Transgender Day of Remembrance

Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. A time set aside to acknowledge/mourn those we have lost because their bodies and lives as trans people are still so hated in our societies.

Light a candle, say a prayer, take a moment of silence, whatever it is you do.

And don't forget.

♥

The names of those we have lost this year can be read here:  http://www.transgenderdor.org/memorializing-2012

Brandy Martell

Location: Oakland, California

Cause of Death: Gunshot

Date of Death: April 29th, 2012

Brandy was 37 years old.

Rest in Peace.

Rest in Power.

Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga pardoned!

Malawi: Breaking news – Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga pardoned � bird of paradox: "According to BBC News (and others), Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga have been pardoned and granted immediate release:

A [...] couple who were jailed in Malawi have been pardoned by President Bingu wa Mutharika.

Mr Mutharika, speaking as UN chief Ban Ki-moon visited Lilongwe, said he had ordered their immediate release.

Steven Monjeza, 26, and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 20, were given 14-year jail terms after being convicted of gross indecency and unnatural acts."

And let's just make sure that this is straight for all my readers... Steven and Tiwonge were convicted of "unnatural acts" based on the fact that Malawi officials refused to acknowledge Tiwonge's womanhood and so viewed the two as a "gay couple."

Unfortunately, most of the coverage I've seen takes the Malawi government's position for granted and also discussed Steven and Tiwonge as a "gay couple."

That's really not ok.

If you're not sure just WHY that's so fucked up, please refer to this post by Helen G.

That said, VERY glad to see that they were pardoned!!

So what did I end up presenting on?

So a few weeks ago I wrote about a collaborative project for school which I would be working on.

So what did I end up doing for my portion? Well, I decided that it was important to talk about dynamics online, and how the feminist blogosphere has and continues to reproduce the oppressions faced in "real life" organizing. As just one example of this I discussed Amanda Marcotte's appropriation of bfp's work a couple years ago. Those of you who were there...I'm sure you remember what I'm talking about. For those who weren't there...Sylvia and Gwen break it down (these are two posts I assigned as readings!).

The central article to this ended up being bfp's essay "Immigration at the Front: Challenging the Every Woman Myth in Online Media" from make/shift magazine's second issue (which is, naturally, excellent). I picked this because it seemed to sum up really well the good and the bad about online organizing. The good: reaches people in isolated communities and brings them together, and it's possible to mobilize a lot of people quickly. The bad: tends to address the same "mainstream" interests as other forms of organizing, and marginalizes everyone else, because of our belief in the "every woman."

The group brought up some other stuff (like about the Anonymous attack on feminist blogs, MMORPG's, and Second Life) but these first three articles ended up being the main things I discussed with the class. Since this was primarily our facilitating discussion with the class based on the readings we assigned it wasn't super structured but we covered a lot of topics, like about the unequal power relations between blogs/bloggers, which bloggers benefit monetarily from their work, who is the "every woman" (hint: white middle class able-bodied cis women!), who is marginalized, how people respond to privilege being called out, and online harassment. And overall I felt like things went really well, people were engaged with the conversation and asking questions.

So yeah, I was pretty happy with it.

Vigil TODAY in Lake Merritt

PRESS RELEASE
TIME: Sunday, November 22, 3:30pm
LOCATION: Mac Arthur and Grand Ave. at Lake Merritt
CONTACT: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Liz Latty
PHONE: (510) 282-5223
EMAIL: morethanavigil@gmail.com
BAY AREA COMMUNITY MEMBERS TO HOLD VIGIL FOR QUEER/TRANS TEENS MURDERED IN MARYLAND AND PUERTO RICO

Though it happened a week ago, I just caught up with this story, so here's what happened.

A queer and/or trans teenager in Puerto Rico, Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado, was killed after she was picked up by a man for sex and he discovered her "male genitalia". She has also been reported predominantly to be a "gay male", though as Helen G notes in the link provided that she was dressed as a woman and that her killer seemingly believed her to be one when he picked her up.
Links and more information found here.

Also of note in this case is the way the local police have been commenting on the victim. The former officer in charge of the case had this to say:

“When these type of people get into this and go out into the streets like this, they know this can happen to them.”

