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By Ricardo Vallarino, member of 100% Diversity and Rights (Argentina)

Photo: Ariel Gutraich/Presentes Archive

Do you know when the queer revolution began? When someone was called crazy and that person turned around and said, "So what?" We don't know when it was, we won't be able to record it. But this happened in Peru, in Guatemala, in China, all over the world.

Luis Negrón

The first lesson we learn is the most fundamental and liberating: pride is standing up to contempt and reclaiming our identity in the face of insult . Today we also know that pride is the struggle for a non-patriarchal order put into practice by caring for others.

From liberation to politics

We stand on the shoulders of giants. But pride wasn't always pride, nor was it always LGBTIQ+. The parable inaugurated at Stonewall moves from liberation to politics. It began with a demand for liberation that contrasted with attempts at assimilation. And it continues with the lesson that this goal will not be achieved without transforming state policies.

READ MORE: #LGBTIPride: Why it's celebrated around the world

When a group of transvestites, lesbians, and gays stood up to the police in 1969, what they wanted was to be left to love and have fun in peace. Stonewall wasn't the first raid or the first resistance, but from then on, scattered groups would opt for visible and articulate protest.

Resisting a raid is not the same as organizing a march, a less urgent but much more laborious and patient task. After much preparation, what was called "Cristopher Street Liberation Day" took place the following year. At that time, marches encompassed only a generic "gay" subject, perhaps equivalent to what we call queer . The demand emphasized liberation and the freedom to love without interference from the police and psychiatrists.

It wasn't until the 1980s that political vocabulary began to reflect disparate identities united in a single expression, which would broaden into the current "+" sign, an opening that punctuates the disorder of our acronyms today . "Pride" would emerge in line with the new challenge of differentiating itself from earlier, more modest attempts, where visibility came at the cost of adapting to heterosexist norms.

It was necessary to show oneself openly and scandalously, without ambiguity and without resentment. At the time of the first march in Argentina, the tension within the movement was between those who defended the notion of "dignity," rooted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and those who defended "pride," warning of the danger of supremacist irreverence. Even today, Jáuregui's phrase effectively overcomes this tension: " Pride is the political response of a society that educates us to shame ."

Over the years, we have faced social and state neglect in the face of the AIDS pandemic, all kinds of exclusions, and judicial inaction in the face of hate crimes. If we conjugate in the past tense, it's because we've managed to bring these problems into public discussion, not because they've disappeared.

The fight against raids is also the founding milestone of the CHA in 1984, which, in the midst of the pandemic, quickly began to articulate demands for recognition of rights and public policies. It would find its antagonist in Quarracino's forcefulness: if you want to live free and in peace, go to an island, said the then Bishop of Buenos Aires, Quarracino . With that provocation, Quarracino expressed a segregationist fantasy that sought to leave the country "immune" from all "deviations." The bishop warned that LGBT+ demands were beginning to look askance at constitutions and laws. For those who only know how to brandish a crucifix, any freedom is the cause or effect of disease. And all disease is the work of Satan.

What does the acronym LGBTIQ+ mean and how do you spell it?

Demanding equal marriage and gender identity laws was nothing more than a desire to live with dignity, in accordance with our desires and identities. This demand for "sectoral" recognition had a universal impact. In light of the demand for equal treatment under the law, what happened was not the normalization of the movement.

Anyone who observes the passage of the ten years since those laws were passed cannot help but observe the transformation of the institution of the family and of legally recognized ties. We have incorporated this openness of relationships so much that the loving and legal bond between two people begins to seem too narrow, the binary system too imposed, the noun too violent and outmoded. Patriarchy, which organizes social life through the primary action of the State, was exposed, and at the same time, the convergence of the LGBTIQ+ movement with feminism accelerated .

But it's also true that the time elapsed since the achievement of these rights has disappointed our expectations of actual transformations. In these months of the pandemic, we see and feel the intensification of fundamental exclusions . The health and autonomy of transvestite and trans people still face outrageous conditions compared to the rest of the population, and prior to the demobilization imposed by the quarantine, conservative groups rose to the pinnacle of executive power in Brazil and the United States. With the creation of the Ministry of Women, Gender, and Diversity, we hope for an acceleration in the transformation of the heterosexist and patriarchal state. And with the prompt passage of the transvestite and transgender labor quota law and the legalization of abortion.

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As these achievements continue, the vastness of violence and obstacles seems simultaneously revealed and multiplied. With the possibility of marriage, adoption, and access to reproductive technologies, we saw the resistance of institutions to their implementation.

With the recognition of gender identity, we observe the delays in access to justice or healthcare by state agents. And at every step, we encounter new waves of violence fueled by the religious panic of our advancement. We tend to delude ourselves with a linear representation of history: a multitude of paths are offered, always branching and swirling in multiple directions. We are not deluded when we maintain that pride is the dream of embracing the future, of building a world where care and freedom are combined. Pride is the lightning in the night of Stonewall and also the thunder of history that marches noisily toward us.

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