In the Face of Erasure | Suppressing Stonewall

“In The Face of Erasure” chronicles hidden events. With every story, Jenny Ballutay ’28 hopes to bring moments – both current and historical – into the public discussion and allow her readers to better understand one another through the stories that shape us all.  

STONEWALL

On February 13th, the National Park Service erased references to the transgender community from its website on the Stonewall National Monument. Specifically, the Park Service deleted explicit mentions of transgender activism and truncated “LGBTQ+” to “LGB,” erasing the T for transgender and Q for queer. A subpage promising to explain different pride flags and significant days in queer history now offers only a bland, vague, three-sentence description:

“Visitors to Christopher Park will find the interpretive flag display featuring the rainbow Pride flag. The original Pride flag was debuted in 1978 as a symbol for LGB diversity and rights. It has since become an internationally recognized symbol for the community.”

(How enlightening!) This subpage, like other subpages on the website, end in this ominous timestamp:

“Last updated: February 13, 2025.”

EXTREMISM

On January 20, Trump signed the executive order “DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.” Consequently, many websites operated by the federal government thinned out their content. Alongside the park service, the FDA and CDC removed treasure troves of information on topics ranging from basic HIV testing resources to the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, which surveys key metrics on adolescent health. Most blatantly, the NIH’s webpage for the Sexual & Gender Minority Research Office vanished overnight.

WAYBACK

I used the Wayback Machine, a non-profit digital archive that stores past versions of webpages, to examine a version of the park service’s Stonewall website from Feb. 3. Here’s two captions from the Virtual Fence Exhibit, a photo gallery depicting figures, including Zazu Nova and Sylvia Rivera, at the Stonewall Riots:

“Zazu Nova, a black transgender woman, sits on top of a table at a Gay Liberation Front meeting in 1970. Zazu was identified by many eyewitnesses as the person who may have thrown the legendary ‘first brick’ at the Stonewall Uprising on June 28, 1969.”

“At a young age Sylvia began fighting for gay and transgender rights while also helping homeless young drag queens, like herself, gay youth and trans people. She was a co-founder of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) with Marsha P. Johnson.”

Today, it’s clear that a government employee searched for instances of the word “transgender” in the gallery and deleted them from the website. Zazu Nova’s current caption erases her trans identity, only telling the reader that Zazu was Black. Sylvia Rivera’s caption hints to the reader that something’s amiss; it now reads as “Sylvia began fighting for gay and rights.” (Oops.)

Prior to February 13, this website was a cornucopia of queer knowledge. Between then and now, someone robbed the site of the fruits of transgender labor, hoping to cut us out of a movement we started.

INDIFFERENCE

Perhaps you aren’t queer. Or perhaps this poor stab at erasure doesn’t chill your spine. I won’t argue that you must empathize with your queer friends — although I hope you can. I will argue, however, that your feelings shouldn’t subside to indifference. To quote activist and Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel:

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”

The opposite of history is not misinterpretation, fiction or lying by omission: it’s indifference. However you feel about trans people or the queer community, remember that nothing should deter you from decrying attacks on historical accuracy. We all have the ability to see nuance.

FIGHT BACK

I encourage you to read the Feb. 3 version of the park service’s Stonewall Monument website on the Wayback Machine. It offers a less censored version of history, one with an expansive discussion of pride flags and an uncensored exploration of trans activists present during Stonewall.

I find it atrocious that the federal government would remove this piece of our past. Still, there’s a silver lining: both history and the internet are persevering and resilient. While no one has legally challenged the suppression of Stonewall’s history on the park service’s website, organizations have already won lawsuits against the CDC and FDA to retain lifesaving information on their websites (this hasn’t stopped the Trump Administration from inserting transphobic disclaimers, though.) I hope this one victory will soon stand among many more. We all have a responsibility to challenge every instance of censorship this new administration brings. 

In the face of erasure, I’m confident the trans community can and will fight back.

The post In the Face of Erasure | Suppressing Stonewall appeared first on The Stanford Daily.