QUEERING THE GAME OF LIFE

tw racism, homophobia, violence: a black lesbian woman in dallas, texas was murdered last week, is still unidentified

aranyerdinratri:

cosmopolitan-fascist:

On July 23, 2012 at approximately 11:03 a.m. the Ellis County Sheriff’s Office was notified of a possible deceased person in a wooded area around the 1400 block of Black Champ Road in the unincorporated area of Ellis County. Deputies were dispatched to the location and upon arrival located a deceased person lying in a heavily wooded area.

She is approximately 5’4 inches tall and weighing approximately 115 pounds. She is believed to be of African-American heritage. She was wearing a black or dark gray tank top, blue jean shorts and white Nike tennis shoes with purple shoe laces. It is believed she may have disappeared on or after the early afternoon of July 17, 2012.

The Sheriff’s Office is releasing an artist rendition of what the female may have looked when she was alive along with the tattoos found on her person.

The Sheriff’s Office reached out to members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in the Dallas area as well as members of GetEQUAL TX. This leads us to believe that there is a possibility that she was part of the LGBT community.

GetEQUAL TX plans to work with police and the community to find justice for this woman and her family.

“If this was a lesbian woman, this makes a third lesbian woman of color brutally attacked in Texas within a month’s time”, said C.D Kirven, an organizer with GetEQUAL, “as a member of the LGBT community and a woman of color, this is not just an attack on this woman but on me and others in my community”

“The recent attacks towards women, especially lesbian women, is an attempt to silence and terrify the LGBT community”, Said Tiffani Bishop, Central Texas Lead Organizer for GetEQUAL TX, “Crimes based in gender and sexual orientation bias are a direct reflection of sexism and heterosupremacy within our society. We must, as a community, stand in solidarity to put an end to these violent crimes.”

“Violence against a member of a community directly effects all members of that community”, said, Michael Diviesti, Co-State Lead Organizer for GetEQUAL TX, “We begin to put ourselves in the place of our brothers and sisters who have suffered this violence. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.”

Any person who may have information regarding the identity of this woman is requested to contact Investigator Joe Fitzgerald at 972.825.4928.

Go here to see artist’s rendition and distinguishing marks

Activist friend posted this, please reblog especially if you live in Dallas.

This is like a 30 minute drive from where I live.

(Source: le-kif-kif, via kadalkavithaigal)

sinidentidades:

A man in Oklahoma City was nearly killed when his car blew up in front of him last night in what appears to be a hate crime. According to Jon Ferguson, he was woken up in the middle of the night by his car alarm, and when he went outside it was being vandalized by several people. Upon approaching them, the vandals threw something into the car, making it explode. Ferguson was rushed to the hospital with first and second degree burns.

The remains of the car suggest that the attack was a hate crime — the vandals spray-painted the homophobic slur “fag” on the hood. Ferguson, who is openly gay, spoke about how the threat of violence has made him doubt whether coming out was a good idea:

FERGUSON:It’s almost not worth being proud of who you are and trying to show you’re gay because stuff like this really does happen. I’ve always seen it on the news that kids are dying and stuff because they’re being bullied, and you’re 25 years old and something like this happens to you. It’s almost not worth it, and you understand why kids don’t come out of the closet.

The case is currently being investigated as an act of arson, not a hate crime. News 9 reported that the Oklahoma City Fire and Police Department will continue investigations if they think a hate crime was committed.

TW for hate crime

loobypls:

Today my hometown was struck by a disgusting hardship.

A woman this afternoon was found by a neighbor, bleeding and naked. She was attacked in her home because she was gay. Two or more men broke into her home through the basement and proceeded to tag her basement. They found the homeowner, who is an open lesbian, and stabbed, assaulted, and carved “dyke” into her chest. They attempted to burn her house to the ground, but the gas only sparked. Somehow, this woman (who remains anonymous until she decides to come out on her own time) was able to escape. She was found naked, bound with zip ties, and bloody. She is still alive and in the hospital. A candle light vigil was held in her name tonight, where more than 500 people from Lincoln and surrounding cities and states joined to talk about the hate and to pay homage to the victim.

A recovery fund has been set up to help her cover medical bills and anything she may need. That link can be found here, along with a link from the original news story.

http://starcitypride.org/victim-recovery-fund/

http://journalstar.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/hundreds-attend-vigil-after-reported-hate-crime/article_d0892b58-9ec9-566c-8b66-bb0a032b8e03.html

Notes: Article taken directly from the Lincoln Journal Star website

Pictures are courtesy of Lincoln Journal Star and Steve Andel Photography. I do not own any rights to anything posted.

(via sinidentidades)

androphilia:

Onur Yürüyüşü 2012 (İstanbul LGBT Pride March 2012)

(via kadalkavithaigal)

sinidentidades:

DOJ accepts ruling that transgender bias is illegal

The Department of Justice (DOJ) accepted Monday a ruling from Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that claims gender identity discrimination is a type of sex discrimination that is illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

According to Metro Weekly, the April 20th ruling from the EEOC was based from a complaint brought by the Transgender Law Center (TLC) on behalf of Mia Macy, a transgender woman living in California who felt the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) denied her employment with the agency after learning of her transition.

