journalism

The Hairpin Drop Heard Around the World 1969

Mattachine Society account of Stonewall, July 1969. The documented origin of the hairpin vocabulary.

Created by Dick Leitsch.

Earlier connections — what may have informed this work

• The documented history the word carries

  alludes to the event↔ lateralDocumented factTS-HAIR-02

  evermore right-where-you-left-me “right where you left me” — Mid-twentieth-century slang for disclosure or signalling of homosexuality, recorded in historical glossaries and independently noted by the American Historical Association.

Motifs running through this work

• Hairpin

  An ordinary idiom is altered so that the word “hairpin” survives, in a vocabulary with a documented queer history.

People

• Dick Leitsch

  journalist, activist

  Wrote the July 1969 Mattachine Society account of Stonewall.