Pride Month is coming to an end – and perhaps you barely noticed that it had begun. This year has been noticeably quiet: no rainbow-colored logos from major corporations, no colorful product lines, no public-facing statements. The reason? Fear. Fear of right-wing boycotts, of digital outrage, of political reprisals from an increasingly hostile Trump administration. But anyone who heard Kylie Minogue blasting under their window at ten a.m. last Saturday knows: Pride is alive. And not because of Instagram, but because people take to the streets – to celebrate, to dance, to drink, to defy. And because they want to remember. Stonewall. The beginning. And yet, it is precisely this beginning that has become the focus of a new cultural battle. It is about control over the narrative. About the question of who really owns the history of queer emancipation. A new biography of activist Marsha P. Johnson, written by trans author and artist Tourmaline, claims Johnson was the central figure in the 1969 Stonewall riots. Her story: a Black, homeless, transsexual sex worker threw the first brick – and thus ignited the global movement for queer rights. The book – praised by Allure, recommended by The New York Times – elevates Johnson to an icon of intersectional activism, which today, especially in progressive circles, is seen as the benchmark for historical recognition. The more marginalized identities a person embodies, the greater their symbolic power.
But it was never that simple. Marsha P. Johnson was an impressive figure – brave, singular, visible. But she herself said in a 1989 interview that the Stonewall Inn was already on fire when she arrived. She wasn’t a leader of the uprising – she was part of the moment, but not its spark. She called herself a drag queen, not a trans woman. The idea that she was the great strategist of the resistance misreads both the historical complexity and Johnson’s own life – shaped by poverty, mental illness, and instability. She co-founded an informal shelter project for queer youth that soon dissolved because no one paid the rent. She gave speeches, marched in parades – and spent many years in institutions and on the street. A worthy figure, without question. But not a queer Gandhi. The issue isn’t honoring Marsha P. Johnson – it’s the erasure of all those who also made history but don’t fit neatly into today’s political narratives. White gay men, for example, who stayed out in their conservative towns during the '70s, '80s, and '90s as teachers, accountants, or civil servants, who organized neighborhood parties, befriended politicians – and quietly earned the trust of their straight surroundings. These “respectable” gays influenced court rulings, forged alliances, changed lives. No revolution with burning barricades – but a quiet, painful, lasting normalization. Not with a Molotov cocktail, but with a mortgage application. Not with a megaphone, but with dinner at Kennedy’s.
Because in the end, equality wasn’t achieved because queer people became more radical, but because they became visible as neighbors, colleagues, friends – and stayed that way. They won over the mainstream because they were part of it. It’s not a heroic story in the classical sense. It has no clear heroes, no dramatic moments, no tear gas images. But it is the story that changed the world. We should never forget Marsha P. Johnson – for what she was: a fighter on the fringes of society who wanted to be seen. But we should stop making her the central figure of a movement carried by millions. Not in spite of their normality, but because of it. Because this is what progress looks like: slow, contradictory, arduous. And sometimes surprisingly unspectacular. But that doesn’t make it any less valuable.
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