The ATF, which is a part of the DOJ, sent a letter to Macy last Friday that will investigate her claims of discrimination. National Center for Transgender Equality executive director Mara Keisling told The Raw Story how much of a turning point decision the ruling was.

“It’s really great,” Keisling. “It’s an amazing tool, it’s common sense and we’ve already seen a lot of employers are taking [it to] the heart, doing what they have to do to be in compliance.”

Keisling also indicated that it was “absolutely” too early to gauge how many employers are abiding by the DOJ’s ruling instead of challenging it.  

(via ianishollywood)

hummussexual:

marsofthemiddleeast:

gay-men:

A photo from the Wipeout Homophobia Facebook group. A (straight as it happens) soldier raises the gay pride flag in Afghanistan. In the words of his wife “this is not photoshopped. It actually happened”.

FUCK YES!

Homonationalism is described as the point of collusion of homosexuality and US patriotism that depends on the otherization of the terrorist.

Homonationalism
Puar’s term to describe the process by which US national citizenship is extended to some lesbians, gays, and queers. This term draws heavily upon Lisa Duggan’s homonormativity, which we have already discussed in this class as a means of envisioning queer possibilities on the terms of heteronormativity. These strategies are inevitably built on exclusion in the name of a new ideal glbt figure. Homonationalism works to theorize the point of “collusion” between homosexuality and US patriotism, aligned against the terrorist. 
Gay people began to perform nationalism in a certain way after 9/11. The symbolism of the flag appeared at gay bars and parades while other prominent gays favored US intervention in the region (70). Homosexual aligned themselves with an us vs them mentality and argued for inclusion based on the exclusion of terrorists and Arabs. They are complicit in racist construction (71).
Puar is also concerned, as is Duggan, about the role of consumption in offering admittance to the nation. She specifically looks to the gay tourism industry that is fueled by white, middle to upper class gays and lesbians who are able to access those services and fit within the national myth of consumption. Inclusion within the nation is based on patterns of consumption (77).

“What I aim to demonstrate in this article is that through this normativizing apparatus the war on terror has rehabilitated some— clearly not all or most—lesbians, gays, and queers1 to US national citizenship within a spatial-temporal domain I am invoking as ‘homo-nationalism’, short for ‘homonormative nationalism’.” (68)

“I argue that the Orientalist invocation of the ‘terrorist’ is one discursive tactic that disaggregates US national gays and queers from racial and sexual ‘others’, foregrounding a collusion between homosexuality and American nationalism that is generated both by national rhetorics of patriotic inclusion and by gay and queer subjects themselves: homo-nationalism.” (68)

“As national identity is reoriented towards excellence in consumption rather than public civic political participation, gay tourists are representative of a form of US exceptionalism expressed through patriotic consumption designed to recover the American nation’s psychic and economic health.” (77)

(via kadalkavithaigal)

velocicrafter:

lgbtlaughs:

Picture of an Indian man’s New York cab license. His name is Ram Amandeep.

[via hemoneyjourney]

Really, LGBTLaughs? Dehumanising racist jokes? Really? You think it’s okay to make fun of someone’s name because it’s from a tradition different from yours & so it “sounds funny”, yeah? Most racists would.

(via dammitcaleb-deactivated20130328)

"So what is queer violence? Queer violence is the way queer people would rather assume I am a gay man in drag or a cis lesbian when I’m at their club event. Queer violence is the way in which anything that appears straight, such as when I hold my boyfriend’s hand, is coded as privileged and fucking up their radical queer spaces. Queer violence is the way in which cis queers rewrite history so that Stonewall stands for queer liberation instead of ticked off trannies fighting against police brutality. Queer violence is the way in which the queer community will get up in arms about anything they claim as homophobic, but still don’t know what transphobia looks like."

- Queer People are not my People by Transcreature

really, really important food for thought.

(via garconniere)

Why doesn’t this have more notes?

(via bowtiesandflapperdresses)

(via 24hoursremain-deactivated201204)

Gay black youths go from attacked to attackers

notime4yourshit:

Whenever there’s trouble around the Chinatown and Gallery Place Metro stations in the District, the finger of blame often points to a most unusual group of suspects: a black gay gang called Check It.

Depending on whom you talk to, they’re just a bunch of mischievous gender benders and drama queens, vulnerable gay youths seeking safety in numbers. Or, they’re one of the largest, more aggressive gangs in the city.

To hear the leader of Check It tell it, there may be some truth to both.

“I just got tired of people beating on me and calling me faggie,” Tayron Bennett, 21, told me recently. He’d helped to organize Check It while a student at Hine Junior High School. Other gay youths from his Trinidad neighborhood in Northeast soon joined, followed by gay youths from throughout the city.

