How Pillion Perfected the Sub-Dom Rom-Com
As long as there’s been a queer rights movement, there have been people complaining about who should and shouldn’t be a part of it. In his Pulitzer Prize-finalist book, The Deviant’s War, gay historian Eric Cervini writes about the pre-Stonewall gay rights demonstrations led by branches of a group called the Mattachine Society. Protesters for the first-ever gay rights picket in front of the White House in April 1965 had a strict dress code: “the men in suits, ties, white shirts; the women in dresses; all well groomed.” In November 1969, the Mattachine Society of New York called the “small group of militants” behind the Stonewall Riots—largely made up of drag queens, trans folks, kinksters, people of color—“a genuine threat to the movement.” Today, that respectability-politics conversation reignites every June when people argue about keeping kink out of Pride demonstrations. Likewise with the hand-wringing op-eds that bemoan how the queer rights movement has become “too radical”—especially relating to trans rights, since marriage equality became federal law in 2015. We don’t agree with how those people …
