It is very hard to imagine a world where police are harassing and arresting the LGBTQ community just for gathering together in public or simply expressing themselves. This community had their jobs, families, and lives threatened just for being who they are. Unfortunately, this is what life was like before they started to fight back against the oppression. The younger generations have grown up in a society, for the most part, of love, acceptance, and protection for these people. This essay will argue that the Stonewall riots were unpremeditated and violent demonstrations that not only marked the start of the gay rights movement, but created the emergence of concepts and influences that are still prevalent today. It will support this argument
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It needs to be political, challenge society in some way, dramatic, newsworthy, resonate with humanity in some way, and have a sense of unity. For some reason, components like these are what makes incidents become viral or movements to be created. An example of this today would be The Black Lives Matter organization(Armstrong & Crage, 2006). The Stonewall riots had this emergence of concepts to show to the world, even if it was not intended. The first one would be the sense of unity because when the riots first started to break out, crowds of people started to ban together and then other groups of people during the night or days after would come together with the others. As days of protesting and riots went on after Stonewall, the number of people increased and could be seen hand in hand as one giant wall. The second major concept to emerge was pride because for the first time, fighting back against decades of oppression was successful and can be looked at as the first achievement in the gay rights movement. It could have only emerged with crowds of people because it was very difficult for gay people to be publicly proud of who they are during this time because of society. Pride is now probably the leading idea in the gay rights movement. This can be seen through gay pride events. Today most people associate the LGBTQ community with pride(Robinson, 2015). Another concept that formed was society as whole reexamining their perspectives and morals on gay rights. This was probably the first time many Americans actually sat down and started to think about society’s view on homosexuals. So the idea of the riots being a conversation starter is very accurate. The last big obvious concept that formed was equality because that is what they were rioting and protesting about. Although the United States has come extremely far with gay rights, there are still
It needs to be political, challenge society in some way, dramatic, newsworthy, resonate with humanity in some way, and have a sense of unity. For some reason, components like these are what makes incidents become viral or movements to be created. An example of this today would be The Black Lives Matter organization(Armstrong & Crage, 2006). The Stonewall riots had this emergence of concepts to show to the world, even if it was not intended. The first one would be the sense of unity because when the riots first started to break out, crowds of people started to ban together and then other groups of people during the night or days after would come together with the others. As days of protesting and riots went on after Stonewall, the number of people increased and could be seen hand in hand as one giant wall. The second major concept to emerge was pride because for the first time, fighting back against decades of oppression was successful and can be looked at as the first achievement in the gay rights movement. It could have only emerged with crowds of people because it was very difficult for gay people to be publicly proud of who they are during this time because of society. Pride is now probably the leading idea in the gay rights movement. This can be seen through gay pride events. Today most people associate the LGBTQ community with pride(Robinson, 2015). Another concept that formed was society as whole reexamining their perspectives and morals on gay rights. This was probably the first time many Americans actually sat down and started to think about society’s view on homosexuals. So the idea of the riots being a conversation starter is very accurate. The last big obvious concept that formed was equality because that is what they were rioting and protesting about. Although the United States has come extremely far with gay rights, there are still