Attack on Moscow metro

Natalia Antonova has the story from a Muscovite perspective.

Happy fucking Pride, eh?

40 years, people. And:

Some cops in Forth worth decided to celebrate Pride weekend with a good old fashioned gay bar raid.

One of the victims is in ICU with a brain injury; he may not survive. The cops' excuse?

"Monday, police chief Jeff Halstead said the officers' actions are being investigated. However, he also said that officers that entered the bar during the scheduled inspection were touched inappropriately.

"You're touched and advanced in certain ways by people inside the bar, that's offensive," he said. "I'm happy with the restraint used when they were contacted like that."

See, no one's actually DIED, see. Well, yet. As of today. Lucky they got off easy, eh? They could've been nailed to a motherfucking fence. How dare they be "drunk and disorderly" (the putative excuse apparently) and act...gay. In a -gay bar.-
And yes, of course whatever touching may have gone on was some guy grabbing a poor hapless cop's ass, not, I don't know, trying to defend himself from being -beaten down to the point of brain injury-. Gay panic for the fail! Bonus points 'coz -it's a motherfucking cop in a fucking gay bar.- On PRIDE WEEKEND.

"They were hyped up. They were loaded for bear," said Todd Camp, a veteran journalist who was there celebrating his birthday with friends. "They were just randomly grabbing people, telling them they were drunk."
Camp told me he has been in bars during TABC/police "checks" before, "and it was never anything like this." Usually, he said, officers discreetly walk through, looking for anybody who has had too much. This was different. "They were shoving patrons," Camp said, "asking, 'How much have you had to drink?'"

...

"[Gibson] was taken down hard," said Camp, with "four or five" officers wrestling him to the floor inside the club. Cellphone photos shot by patrons and posted to blogs show a person being held facedown by officers in a short hallway inside the club, then show a dent in the wall where his head was apparently banged....

"Culture of Life," "Family Values," "Terror"

One of the U.S.' last late-term anti-abortion providers (you know, only done when women NEED it because of a health emergency?**) was assassinated in Wichita. Dr. George Tiller. In his church, no less.

Tiller has long been a focal point of protest by abortion opponents because his clinic, Women's Health Care Services at 5107 E. Kellogg, is one of the few in the country where late-term abortions are performed.

..."We are shocked at this morning's disturbing news that Mr. Tiller was gunned down," anti-abortion group Operation Rescue said in a statement on its Web site. "Operation Rescue has worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see him brought to justice. We denounce vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning. We pray for Mr. Tiller's family that they will find comfort and healing that can only be found in Jesus Christ."

Of COURSE you are.

Protesters blockaded Tiller's clinic during Operation Rescue's "Summer of Mercy" protests during the summer of 1991, and Tiller was shot by Rachelle Shannon at his clinic in 1993. Tiller was wounded in both arms, and Shannon remains in prison for the shooting.

The clinic was bombed in June 1986, and was severely vandalized earlier this month. According to the Associated Press, his lawyer said wires to security cameras and outdoor lights were cut and that the vandals also cut through the roof and plugged the buildings' downspouts. Rain poured through the roof and caused thousands of dollars of damage in the clinic. Tiller reportedly asked the FBI to investigate the incident.

No arrests were made in the 1986 bombing.

Yeah, Operation Rescue, you remember them, they're swell peaceful folks:

Randall Terry founded Operation Rescue in 1986 and the Society for Truth and Justice in 2003.
"Randall Terry led the nation's largest civil disobedience movement, 'Operation Rescue,' in opposition to abortion. He is an outspoken opponent of granting special rights to homosexuals, and led the fight against same-sex marriage in Hawaii and Vermont.

...Quotes by Randall Terry

"I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you... I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism." August 16, 1993.

"When I, or people like me, are running the country, you’d better flee, because we will find you, we will try you and we will execute you." ["reportedly said of doctors who perform abortions"] 1995.

Yes, this lovely fellow, who led the protests against Obama's recent commencement speech at Notre Dame (and was arrested):

"The University has deliberately poked its finger in the eye of the Bishops and faithful Catholics who have condemned President Obama's appearance at Notre Dame.

