
There is no because of this or that — Stonewall just happened. There was a tendency at that time for white people to think, well, she’s a junkie or she’s an alcoholic or she’s a drug addict. She’s anything but human, so why listen to her? That was the basic attitude towards us trans women in the 60s. And it just happened to be everywhere. Some of the girls back then, like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, tried to speak up for us, but just got laughed at. Everyone, especially the police, had been treating us trans girls poorly for years. They used to make trans women wear three articles of male clothing under their female attire in order to enter the bar. It was such a mental and emotional persecution building up over time — the shit just hit the fan, period.