Thankfully THAT asshole was taken off the case. We'll see if it gets better on that front from here on.

The same week, in Baltimore, Maryland, queer fifteen-year-old Jason Mattison, Jr., was raped and stabbed to death in his aunt’s home by an adult male, a family friend with whom, according to a Baltimore police spokesperson, Mattison allegedly had a “forced sexual relationship.”

(From the press release of this vigil) More information on this case can be found here.

There are other events and vigils that have been popping up all over the country. Events for Jorge can be found here For Jason, here.

Does one person make a difference?

So I recently read about the newest Miss England at Bitch Blogs and the writer, Mandy Van Deven, asked if the inclusion of a black woman who is openly athletic and ambitious as the number one beauty queen in her country could be seen as feminism at work. My first reaction was a very tentative, "maybe?"

The problem is, women can be included in something without that something (whether it be politics or community leadership or motherhood or beauty pageants) necessarily taking on anything (values, practices, etc.) remotely feminist (much less womanist). We see this all the time, don't we? Women's options for participation in life have been expanded, but only if we play by the rules.

Looking at Rachel Christie's pictures and reading about her, it reminded me of a case I had heard of before: Vanessa Williams.

And the question that came to my mind was: does the inclusion of these Black women really challenge whiteness? Or is it simply more of the aforementioned "play by the rules and we'll let you have this" mentality?

Lo and behold, a mere week later I was assigned a reading for this women's political history class precisely about the Vanessa Williams case. Reading through Sarah Banet-Weiser's essay, I got my answer: a resounding "No".

Pageants have a set of rules they play by, it's called "idealized white womanhood" and while women of color can be included now, it's only by showing white America that "we're just like you".

Banet-Weiser talked about the way specifically Black women (though I would argue this applies to all women of color because they are so severely underrepresented in pageant winners or even contestants) must "pass" while also "eroticizing their difference". In other words, they have to make us (the audience, the, white, audience) want them, while also feeling they could be one of "us". They have to fit a mold and prove to us that they can represent the same "values" as their white pageant sisters.

This played out in a huge way with Vanessa Williams' fall from grace because she broke the rules of proper "American" (read: white) womanhood. She was, in her Penthouse pictures, too sexual and sexually deviant across boundaries of both "appropriate" race and sexuality.

Most importantly, there have been no institutional changes to the pageant since Vanessa Williams became the first Black woman to win the Miss America title. More Black women (and one Asian American woman) have followed in those footsteps, but there is still a very strict formula one must follow to be a beauty queen. Look at the winners before and since, there is definitely a "look" that is deemed "correct". And the behavioral components Banet-Weiser discusses certainly seem to still be strongly in place.

So to me, is Rachel Christie's victory "feminism at work"?

No. Because I have no reason to believe her win will challenge the rules of the pageant, and those rules are markedly anti-womanist/feminist.

Certainly her win is an achievement for a talented and ambitious young Black woman in the UK, and perhaps that's a good thing in of itself (though I had to put that "perhaps" in because I'm unsure if indoctrinating women of color into the cult of white womanhood is really a good thing for anyone). But that doesn't make it feminist.

IDAHO Under Attack

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Gametes and RadFems

It's recently come to light (at least in my little world) just how Transphobic Radical Feminists (as opposed to...other Radical Feminists...like me!) justify their exclusionary attitude toward transwomen, and basically what the Womyn Born Womyn "thing" really means.

They're falling back on biology, and thus a form of the very Essentialism the Radical Feminism I know has spent so much time deconstructing!

That is; a male produces smaller gametes (sperm) and a female produces larger gametes (eggs).

That's it. That's the entire biological definition of what it means to be male and female (and btw, some biologically male animals, like seahorses, for one, are the ones who carry children, and quite a few species don't remain "male" and "female" throughout their life! so, there is a lot in between what biology considers male and what we humans do).

In contrast, "man" and "woman" are social definitions. Each society, from insects, to fish, to mammals, each species has a society, which has gender roles. And many societies have multiple genders (again, from fish, to insects, to mammals, etc.). All of this has developed evolutionarily along with whatever keeps the species going. AKA what keeps them reproducing, and wanting to reproduce, and what keeps their society flourishing.

