Page "Stonewall riots" Paragraph 63

The Stonewall riots marked such a significant turning point that many aspects of prior gay and lesbian culture, such as bar culture formed from decades of shame and secrecy, were forcefully ignored and denied.

Historian Martin Duberman writes, " The decades preceding Stonewall ... continue to be regarded by most gays and lesbians as some vast neolithic wasteland ".

Historian Barry Adam notes, " Every social movement must choose at some point what to retain and what to reject out of its past.

What traits are the results of oppression and what are healthy and authentic?

" In conjunction with the growing feminist movement of the early 1970s, roles of butch and femme that developed in lesbian bars in the 1950s and 1960s were rejected, because as one writer put it: " all role playing is sick ".

Lesbian feminists considered the butch roles as archaic imitations of masculine behavior.

Some women, according to Lillian Faderman, were eager to shed the roles they felt forced into playing.

The roles returned for some women in the 1980s, although they allowed for more flexibility than before Stonewall.