" in GLF advertisements seeking new members and volunteers. Two other newspapers were initiated within a six-week period: "Come Out!" and "Gay Power"; the readership of these three periodicals quickly climbed to between 20,000 and 25,000.


title: Stonewall riots

text: GLF members organized several same-sex dances, but GLF meetings were chaotic. When Bob Kohler asked for clothes and money to help the homeless youth who had participated in the riots, many of whom slept in Christopher Park or Sheridan Square, the response was a discussion on the downfall of capitalism. In late December 1969, several people who had visited GLF meetings and left out of frustration formed the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA). The GAA was to be more orderly and entirely focused on gay issues. Their constitution began, "We as liberated homosexual activists demand the freedom for expression of our dignity and value as human beings." The GAA developed and perfected a confrontational tactic called a zap: they would catch a politician off guard during a public relations opportunity and force him or her to acknowledge gay and lesbian rights. City councilmen were zapped and mayor John Lindsay was zapped several times—once on television when GAA members made up the majority of the audience.


title: Stonewall riots

text: Police raids on gay bars did not stop after the Stonewall riots. In March 1970, deputy inspector Seymour Pine raided the Zodiac and 17 Barrow Street. An after-hours gay club with no liquor or occupancy licenses called The Snake Pit was soon raided and 167 people were arrested. One of them was Diego Viñales, an Argentinian national so frightened that he might be deported as a homosexual that he tried to escape the police precinct by jumping out of a two-story window, impaling himself on a spike fence. The "New York Daily News" printed a graphic photo of the young man's impalement on the front page. GAA members organized a march from Christopher Park to the Sixth Precinct in which hundreds of gay men, lesbians, and liberal sympathizers peacefully confronted the TPF. They also sponsored a letter-writing campaign to Mayor Lindsay in which the Greenwich Village Democratic Party and congressman Ed Koch sent pleas to end raids on gay bars in the city.


title: Stonewall riots

text: The Stonewall Inn lasted only a few weeks after the riot. By October 1969 it was up for rent. Village residents surmised it was too notorious a location and Rodwell's boycott discouraged business.


title: Stonewall riots

text: Christopher Street Liberation Day, on June 28, 1970, marked the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots with an assembly on Christopher Street; with simultaneous Gay Pride marches in Los Angeles and Chicago, these were the first Gay Pride marches in US history. The next year, Gay Pride marches took place in Boston, Dallas, Milwaukee, London, Paris, West Berlin and Stockholm. The march in New York covered 51 blocks, from Christopher Street to Central Park. The march took less than half the scheduled time due to excitement, but also due to wariness about walking through the city with gay banners and signs. Although the parade permit was delivered only two hours before the start of the march, the marchers encountered little resistance from onlookers. "The New York Times" reported (on the front page) that the marchers took up the entire street for about 15 city blocks. Reporting by "The Village Voice" was positive, describing "the out-front resistance that grew out of the police raid on the Stonewall Inn one year ago".


title: Stonewall riots

text: By 1972, the participating cities included Atlanta, Buffalo, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Miami, Minneapolis and Philadelphia, as well as San Francisco.


title: Stonewall riots

text: Frank Kameny soon realized the pivotal change brought by the Stonewall riots. An organizer of gay activism in the 1950s, he was used to persuasion, trying to convince heterosexuals that gay people were no different from them. When he and other people marched in front of the White House, the State Department, and Independence Hall only five years earlier, their objective was to look as if they could work for the US government. Ten people marched with Kameny then and they alerted no press to their intentions. Although he was stunned by the upheaval by participants in the Annual Reminder in 1969, he later observed, "By the time of Stonewall, we had fifty to sixty gay groups in the country. A year later there was at least fifteen hundred. By two years later, to the extent that a count could be made, it was twenty-five hundred."


title: Stonewall riots

text: Similar to Kameny's regret at his own reaction to the shift in attitudes after the riots, Randy Wicker came to describe his embarrassment as "one of the greatest mistakes of his life". The image of gay people retaliating against police, after so many years of allowing such treatment to go unchallenged, "stirred an unexpected spirit among many homosexuals". Kay Lahusen, who photographed the marches in 1965, stated, "Up to 1969, this movement was generally called the homosexual or homophile movement... Many new activists consider the Stonewall uprising the birth of the gay liberation movement. Certainly it was the birth of gay pride on a massive scale." David Carter, in his article "What made Stonewall different", explained that even though there were several uprisings before Stonewall, the reason Stonewall was so significant was that thousands of people were involved, the riot lasted a long time (six days), it was the first to get major media coverage, and it sparked the formation of many gay rights groups.