There are LOTS of really interesting examples of different strategies out there. From fish who have four different genders, with masculine females and feminine males and vice versa who pair up with whoever will work best with them. To our closest genetic relatives, who couldn't be more socially different, chimpanzees and bonobos. Chimps use a violent, patriarchal, loner sort of society to keep it together. Bonobos use extremely peaceful, and extremely sexual (tons of sex, between EVERYONE), matriarchal, communal society. And lots, lots, lots more...

My best guess is that this position is that since gender is a social construct, it should be broken down completely and done away with. That we will all be simply human, and be as masculine or feminine or (I assume) androgyne as we want to be. Or, it has been suggested there will be "no gender at all", which, personally, I think is unrealistic and rather silly. All animals have gender, it's not necessarily a bad thing.

I have also seen it said that Radical Feminism is only concerned with freeing females from oppression. Not women. Females. So, only those of us who naturally produce the larger gametes (this is why women with hysterectomies don't count as "non-women"). Of course, gods know what role this leaves for the intersex; the gametes they produce aren't necessarily telling of what their secondary sexual characteristics will be, so there's no easy place to put them in this construct.

Personally, I don't think this definition is a good one to go by for a social justice movement. The whole point of SOCIAL justice is to make society more just, and denying people's gender identities doesn't do that. We can affirm people's identities and still work against gender stereotyping that assaults all WOMEN. IMO we should be working to change that social definition, GENDER, "man" and "woman", not fighting against "male/female", why in the world does it matter to society (where we all live) what gametes we produce?? I don't see men ask women about the state of their eggs before raping them!

Far more important to me, what does it MEAN to be a "man"? What does it MEAN to be a "woman"? What does it MEAN to be neither, or both? What does it mean to be a masculine woman, or a feminine man? This is society, this is something we have control over, who "counts" as a man or a woman is up to us, the people who make up society. Who produces what size gametes doesn't tell us anything about a person, what they've gone through in life, who they are, it's a definition scientists use to differentiate between animals they're studying, even they say that's all it's good for (Evolutionary Rainbow, Joan Roughgarden).

But maybe gamete size is tangible. Maybe it's something solid that can unite us under one banner. "Woman" is so potentially malleable! It's maybe even confusing!

So what.

Life is confusing.

Someone tells me she is a woman, she lives as a woman, is treated by society as a woman, is in her own head and heart and soul a woman? She's a woman to me. I don't give a shit if her body produces eggs or sperm, that's not what matters. And same goes for a man.

Reducing complicated social problems to a biological black and white might be convenient, but it's wrong.

Transgender Day of Rememberance 2008

Yesterday was the TDoR. I was in school and didn't manage to get to a computer to make a post, but I would like to do so today. I would like to believe that the argument against Trans Murder Apology I wrote was a good memorial, but the dead deserve to be remembered too.

Link

*Warning, some descriptions of cause of death below*
Remembering our dead:

Kellie Telesford
Location: Thornton Heath, UK
Cause of Death: Strangled
Date of Death: November 21, 2007

Brian McGlothin (Liked to dress in women’s clothes)
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
Cause of Death: Shot in the head with an automatic rifle by Antonio Williams who is serving a six year sentence. Brian was 25 years old.
Date of Death: December 23, 2007

Gabriela Alejandra Albornoz
Location: Santiago, Chile
Cause of Death: Attacked and stabbed
Date of Death: December 28, 2007

Patrick Murphy (Found Dressed in Women’s clothes)
Location: Albuquerque, NM
Cause of Death: Shot Several times in the head
Date of Death: January 8, 2008
Patrick was 39 years old.

Stacy Brown
Location: Baltimore, MD
Cause of Death: Shot in the head
Date of Death: January 8, 2008
Stacy was 30 years old.

Adolphus Simmons
Location: Charleston, SC
Cause of Death: Shot to Death (Aldophus was 18 yrs. old)
Date of Death: January 21, 2008

Fedra (a known transvestite)
Location: Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia
Cause of Death: Was found lying face up in a pool of blood, cause of death was not reported.
Date of Death: January 22, 2008

Ashley Sweeney
Location: Detroit, Michigan
Cause of Death: Shot in the head
Date of Death: February 4, 2008
The age of Ashley Sweeney is unknown, she was only described as a young transgender woman in a press release.

