AN: In honor of today (6/28/19) being Stonewall's 50th anniversary. Happy Pride, my readers.
Nature. Usually, when one thought of "nature", they thought of the great outdoors. They thought of plants, trees, rocks and rivers. Or they would perhaps think of order and harmony, of perfect balance and unity. Everything would be right. Everything would be good. Everything would organized and natural. Nature meant natural. It meant organic and original. It meant real and wholesome and true. It was a down-to-earth and earthy word. Everything related to nature was natural, supposed to be there. But there wasn't much room for nature in the city, in either sense.
In a place fraught with people, there wasn't much room for nature. Humanity took the wheel while nature took a back seat. Manmade laws overrode nature, and social constructs destroyed the natural and original. There were no forests in the city. Plants were only decorative, few and far between, lining streets, but only for humanity's viewing pleasure. Tall clusters of buildings, busy subways, packed highways, restless feet, open stores, businesses and restaurants. They were what ruled the city. No nature, just manmade objects. Hustle and bustle, vim and vigor, political turmoil, passionate opinion, diversity, division... uprising.
Nature was always overturned in the city, not just literally, but metaphorically as well. Stonewall was a perfect example. It began as a simple tearoom. Totally natural, normal, humble and acceptable. It was just a restaurant. But then nature was overturned. Underneath the surface title, the Inn was a speakeasy. The natural order of the city and its laws were overturned within Stonewall. It was no mere restaurant, it was a bar in a world where alcohol was illegal.
Then even after the Prohibition ended, Stonewall continued to be a hotbed for rebellion, turmoil, conflict and all other things that upset nature. It remained as a bar before being turned into a base of operation by the Mafia in 1966. Once again, nature was overturned. The Inn became a gay bar, a place of unlicensed liquor, drug deals, homosexuals, and dancing. It was the only bar for gay men in New York City where dancing was allowed. It was very different from the rest of the outside world. It was very unnatural by comparison.
In an effort to return and retain order, police raids on gay bars became increasingly common around that time. But the bars were experts in overturning the natural order of things. They knew how to hide their alcohol when the police came by, only leaving a fraction of their total stock visible, so when the raids were over, business could begin again as normal. The police took great pains to restore order and nature to the city, but Stonewall was not so easily stopped. Instead, it continued to overturn the natural order in every way it could.
The entire joint became a place for those outside of nature to hide. Aside from the mafia and gay men, people of color, people in poverty, youth, and people who were gender nonconforming (whether they be trans or drag queens) took shelter in Stonewall. Outsiders and outcasts to society took up residence in a bar where the unnatural was natural. The bar took all of the people the rest of the world did not want.
Then Stonewall became even more radical. It upset nature again, and, in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, around 1:20 a.m., the ultimate act of defiance against nature and naturalness occurred: rebellion. It was a riot, an uprising. What began as a typical police raid quickly entered into unnatural territory when the vehicles set to take the arrested patrons away was delayed. As the arrested patrons remained on the bar's doorsteps, people on the outside began to take notice. Numbers grew as more and more bystanders took interest…
The police, in fear, barricaded themselves inside Stonewall. The people set to restore the natural order took shelter in the very place they came to silence. The creators and enforces of nature took shelter in a place of chaos and unnatural essence. Nature really was overturned that night.
When the arrests finally began, the people fought back. With so many onlookers, the outcasts finally had an army. For the first time ever, they finally had a chance. Nature was upset, disturbed, and for once, it was the cops who were on the defense. The anger and tension hit a climax and finally, the riot began. Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson took a brick to the barricaded bar. The Stonewall Uprising was here.
For two days, the siege on the Inn continued. Queer people united in a way they had never united before. The battle was fierce, but the people were angry enough that even pain and police could not keep them down. If any group of people would be able to handle the pain of a rebellion, it was the group that had already spent their entire lives fighting. Gays, lesbians, drag queens, homeless youth, people of color, people in poverty, they all fought back against the cops and everything that the cops represented, the first and foremost being nature. Finally, the queer community became daring enough to challenge nature itself!
And even after the riot was over, the rebellion continued. An uprising could not happen without having a ripple effect on everything around it. Protests happened, queer groups were created, visibility and press coverage was given, Gay Pride was established. The country was shaken, nature uprooted and replaced by raw rebellion. 50 years later, the rebellion is still not over. People across the globe continue to upset the natural order of things to create something newer and better.
ooo
In order to defeat nature, one must be unnatural. No one ever changed the world by being normal, after all. The only way for something brilliant to happen in history is for a revolutionary to take the lead. And the only way to be revolutionary is to be different, and against nature. But even after a new natural order is created, the best thing one can do is to keep wheels turning and keep the fire burning.
But now it's time to turn this very story against its nature and ask if Stonewall was really that "against nature" after all. Maybe, in reality, the real unnatural ones were those who opposed the push for change. After all, change and rebellion are very natural. It is with the natural order of things to be chaotic and turbulent. Entropy and the Big Bang can testify to that.
And the story of humanity is nothing but an endless struggle against nature. The invention of tools, the desire to prolong lifespans, the fight for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, all of it was nothing but humanity's battle against nature. A desire to see humans rise up and overcome the challenges of nature. Because it is within nature's natural order that things constantly be in a state of change and growth, evolution. So perhaps Stonewall was natural all along, a microcosm of a much larger pattern that started all the way back with the Big Bang.
And HUMAN nature is a very fickle thing. It seeks order and freedom, unity and diversity, at the same time. Human nature gravitates towards power and pleasure, towards things that benefit it. So what if the rebellion benefitted it? If rebellion was what humanity needed, wouldn't that make a rebellion natural? So perhaps Stonewall was natural all along… And if that is the case, then perhaps liberation was always destined to happen as well. After all, what is more natural than a turbulent world?
Maybe the rebellion was just a reshuffling of the deck, because change is nature, after all. And things are still changing even today. So is it natural or not? Maybe, all along, the cops and all who stood against queer folk were the unnatural ones. And maybe outcasts of Stonewall were always a part of nature, the rebellion just gave them the strength to find their place within it. Life, after all, is a rebellion in and of itself. And there is nothing more natural than that.