"But far worse - they have cast aside the unborn who will perish under President Obama's policies. They have put prestige ahead of life. Georgetown's attitude seems to be: Germany's leaders built great roads in the 1930s, they helped save the banks, and they rebuilt the economy. Let's focus on their economy - not that whole genocide thing."

..."Mr. Obama is spending our money to promote child-killing in Africa and forced abortion in China; he is changing the conscience regulations for health workers, so that Catholic hospitals must refer for abortion, or dispense abortifacients; he has unleashed our money to pay for the creation and destruction of innocent human embryos. This sudden invite is as wicked as it is sneaky.

In 2000, Terry divorced his wife of 19 years and married Andrea Kollmorgen, with whom he has had three children. Both of Terry's adopted daughters became pregnant outside of marriage; one later converted to Islam. In 2004, Terry's son Jamiel, adopted at age eight, came out of the closet and wrote an article for Out Magazine. Terry responded by disowning him.

Oh yeah, that bit:

In his interview, Jamiel explains that he wrote the article because "I wanted my father to see I'm not going to hell," but says that he still loves his father. Below, Randall says that Jamiel is "bringing great sadness to our home and embarrassment to our family:"

[Interviewer]: Do you understand his reasons for publishing it?

[Randall]Well they shift from day to day, so what are the ones you heard?

He said it was part of his own journey, part of his own acceptance of his homosexuality. I guess he also wanted to be an example to other people who grew up in his situation.

I don't accept that. I know that if he had wanted to do that, he would have done it without going after the money that was given to him on the basis of my name.

What effect do you think this has on your name, or on you?

I think that it garners sympathy for me. But that's not the point. The point is that it is a betrayal of family dignity and family boundaries for money. He gave CNN pictures of our family. That's just unbelievable to me...I cannot have him in my home while I know that at any point, he could take pictures and sell them."

Do you think he's in financial straits?

Of course he is.

Meanhwile, you can still find "Tiller Watch" on Operation Rescue's current website. Nice to know they're keeping an eye on the current POTUS as well, I feel.

ETA: Let it be on record: twits of hate.

ETA again: Stay classy, Randy.

In his comments, Terry does not grieve for Tiller or denounce the murder but seems more concerned about President Obama's reaction and what it bodes for the pro-life movement.

"George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.

Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches."

"Even their churches;" gosh, you mean like the one Tiller was killed in? Peacefully, of course.

ETA again, again: more on Randall Terror.

Operation Rescue's Web site said the organization was "shocked" by the murder.

Well, I'm not.

This has been a long time coming, and no one has played a greater part in the run-up to the doctor's death than Operation Rescue. Their leaders -- and all of the group's enablers -- should be cowering in shame today.

I was in Wichita, Kansas in 1991 covering Operation Rescue's cruelly misnamed "Summer of Mercy," a six-week ordeal when thousands of anti-abortion protesters descended on Dr. George Tiller.

These "rescuers" -- sweaty mobs of zombie-like true believers -- swarmed across the street in front of the clinic like angry ants. They crawled over the hot asphalt toward his office on their hands and knees. They collapsed onto the stairs, chained themselves to the fence, shrieked prayers and threats and bellowed the Biblical equivalent of evil spells at anyone who approached the place. They fell lifelessly to the ground, some of them swooning and crashing spectacularly to earth.

When I went to Wichita to cover this, I thought I would be assigned there for a day or two. But this became more than a single protest. It turned out to be the birthplace of heartland civil disobedience against abortion and it went on and on and on...

** p.s., you stupid fucking bastards:

Despite what Operation Rescue claimed, none of his clients were ending pregnancies on a whim. None of them wanted to be there.

Each case was a tragedy -- a much anticipated child discovered to have only a partially formed head, a baby that was dying in the womb and had to be delivered, a child with medical problems so profound as to be unimaginable, a diagnosis that meant a child's life outside its mother's body would be both brief and brutal.

Tiller's clients often included couples who had been hoping to become parents but had their hearts broken late in pregnancy when they received horrifying medical news about their much-wanted babies.

These people got no mercy from Operation Rescue.

They were hounded and harassed, shoved and shouted at on the most heart-breaking day of their lives....

Get it? YOU DIDN'T EVEN SAVE ANY LIVES. THEY WERE ALREADY DYING. YOU STUPID, STUPID EVIL FUCKS.