Sanesha (Talib) Stewart
Location: Bronx, NY
Cause of Death: Stabbed to Death
Date of Death: February 10, 2008
Sanesha was 25 years old.

Lawrence King
Location: Oxnard, California
Cause of Death: Shot to death by a classmate because he liked to wear
women’s clothes.
Date of Death: February 12, 2008
Lawrence was 15 years old.

Simmie Williams Jr.
Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Cause of Death: Shot to death, Simmie was found wearing women’s clothing.
Date of Death: February 22, 2008
Simmie was 17 years old.

Luna (no last name reported)
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Cause of Death: Beaten to death and tossed into a dumpster.
Date of Death: March 15, 2008

Lloyd Nixon
Location: West Palm Beach, Florida
Cause of Death: Beaten in the head with a brick.
Date of Death: April 16, 2008
Lloyd was 45 years old.

Felicia Melton-Smyth
Location: Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
Cause of Death: brutally stabbed to death by Francisco Javier Hollos, who said he killed her because she would not pay for sex. Felicia was an HIV activist on vacation from Wisconsin.
Date of Death: May 26, 2008

Silvana Berisha
Location: Hamburg, Germany
Cause of Death: Stabbed to Death
Date of Death: June 24, 2008

Ebony (Rodney) Whitaker
Location: Memphis, Tennessee
Cause of Death: Shot
Date of Death:July 1, 2008
Ebony was 20 yrs. old.

Rosa Pazos
Location: Sevilla, Spain
Cause of Death: Stabbed.
Date of Death: July 11, 2008

Juan Carlos Aucalle Coronel
Location: Lombardi, Italy
Cause of Death severely beaten causing fractures to the head and face before being run over by a car.
Date of Death July 14, 2008
Juan Carlos was 35 years old.

Angie Zapata
Location: Greeley, Colorado
Cause of Death: She was found in her home with two severe fractures in her skull. Angie was murdered by 31 year old, Alan Ray Andrade.
Date of Death: July 17, 2008
Angie was 18 years old.

Jaylynn L. Namauu
Location: Makiki Honolulu, Hawaii
Cause of Death: Stabbed to Death
Date of Death: July 17, 2008
Jaylynn was 35 years old.

Samantha Rangel Brandau
Location: Milan, Italy
Cause of Death: Beaten, gang raped, stabbed and left for dead.
Date of Death: July 29, 2008
Samantha was 30 years old.

Nakhia (Nikki) Williams
Location: Louisville, Kentucky
Cause of Death: Found near the dumpster next to her home, she had been shot.
Date of Death: August 20, 2008
Nikki was 29 years old.

Ruby Molina
Location: Sacramento, California
Cause of Death: Drowned
Date of Death: September 21, 2008
Ruby’s naked body was found floating in the American river.
She was 22 years old.

Aimee Wilcoxson
Location: Aurora, Colorado
Cause of Death: Undetermined (Police have yet to reveal cause)
Date of Death: November 3, 2008
Aimee was found dead in her bed.
She was 34 years old.

Duanna Johnson
Location: Memphis, Tennessee
Cause of Death: Shot
Date of Death: November 9, 2008
Duanna was found dead in the middle of the street. She was 42 years old.

Dilek Ince
Location: Ankara, Turkey
Cause of Death: Shot in the back of the head
Date of Death: November 11, 2008

Teish (Moses) Cannon
Location: Syracuse, New York
Cause of Death: Shot
Date of Death: November 14, 2008
Teish was 22 years old.

Ali
Location: Iraq
Cause of Death: Executed (for being transgender)
Date of Death: 2008, Month is Unknown
Video of Ali before she was executed: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2tDVtjQNfQ

*IMPORTANT NOTE - There were 2 other Iraqi, transgender women who were executed at the same time as Ali.

May they rest in peace.

Trans Murder Apology

Where to begin?

Forums can be such catalysts for thoughtful articulations! Arguing with people has always been much more fruitful for my brain than analyzing by myself. Recently, as in, over the last two or three days, there has been a conversation going regarding the murder of Angie Zapata.

