Sylvia Rivera Y'all better quiet down

Digitalised recording of trans rights activist Sylvia Rivera's speech at New York City's Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally in 1973. (Transcription follows:) Sylvia Rivera: I may be— Crowd: [booing] Sylvia Rivera: Y'all better quiet down. I’ve been trying to get up here all day for your gay brothers and your gay sisters in jail that write me every motherfucking week and ask for your help and you all don’t do a goddamn thing for them. Have you ever been beaten up and raped and jailed? Now think about it. They’ve been beaten up and raped after they’ve had to spend much of their money in jail to get their hormones, and try to get their sex changes. The women have tried to fight for their sex changes or to become women. On the women’s liberation and they write ‘STAR,’ not to the women’s groups, they do not write women, they do not write men, they write ‘STAR’ because we're trying to do something for them. I have been to jail. I have been raped. And beaten. Many times! By men, het