news ...
Jimi Greydog
Hi, all...
These are the words of a true gender-rights activist..
Listen up, Gulls.. listen up!
Jimi
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I used to explain to college audiences and
Congress-
members alike that every four or five months another
fairly
straightforward, unambiguous gender hate crime occurs.
Awful
as that figure is, I didn't know how good we had it.
Rita Hester in Boston, Chanel Chandler in
California,
Steve Dwayne Garcia and Jane Doe in Houston, Lauryn
Paige in
Austin, Fitzroy Green in New York, Vianna Faye
Williams in
Jersey City, and Tasha Dunn in Tampa... We are now
averaging
one gender-murder every month. Simply put, in the last
half-
year, this country has turned into a meat-grinder.
Where are the voices crying out against the
murders
of these people? Is it that the violence done to Rita
Hester
or the sadistic torture and murder of Lauryn Paige are
less
horrific? Is it that the hatred which impelled the
killer of
Tasha Dunn to, in the words of the police, beat her to
her
last breath any less virulent and profound?
Or is it that when a hate crime occurs based
on race,
or religion, and now, at last, on sexual orientation,
reasonable people can reasonably hope that voices will
be
raised in protest? But are six murders, or sixty
murders,
that occur based on gender rendered mute and invisible
because certain kinds of bodies and certain kinds of
hate
don't matter as much? Within the queer community and
certainly within the straight press, we are disposable
people.
How many of us will need to die violently,
alone,
and in terrible pain before our press, our leaders,
and our
organizations speak out? Perhaps they never will speak
out,
and some of us will continue to pay for being
gender-different
with our lives.
It is ironic that GenderPAC's National Survey
of
TransViolence reveals that the most common epithet
used
when we are bashed is "faggot." Transpeople are
targeted
because of the perception that we are gay. And gays
are
often picked out because they are "visibly queer,"
that
is, because they are gender-different.
But the fine-line distinctions we draw to
populate
and protect the divisions among us--between
orientation and
gender or between gay and queer or between you and
me--are
lost upon those who stalk and prey upon us. We are all
at
risk, even if only some of us count.
-- Riki Anne Wilchins
--
--
"I'll say ONE thing for ya, you are FULL of surprises!"
--Esther Williams-- A Raw Wind in Eden--1958--
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"When men get me into trouble, OTHER men get me out!
That's the way you SPELL trouble ... M-E-N. "
--Stormy Wethers-- at "The Fifth Estate"--1967--
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"There is a reason men are so interesting during sex.
It is the only time they are plugged into anything
intelligent!"
--anonymous woman's rights activist-- 1990's---
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