Now, any feminist who's been around the block has seen this exact same rationale leveled at women who are raped, "well if she didn't [whatever she did] then [that] wouldn't have happened to her!" And we call this rape apology.

I don't know if there is a term for this that I simply haven't come across yet, but there should be a term for the blame I see leveled at trans people for "getting themselves murdered" which is basically what I have been dealing with. In contemplating all the overlapping issues I could think of, I came up with a few things, which I'd like to share with y'all.

There seemed to be a few different concepts underlying people's responses to Angie's murder. The most prominent, which I have seen just about every time this topic comes up anywhere, is that she was "lying", she "deceived" the man she slept with, and don't we all get angry when we're lied to?!

I think it's a bit more complex than that, personally.

We have a situation where say, a transsexual (or intersexed) woman, who has not had bottom surgery, is getting sexually involved with a heterosexual, cissexual man.

Now, this woman is presenting as a woman because she in fact, is a woman. If she still has a penis in some form that doesn't make her a liar for presenting as a woman.

The cissexual man assumed this woman wouldn't have a penis, but if he got involved with a cissexual woman who had a hysterectomy he would likewise assume she had a uterus. This is because these are the typical bodily configurations of a woman. They are what we are taught to expect a woman to consist of. But they are not the only configurations of a woman. Her not telling him of her atypical bodily configuration doesn't make her a liar. She just happens to be a woman with a penis.

The real issue in any of these types of cases is with the murderer involved. It is he who is reacting to his assumptions being incorrect.

Now, there are two ways to react, assuming he is not attracted to women with intersex or transsexual histories. He can say "I'm sorry, I assumed you were cissexual and this doesn't work for me" and go on his merry way (I will refrain from getting into the latent unaddressed issues I believe such men have with their own sexualities) or a variation along the lines of "I'm sorry, I not sexually attracted to people with a penis" (I don't assign such issues to this response), OR he can go all irrationally rageful, as in the Zapata case, and beat or kill this woman for... Well, whatever exactly is going on in his head at the time. It sure seems to me like what these men really get angry about are those latent issues I mentioned earlier. Like somehow being attracted to a woman with a penis, or someone with an intersexed or male-bodied history makes you GAY, OMG.

This is why the issue really, really, never lies with the T or I person.

Yes there is baggage that comes along with ones sexuality and gender. Some guy might see my hairy legs and get instantly turned off. Fine he's not my type. We make these kinds of negotiations in establishing relationships constantly. But if I jump into bed with some guy and he discovers a much loathed hairy bush, he's not going to kill me for it.

Why?

Because it's understood that a part of dating is dealing with the fact that not everything one assumes about another person is going to be true. Ever. That is the nature of building a relationship, even a purely sexual one. Additionally, other information is routinely left out of discussion before sexual relations take place, and that discovery of that information, even important life impacting sorts of things, does not result in murder.

Taking that into account, there must be a unique element to the information of T/I history to the person hearing it, something that might cause such reactions.

I think Radha [yes she was there too] hit the nail on the head, that unique element is homophobia.

The man in this case is not upset that Angie didn't share information with him. Certainly a man you've been married to for 20 years probably IS upset at that, but that's not the case we're discussing here. The man in this story is upset because she "lied" to him, she "fooled" him into think she was a "real woman."

It's not her words or her lack of words that creates this "lie", it is her very existence, and more importantly, his response to her existence. He is attracted to her, and by his definition she is not a "real" woman, but in fact a man. Thus he was attracted to a man, in his mind. If this is what he is in fact responding to, as I'm arguing, then his resulting rage is rooted in homophobia.

These responses from these men aren't about the T/I person. They are purely about themselves and their fear of what their attraction to a person with an intersex/trans history means in relation to their self identity as a heterosexual male.

Which is why my cissexual husband wouldn't respond this way. I discussed this with him, setting up a scenario wherein he meets an attractive woman, they go home together and when things get naked or shortly before, he discovers she has a penis. I asked him what he would do. He said he would feel a mixture of "disappointed" and "terribly amused". Amused at this "oops" moment, because he is simply not sexually attracted to penis. Disappointed that he's not actually getting laid that night.

I asked him if he would feel this woman lied to him or deceived him. No, he said.