D.C. police estimate that Check It has a core membership of about 20 and counts between 50 and 100 others as “associates.”

“At first, I tried fighting bullies one-on-one, but they don’t fight fair; they fight two and three on one,” Bennett said. So the youths got together and “started carrying mace, knives, brass knuckles and stun guns, and if somebody messed with one of us then all of us would gang up on them.”

Check It.

Read More

(via dammitcaleb-deactivated20130328)

The harsh reality is that whether they possess a J.D. or a GED, members of the African-American transgender community face severe discrimination, according to the recent study Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (pdf).The survey, the first of its kind, was a collaboration between the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Black Justice Coalition. It collected data from more than 6,500 transgender Americans and found that all transgender people face severe bias ranging from housing and health care to education and employment.

But when researchers took a deeper look at the discrimination that the black respondents faced (pdf) — all 381 of them — the data jumped out at them. “What was really poignant were these stark differences. In every case, black respondents fared worse than the nonblack respondents in the national survey,” says Darlene Nipper, deputy executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “This is because black transgender people face anti-transgender bias coupled with structural and institutionalized racism.”

(via kadalkavithaigal)

Family of Black Man Sues Whites in Killing

notime4yourshit:

The lawsuit makes public for the first time the names of all seven people who had piled into the two vehicles that night, charging that while some were directly responsible for assaulting and killing Mr. Anderson, others were negligent because they acted as lookouts and did not try to help Mr. Anderson.

One of the people yelled “white power” during the attack, and others used a racial slur and bragged about the killing, according to the investigators.

The district attorney for Hinds County, Robert Shuler Smith, has said he will try to implicate other teenagers when he takes the case to a grand jury, expected to happen this month.

The F.B.I. has also gotten involved, with civil rights investigators helping Mr. Smith piece together the case, which was hampered early on by missing evidence and holes in some initial police work.

Mr. Smith has said he intends to prosecute the case as a hate crime, which comes into play during the sentencing phase. If Mr. Dedmon is convicted of capital murder and the prosecutors can prove that the crime was committed because of the victim’s race, the sentence may be doubled. The prosecutors have not decided whether to seek the death penalty for Mr. Dedmon.

The victim’s family has created the James Craig Anderson Foundation for Racial Tolerance, but has not spoken much publicly about Mr. Anderson’s death. In an interview with The New York Times last month, family members described Mr. Anderson as a good country cook, a gifted gardener and always genial. They said he liked his job on the assembly line at the Nissan plant, which he had held for about seven years.

“If you met him, the first thing you were going to see was that grand-piano smile,” said his eldest sister, Barbara Anderson Young, who is one of the plaintiffs.

James Bradfield, Mr. Anderson’s partner of 17 years, is not a plaintiff. Under Mississippi law, same-sex partners have no claim in civil actions like this, Mr. Dees said.

There was no indication that Mr. Anderson’s sexual orientation was a factor in the crime.

Read More

(via dammitcaleb-deactivated20130328)

Family of Black Man Sues Whites in Killing

notime4yourshit:

The lawsuit makes public for the first time the names of all seven people who had piled into the two vehicles that night, charging that while some were directly responsible for assaulting and killing Mr. Anderson, others were negligent because they acted as lookouts and did not try to help Mr. Anderson.

One of the people yelled “white power” during the attack, and others used a racial slur and bragged about the killing, according to the investigators.

The district attorney for Hinds County, Robert Shuler Smith, has said he will try to implicate other teenagers when he takes the case to a grand jury, expected to happen this month.

The F.B.I. has also gotten involved, with civil rights investigators helping Mr. Smith piece together the case, which was hampered early on by missing evidence and holes in some initial police work.

Mr. Smith has said he intends to prosecute the case as a hate crime, which comes into play during the sentencing phase. If Mr. Dedmon is convicted of capital murder and the prosecutors can prove that the crime was committed because of the victim’s race, the sentence may be doubled. The prosecutors have not decided whether to seek the death penalty for Mr. Dedmon.

The victim’s family has created the James Craig Anderson Foundation for Racial Tolerance, but has not spoken much publicly about Mr. Anderson’s death. In an interview with The New York Times last month, family members described Mr. Anderson as a good country cook, a gifted gardener and always genial. They said he liked his job on the assembly line at the Nissan plant, which he had held for about seven years.

“If you met him, the first thing you were going to see was that grand-piano smile,” said his eldest sister, Barbara Anderson Young, who is one of the plaintiffs.

James Bradfield, Mr. Anderson’s partner of 17 years, is not a plaintiff. Under Mississippi law, same-sex partners have no claim in civil actions like this, Mr. Dees said.

There was no indication that Mr. Anderson’s sexual orientation was a factor in the crime.

Read More

(via strugglingtobeheard)

fuckyeahlesbianliterature:

July edition of Black Enterprise magazine.

(via fashionistazapatista)