Park Service Removes ‘Transgender’ from Stonewall Monument Site

Last week, the National Park Service removed the word ‘trans’ from the webpage dedicated to the Stonewall riot, as well as the ‘T’ from all instances of the LGBTQ+ acronym. This is very blatantly in reaction to Trump’s recent slew of anti-trans orders in the month since he was sworn into presidential office, going so far as to executively order that there’s only two genders in the country and remove funding from hospitals providing gender-affirming care and schools allowing trans women to compete in sports.

Last updated on February 13, the National Park Service page commemorating the 1969 riots at Stonewall Inn in New York City, which placed the queer liberation movement in the public eye, completely wiped the site of any mention of transgender people. It also now lists the acronym for the community as ‘LGB’, removing the T for transgender as well as the Q+ that acknowledges everybody beyond the lesbian, gay, and bisexual binaries. Just last year, the National Park Service opened the Stonewall National Monument Visitor’s Center, an adjoining museum to the historic gay bar that elaborates on it’s background, making this sudden erasure of transgender people an icy 180.

This is extraordinarily detrimental — the gay liberation movement, as well as the uprising at Stonewall, were led primarily by Marcia P. Johnson, a Black trans woman, as well as a slew of other mostly unnamed trans women of color. Representatives for the Stonewall Inn, as well as the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative, said, “This decision to erase the word ‘transgender’ is a deliberate attempt to erase our history and marginalize the very people who paved the way for many victories we have achieved as a community […] It is a direct attack on transgender people, especially transgender women of color, who continue to face violence, discrimination, and erasure at every turn.”