This is not to laud my husband. But it was mentioned in the thread also, that cis-men don't need to examine their sexuality in depth the way transpeople do. I couldn't possibly disagree more. In fact I think het-cis guys are the ones who MOST need to examine their sexuality, because (as my husband says too) their homophobia is directly rooted in their NOT doing so.

This is why hubby generally dislikes other het-cis guys (and actually actively prefers the company of gay men). The rampant, thinly veiled homophobia bothers him. The lack of security in their identity and sexuality grates on him. And he attributes it directly to the fact that they don't ever think about their sexuality, don't entertain the possibility that they might not be "all the way" straight. They can't even think about it because it causes how they view themselves to shift so much.

Whereas he did think about it. It occurred to him one day to be curious about the possibility and so he went out and watched some gay porn, studied it, absorbed his reactions to it. What did he discover? Did nothing for him, he envied the guys for their bodies a little bit, and then he went on his merry way.

I think if every "hetero" guy did this same thing, two things would happen. 1. There would be far fewer closeted gay men in the world (:P) and 2. us women would not be abused or murdered by them anymore (because I think misogyny and homo/transphobia are inseparably linked but that's an argument for another time), at the very least gay men and trans women in all their variations wouldn't be. No more Angie Zapata's and Matthew Shepard's and Duanna Johnson's etc etc...

Another element going on in these conversations is that they are simplistic victim blaming. I don't care if you preface your statement with "Now I'm not BLAMING this person for getting themselves murdered...BUT". Whatever follows is some variation of victim blaming!! "Don't swim with the sharks and expect your ass not to get bitten". Whatever way you try and spin statements like this you are putting responsibility for preventing crime against this woman on HER, and by it's very nature that diverts some blame from the perpetrator.

This is usually followed by "well I want people to stay safe! this is a dangerous world we live in!!"

Well, yah. Do any of us REALLY not know that though? Do we need YOU to tell us this?? Don't we as women learn very quickly what actions we need to perform, and what activities to avoid, to keep ourselves safe? Aren't those beaten into our heads on a regular basis from birth?

We are all conscious of the compromises we make in our lives to keep ourselves safe. And we shouldn't think about those compromises as anything but. I know they are, I'm sure you know they are.

And the bottom line, we shouldn't HAVE to make compromises to "stay safe". That is idealistic, I know, but letting the conversations in response to these events revolve around us and how we can stay safe we are in some ways letting abusers off the hook, when the conversation should be revolving solely around THEM and their atrocious actions.

Until there is a resounding "HOW DARE YOU" response to stories like Angie's from the mainstream I feel like I have to just yell it louder to compensate, and going immediately into "stay safe" reinforce exactly what they want...For us to continue making adjustments FOR THEM, thinking how WE can adjust OUR behavior FOR THEM, instead of insisting to be treated like human beings BY them.

When it's doing the latter, and calling men out on their homophobia and misogyny, which will eventually, gods willing, make it possible for us to live in, take up space in, the world without making those compromises.

Homophobia and the Black Community

From the Diary of an Anxious Black Woman

I do think we need to consider the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality to begin to dismantle attitudes, roadblocks, and barriers that have kept marginal groups divided. After all, post-emancipation, there was a reason why the first thing freed slaves wanted to do was reunite with their families, forcibly separated during slavery, and why they married in droves. There's a reason why the romance of the heterosexual family, who in turn serve as a powerful symbol as the backbone of every community, is so powerful. So powerful, in fact, that it has become imperative for LGBT communities to fight for marriage equality today. The romance of marriage and family is the romance of acceptance and respectability, and every marginal community has fought for that acceptance and respectability because of the belief that this is the key to equality. And, there must be some truth to this for why were white supremacists so opposed to black families that they worked hard to keep them broken down? There must be some truth to this, for why are heterosexists working overtime to prevent lesbians and gays from gaining full access to marriage, and all the economic, social, and cultural benefits that accompany it?

