Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Introduction
- one Case Con and radical social work in the 1970s: the impatient revolutionaries
- two The best and worst of times: reflections on the impact of radicalism on British social work education in the 1970s
- three Social work and women’s oppression today
- four The jester's joke
- five LGBT oppression, sexualities and radical social work today
- six Radical social work and service users: a crucial connection
- seven Why class (still) matters
- eight International social work or social work internationalism? Radical social work in global perspective
- nine Rediscovering radicalism and humanity in social work
- ten Re-gilding the ghetto: community work and community development in 21st-century Britain
- eleven Resisting the EasyCare model: building a more radical, community-based, anti-authoritarian social work for the future
- Bibliography
- Index
five - LGBT oppression, sexualities and radical social work today
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Introduction
- one Case Con and radical social work in the 1970s: the impatient revolutionaries
- two The best and worst of times: reflections on the impact of radicalism on British social work education in the 1970s
- three Social work and women’s oppression today
- four The jester's joke
- five LGBT oppression, sexualities and radical social work today
- six Radical social work and service users: a crucial connection
- seven Why class (still) matters
- eight International social work or social work internationalism? Radical social work in global perspective
- nine Rediscovering radicalism and humanity in social work
- ten Re-gilding the ghetto: community work and community development in 21st-century Britain
- eleven Resisting the EasyCare model: building a more radical, community-based, anti-authoritarian social work for the future
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The year 2009 marked the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York and the subsequent birth of the Gay Liberation Front. It is difficult to underestimate the significance of the Stonewall Rebellion of 27 June 1969 which was initiated by the lesbians and gays, drag queens, transvestites and transsexual people in the Stonewall bar in New York who had grown sick of police harassment and who therefore said, ‘Enough is enough’. The resistance at a seedy New York club ended up with a group of brutal, racist, homophobic cops being penned up inside the Stonewall bar. It was a moment of celebration and inspiration which ignited a movement.
For many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people at the time it was a crowning moment, a decisive and defiant shift away from guilt about oneself to pride in who you are, explicitly modelled on the civil rights and Black power movements in the US. That pride, protest and defiance carried over into the early Pride marches. The mood of the times is summed up by the recollections of one of the participants in the rebellion, Sylvia Rivera, who went on in 1970 to co-found Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR) with the black drag queen Marsha P. Johnson. A few years before her death in 2002 Sylvia gave an interview to Leslie Feinberg (1998) recalling the atmosphere of those days:
We were not taking any more of this shit. We had done so much for other movements. It was time. … All of us were working for so many movements at that time. Everyone was involved with the women's movement, the peace movement, the civil rights movement. We were all radicals. I believe that's what brought it around. … I was a radical, a revolutionist. I am still a revolutionist. … If I had lost that moment, I would have been kind of hurt because that's when I saw the world change for me and my people. Of course, we still got a long way ahead of us. (1998, p 107)
LGBT oppression is an issue with which social workers and social work educators need to concern themselves.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Radical Social Work TodaySocial Work at the Crossroads, pp. 79 - 94Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2011
- 1
- Cited by