Sylvia Rivera, born on July 2 in 1951, was a Latina American queer rights activist, member of the Gay Liberation Front, and community worker from the state of New York.

Rivera, who identified as a "half-sister", participated in demonstrations with the Gay Liberation Front. With her close friend Marsha P. Johnson, Rivera co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a socialist group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens, gay youth, and trans women.

At different times in her life, Rivera battled substance abuse and lived on the streets, largely in the gay homeless community at the Christopher Street docks. Her experiences made her more focused on advocacy for those who, in her view, mainstream society and the assimilationist factions of the LGBT community were leaving behind.

Rivera died during the dawn hours of February 19th, 2002, at St. Vincent's Hospital, of complications from liver cancer. Activist Riki Wilchins said this of her: "In many ways, Sylvia was the Rosa Parks of the modern transgender movement, a term that was not even coined until two decades after Stonewall".

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  • hello_hello [they/them, comrade/them]
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    6 days ago

    and I know that's kind of stupid because it's just dumb cape shit

    Don't beat yourself up over that, The Boys is very much above cape shit (well, not above being lib but you get the point). I think with a show where someone is going to die each episode that they actually made this episode's subplot really land.

    I think death in media has always disturbed me on some level, and it doesn't help when works are structured where a bunch of low level goons get killed/harmed horribly and no one stops to think about it (looking at every shooter game made in the last 20 years).