Black people's sexuality has been attacked for so long, that church, family, and community have been a refuge. It's a difficult thing, then, to give up the romance of the heterosexual nuclear family by supporting what has been preached to them as "sin." This "family" is supposed to protect our respectability and our acceptance. A significant number of black people whom I've come across, keep harping on how proud they are, not only that Obama was elected, but that he had his black wife and children with him. I am quite sure that unified heterosexual family portrait signaled something else for LGBT communities in California, Florida, and Arkansas (where they also lost the right to adopt children), who lost their right to marry the same night this First Family was embraced and celebrated.

And, yet, this same First Family has been on the receiving end of many death threats, despite this acceptance, which suggests that certain privileges and power - which are preserved for white heteropatriarchy - are now being powerfully contested. What is a powerful symbol for one group is a threat for another.

Protest!

It was fun! Not a lot to tell, I was out on the street, there were many of us, two of "them" and it sounded like the rally itself was having a good ol' time but I had a hard time hearing it. I did see the beginning, where they did some smudging, which was awesome, I could smell the sage all the way at the back. And they did some drumming and then again at the end which was nice. We had two-spirit representatives as a part of that, which was pretty cool to me because it seems like transgender folks have gotten sort of elided in the fight. Overall it felt nice to be out with people, creating collective energy, and there was a LOT of honking for us. Honking from people of all ages AND ethnic backgrounds tyvm.

Oh, the sign I finally decided to go with! I got a poster board that was orange on one side and purple on the other. On the orange side I wrote "'Defending TRADITIONAL Marriage'?? Are you bringing back DOWRIES and MARITAL RAPE too?? No thanks!" On the purple side it said "Obama was AGAINST 8!" \o/ One of my favorite signs said "Don't you want Dumbledore to be happy? Let him marry!" I spent most of the time chatting with the two women standing next to me, one an obvious middle class Cali born white woman like me and the other an immigrant from Kenya who said after talking with her particular community after the voting she found a lot of them didn't really understand what they were voting for and said we really need to go into the community and educate to change that. They were both cool. The only thing that bothered me was this one older man of apparently Asian descent who kept yelling at the guys across the street "religion is the root of all evil!" That made me sad because I don't think it's true. The pronouncement did get me thinking about something I read at The Wild Hunt today though, something I think we forget in all this is that some religions are having THEIR beliefs trampled by other religions in this fight.

Overall though, good times.


*EDIT* I'm sharing pictures through my Tumblr: Rags'n'Bones as I find them!

Colbert - Savage Prop 8

Just Stop

Stop blaming Blacks and Latinos and Asians for Prop 8 passing.

WE failed. Those of us working on the campaign. We didn't do a good enough job. Period.

We spent too much time preaching to the white middle class SF and LA choir and not enough knocking on doors outside of our neighborhoods and engaging with people different than us. When the Pro-8 people were knocking on those doors and telling people LIES we weren't there to correct it. It's really pretty fucking simple.

Ad after ad told voters that without Prop 8, their churches would be forced to perform same-sex unions and be stripped of their tax-exempt status; that schools would teach their children to practice homosexuality; and, perhaps most effective, that a smiling Barack Obama had said, "I'm not in favor of gay marriage." This last bit went out in a flier by the Yes on 8 campaign, targeting black households.

What did we do about that? Did we have a flier with Obama's face on it stating that he was strongly opposed to Prop 8 itself?? Or were we over-confident we could win by doing the same old thing?

Andrea Shorter, a black lesbian volunteer for the No on 8 campaign, told me that the outreach to the African-American community began in earnest a week ago. "What's happened is that there's been an outcry from communities of color, including African-American communities, who say, 'Include us!' Now there's a GOTV strategy, but for some it seems last minute," she said in an interview before the election. Another No on 8 activist, Karin Wang, told me at the City Hall rally that when Asian Pacific Islander groups went to buy ads in Chinese and Korean newspapers, they were informed that Yes on 8 had been renting space for weeks.

Learn from this Equality Campaign, learn from it and do better next time. Cuz there will be a next time.

Who Cares if a Few Dykes Get Banned from Digg?

Via

Got your attention? Good. Recently I’ve become aware of a strange situation at Digg, where a few quality lesbian articles have been systematically buried and lesbian Diggers have been banned, with no response from Digg. Why should you care?

After reading this story, I got scared. I’m not a lesbian, but I care, because this is exactly the sort of things, we internet dwellers should be worried about. As content creators and consumers, we can’t allow de-democratization of the web. It will be the end of free speech on the web.

