Sylvia Rivera: The Outsider Within Lilly Richart

  

    This photo is of Sylvia Rivera, a trans activist. The quote "Y'all better quiet down" and the moment that the accompanying text provides is from a speech that Rivera gave at a Gay Pride Rally in 1973. Right before her speech, a woman took the stage to talk, calling for an exclusion of trans women to the movement. She claims that it is not for them, and trans women were really men just trying to tell “real” women how to be. While Rivera's gender identity was fluid, shifting from identifying as a drag queen, a gay man, gay girl, or a street queen, the former speech was intended to rally for her exclusion from the Gay Liberation movement. Rivera's speech at this rally talks about how she is not going to stop being a part of this movement, and she will continue to fight for gay rights. The text within the image reveals that even during this speech, she was booed and jeered at.

Within this movement, Rivera is acting as an outsider within. Not only is she trans within a movement that wanted to only focus on gay people, but her race also functions as something to push her aside. As seen from the text in the image, Rivera was Puerto Rican, and was "white washed out of history" and received "no love from the overwhelmingly white Gay community." While this may seem like she is simply an outsider, Rivera still functioned as a partial insider to the movement. As the image states, she was a "brave LGBT civil rights pioneer." Similar to how black women acted as partial insiders and got as close to people to as to be called their mother and feeling forms of affirmation (Collins 1986: S14), Rivera was a partial insider as she is often thought of to be a centra figure to the Gay Liberation Movement and is framed as a mentor. At the same time, as revealed by the image, she never fully belonged to the movement, just as black women never truly belonged with their black families (Collins 1986: S14).