Learn: San Francisco LGBTQ+ History: Activism, Resistance, and Public Space

LAPV

Author: Christina B. Hanhardt | Title: Count the Contradictions: Challenges to Gay Gentrification at the Start of the Reagan Era | Definition: organized against police violence and harassment in San Francisco. The group challenged the idea that more policing necessarily made queer communities safer.

Ray Broshears

Author: Christina B. Hanhardt | Title: Butterflies, Whistles, and Fists | Definition: a San Francisco gay activist associated with the Lavender Panthers. His group adopted confrontational street patrol tactics in response to attacks on gay people.

Vanguard

Author: Jennifer Worley | Title: Street Power and the Claiming of Public Space | Definition: radical organization of queer and transgender youth in San Francisco's Tenderloin during the 1960s. It challenged police harassment and exclusion from public spaces.

Compton's Cafeteria Riot

Author: Chandra Laborde | Title: A Transecological Poetics of Reterritorialization in San Francisco's Tenderloin | Definition: a 1966 uprising by transgender and gender-nonconforming people against police harassment in San Francisco. It became an important moment of transgender resistance before Stonewall.

Esta Noche

Author: Juana María Rodríguez | Title: Activism and Identity in the Ruins of Representation | Definition: a gay Latino bar in San Francisco's Mission District. It served as a social and cultural gathering space for LGBTQ+ Latinos.

Gendercide

Author: Deborah A. Miranda | Title: Extermination of the Joyas: Gendercide in Spanish California | Definition: is the systematic destruction of people because of their gender identity or expression. Miranda uses the term to examine Spanish colonial violence against Indigenous gender-diverse people known as joyas.

Cross-dressing laws

Author: Clare Sears | Title: Problem Bodies, Public Space | Definition: punished people for wearing clothing authorities associated with another gender. These laws were used to police gender expression and target gender-nonconforming people in San Francisco.

Proposition 6

Author: Christina B. Hanhardt | Title: Count the Contradictions: Challenges to Gay Gentrification at the Start of the Reagan Era | Definition: , was a 1978 California ballot measure intended to exclude gay and lesbian people and their supporters from public school employment. Its defeat was an important victory for LGBTQ+ political organizing.

Gayola

Author: Nan Alamilla Boyd | Title: Queer Cooperation and Resistance: A Gay and Lesbian Movement Comes Together in the 1960s | Definition: was a San Francisco police corruption scandal involving officers demanding bribes from gay bar owners. It exposed police exploitation of gay establishments and encouraged LGBTQ+ political organizing.

Onyx

Author: Christina B. Hanhardt | Title: Count the Contradictions: Challenges to Gay Gentrification at the Start of the Reagan Era | Definition: was a Black lesbian newsletter that documented Black lesbian perspectives and political concerns. Its imagery highlighted resistance to racism and police violence.

Internment camps

Author: Tina Takemoto | Title: Looking for Jiro Onuma: A Queer Meditation on the Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II | Definition: were facilities where the United States government forcibly incarcerated Japanese Americans during World War II. Takemoto examines this history through Jiro Onuma to recover overlooked queer experiences.

Mona's

Author: Nan Alamilla Boyd | Title: Lesbian Space, Lesbian Territory: San Francisco's North Beach District, 1933-1954 | Definition an early lesbian nightclub in San Francisco that opened in 1934. It provided an important social space for lesbian community and culture.