“It’s Democratic- the Majority of Diggers Don’t Care for this Content”
I’ve spoken with a few people on the subject, for the past couple of days, and this objection came up every time. I disagree. These stories never reached much over 20 Diggs, it would only take as many buries to make them disappear. The option to report a story also makes it quite easy to make it go away. To strengthen my point, that there is an alternative Digg, just type the term “gay rights” in the Digg search box, and look through an endless list of pro-gay stories, (too bad more than 95% haven’t risen above 2 Diggs).

“Well if it Wasn’t Porn, Why Did the Digg Staff Block it?”
That’s a great question! What the hell is the Digg team doing, blocking none-offensive material? And why would it ban its own users, if they were on the up-and-up? Stories by Gay Parents, a sub-blog at Parents.com, surly couldn't be porn, right?

So I come to a worrying conclusion: There are a few homophobic Diggers out there, burying stories and reporting gay Diggers, and Digg is either irresponsibly banning without checking the facts, or actively supporting homophobia. Either way, they are not dealing with this issue as I would, personally, see fit, of a social network.

It Scares The Shit Out of Me
And that’s why I care. Because if it’s gays, now, who’s to say blacks aren’t next? Asians? Hispanics? Jews? Women? And maybe it won’t be just Digg? Maybe all the other social networks? Maybe the whole of the web?

Am I over reacting? You tell me. Is there a difference between banning lesbians with lesbian-interest stories, or banning Jews with Jewish-interest stories? Diggers have told me of hateful, disturbing comments. A Short search could lead you to this seemingly innocent example.

Ban Digg!
Many of the gay community have opted to ban Digg, in protest. And my initial reaction was quite similar. But after turning it over in my mind, knowing I’m writing this article, an interesting idea popped into my head:

Don’t ban Digg!

Think of a workers strike: What would be more effective? If the strikers sat home and waited to be begged by their company to come back to work. Or if the strikers gathered around their company buildings, chanting and singing, till their throats are hoarse and they can’t sing any more?

I took the liberty of compiling a 100 Digg articles, which are of gay interest. I want every one reading this article, to follow these links and Digg every one of these stories. These are quality gay-targeted content- no porn, no spam. Some are fun, some are sad, some are political. I want to see gay stories take the front page of Digg! Maybe that’ll get the Digg team to acknowledge the situation, which has been inflaming gays and straights alike.

Don’t ban Digg- give it another voice! I’m sure not every Digg user is a homophobic. I know for a fact, there are plenty of us out there, who love to read this content, or at least want to know that the content is not being censored.

Please follow the link at top to her original post, and link list!!!!

I think this is important shit and we should work together on it!

The Closet of Fear

Go check out this amazing story about works for the LGBTQ community in Iraq. It's eye opening and moving.

THE CLOSET OF FEAR: The systemic execution of gays and lesbians in Iraq.

The nature of the work to save gays and lesbians is so secretive that it cannot be coordinated through the Iraqi government or the NGO coordinating council. All the gays and lesbians I talked to confirmed that there are security risks at all levels; it seems unlikely they would all share the same unfounded paranoia, so I believe them. Unable to coordinate relief efforts through the NGO coordinating agency or the Ministry of Civil Society, gays and lesbians are left entirely on their own to operate a rogue underground railroad.

The otherwise personable and even liberal Iraqis and Jordanians with whom I talked, found homosexuality extremely unpleasant to even talk about. Faiza, an Iraqi refugee who is helping to organize empowerment programs for women in Jordan and Iraq, was dismayed when I told her I was looking to work with a relief agency to help gays and lesbians. "Why they help lesbians? Widows and orphans need help, and they help lesbian???" she said in broken English. Her perspective was one of complete disdain for any group of crazy westerners who would actually want to help gays and lesbians amidst such an enormous humanitarian crisis.

I also want to take this opportunity to call your attention to a new feature. I have added a 10 item list of posts I have recently read and wanted to share. It's near the bottom of the column to the right, and as I'm reading through my Google reader I simply click "share" and it it moved there. It's a nice way for you all to see what I'm reading any enjoying, as I simply can't blog coherently about everything I'd like to.