title: Stonewall riots

text: The Stonewall riots are often considered to be the origin or impetus of the gay liberation movement, and many studies of LGBT history in the U.S. are divided into pre- and post-Stonewall analyses. However, this has been criticized by historians of sexuality. Calls for the rights of gender and sexual minorities predate the Stonewall riots, and there was already the emergence of a gay liberation movement in New York at the time of the riots. The Stonewall riots were not the only time LGBT people organized politically amid attacks on LGBT establishments. However, the event has been said to occupy a unique place in the collective memory of many LGBT people, including those outside of the United States, as it "is marked by an international commemorative ritual – an annual gay pride parade", according to sociologist Elizabeth A. Armstrong.


title: Stonewall riots

text: Within two years of the Stonewall riots there were gay rights groups in every major American city, as well as in Canada, Australia, and Western Europe. People who joined activist organizations after the riots had very little in common other than their same-sex attraction. Many who arrived at GLF or GAA meetings were taken aback by the number of gay people in one place. Race, class, ideology, and gender became frequent obstacles in the years after the riots. This was illustrated during the 1973 Stonewall rally when, moments after Barbara Gittings exuberantly praised the diversity of the crowd, feminist activist Jean O'Leary protested what she perceived as the mocking of women by cross-dressers and drag queens in attendance. During a speech by O'Leary, in which she claimed that drag queens made fun of women for entertainment value and profit, Sylvia Rivera and Lee Brewster jumped on the stage and shouted "You go to bars because of what drag queens did for you and "these bitches" tell us to quit being ourselves!" Both the drag queens and lesbian feminists in attendance left in disgust.


title: Stonewall riots

text: O'Leary also worked in the early 1970s to exclude transgender people from gay rights issues because she felt that rights for transgender people would be too difficult to attain. Sylvia Rivera left New York City in the mid-1970s, relocating to upstate New York, but later returned to the city in the mid-1990s to advocate for homeless members of the gay community. The initial disagreements among participants in the movements, however, often evolved after further reflection. O'Leary later regretted her stance against the drag queens attending in 1973: "Looking back, I find this so embarrassing because my views have changed so much since then. I would never pick on a transvestite now." "It was horrible. How could I work to exclude transvestites and at the same time criticize the feminists who were doing their best back in those days to exclude lesbians?"


title: Stonewall riots

text: O'Leary was referring to the Lavender Menace, an appellation by second wave feminist Betty Friedan based on attempts by members of the National Organization for Women (NOW) to distance themselves from the perception of NOW as a haven for lesbians. As part of this process, Rita Mae Brown and other lesbians who had been active in NOW were forced out. They staged a protest in 1970 at the Second Congress to Unite Women and earned the support of many NOW members, finally gaining full acceptance in 1971.


title: Stonewall riots

text: The growth of lesbian feminism in the 1970s at times so conflicted with the gay liberation movement that some lesbians refused to work with gay men. Many lesbians found men's attitudes patriarchal and chauvinistic and saw in gay men the same misguided notions about women that they saw in heterosexual men. The issues most important to gay men—entrapment and public solicitation—were not shared by lesbians. In 1977, a Lesbian Pride Rally was organized as an alternative to sharing gay men's issues, especially what Adrienne Rich termed "the violent, self-destructive world of the gay bars". Veteran gay activist Barbara Gittings chose to work in the gay rights movement, explaining, "It's a matter of where does it hurt the most? For me it hurts the most not in the female arena, but the gay arena."


title: Stonewall riots

text: Throughout the 1970s, gay activism had significant successes. One of the first and most important was the "zap" in May 1970 by the Los Angeles GLF at a convention of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). At a conference on behavior modification, during a film demonstrating the use of electroshock therapy to decrease same-sex attraction, Morris Kight and GLF members in the audience interrupted the film with shouts of "Torture!" and "Barbarism!" They took over the microphone to announce that medical professionals who prescribed such therapy for their homosexual patients were complicit in torturing them. Although 20 psychiatrists in attendance left, the GLF spent the hour following the zap with those remaining, trying to convince them that homosexual people were not mentally ill. When the APA invited gay activists to speak to the group in 1972, activists brought John E. Fryer, a gay psychiatrist who wore a mask, because he felt his practice was in danger. In December 1973—in large part due to the efforts of gay activists—the APA voted unanimously to remove homosexuality from the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual".