ABSTRACT
Fig. 5.1. “Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries,” left to right: Randi (hand on hip), Sylvia Rivera front and center, Bubbles with arms around unknown queen, Clarence possibly in back. (Photograph by E. Bedoz, pseudonym for Ellen Schumsky, Come Out 1, no. 7, 1970; Individuals identified by Bebe Scarpi, telephone conversation with author, December 31, 2006.)
S.T.A.R. defies neat categorization. Its participants were societal outcasts rendered economically, socially, and psychologically vulnerable because of gender non-conformity, youth, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, and poverty. The group’s impact was more powerful than its small size of twenty or thirty participants would have predicted. Even before S.T.A.R. was founded, street transvestites worked to catalyze, define, and promote gay liberation.