Final edit (really):

Something positive you can do: donate to Medical Students for Choice.

h/t Lina.

Damn right it's not just words

******************************************************************************************************************************
ETA: BREAKING: Jury found Andrade guilty of first degree murder (along with other counts)

Life in prison without parole. Thank god.
******************************************************************************************************************************

Yeah, this is the cheery fucking post, today. Recently, not one, but -two- eleven year old boys, separately, have killed themselves because of homophobic bullying.

mzbitca says:

April 21st, 2009 at 10:42 am - Edit
Everytime I see some homophobic asshole complain about how gay marriage/the “gay agenda” is hurting them I just want to fucking scream. THEIR agenda is basically killing people and they don’t want to see people fucking holding hands or getting married.

And while homophobia is not the -same- as transphobia?** (and yes, there's a separate issue about co-optation and erasure w/in LGBT organizations, but put that on hold for now) Or misogyny, for that matter? or any other form of gender-based oppression? (After all, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover never ID'd as gay) Let the record show that they have the same noxious roots. Particularly in childhood.

little light says:

April 21st, 2009 at 9:58 am

God, it just makes my heart ache.

And it was so nearly me, too. I remember kids beating me up with teachers watching, who’d smirk and play innocent when I asked them for help. I think they thought it would fix me, you know? I hear in so many of these bullying stories that the people who think bullying is an important part of growing up say, over and over, it teaches children how to fit in, teaches them to be better, teaches boys especially how not to step out of line, and these are important lessons somehow. They think this bullying fixes kids and teaches them not to be freaks. They know it goes on, even encourage it. And some of us survive, somehow, but some of us–like, God, these poor 11-year-old children–don’t.

And you know–you know–there were a lot of people who knew this was going on, and chose not to stop it, because boys will be boys and that’s how kids are and hey, the kid needs to learn.

We need to find a way to give kids other, safer ways out of this. It just breaks my heart.

Little light had her own post on childhood bullying recently. Read it, if you're up for it--there's trigger warnings at the top. And then, if you're still up for potentially stomach-churning, read all the comments.

Still here? Okay. Moving on. The ongoing Angie Zapata trial, luddites and germs.

Angie Zapata was raised in Fort Lupton, Colorado, the second youngest of six children. Early in life, Angie’s family knew that she was transgender, but it wasn’t until around age 16 that she began living her life full-time as Angie. Being a woman was who Angie was - an incredibly loving daughter, sister and aunt. As a transgender woman, she faced harassment, bullying and exclusion — and eventually death. In July 2008, Angie Zapata was brutally murdered with a fire extinguisher because of anti-transgender bias. She was only 18. Zapata is survived by her mother, Maria and siblings Monica, Gonzalo, Stephanie, Ashley, and Nicole.

In high school, Angie endured harassment from other students and received little support from school administrators. In early 2008, Angie dropped out of school and moved to the city of Greeley, where she rented her own apartment. Babysitting her nephew and four nieces became Angie’s full-time job. She planned to move to Denver to pursue her interest in fashion and makeup as a cosmetologist.

A vibrant everyday Greeley teenager, Angie was an integral part of her family and community. Angie’s sister, Monica Zapata, recounted to The New York Times that, “We loved to take her out, because she got so much attention. I couldn’t even take her to Wal-Mart because people would turn around. Everybody knew Angie.” Although her friends and family were supportive, Angie was no stranger to the difficulties of life as a transgender woman. Monica Zapata said of the harassment Angie faced at school: “One time she came home crying saying, ‘Why, Monica, why won’t people accept me?’”

While the precise details of their meeting are not known, it is believed that Angie met the man who has admitted killing her through a mobile social networking site. On July 17, 2008, Angie Zapata was brutally murdered in her Greeley apartment. Two weeks later, Allen Andrade was arrested. Andrade has been charged with first degree murder, aggravated motor vehicle theft, identify theft and a bias motivated (hate) crime by the Weld County District Attorney.

The trial marks the first time that Colorado’s gender identity-inclusive hate crimes statute has been applied in the investigation and prosecution of an anti-transgender murder case.

You can follow the updates on the trial through Twitter. ETA: warning, details may be triggering.

But, so, yeah, words mean things. And in case you thought it stops when you enter the nominal world of grownups, or even that it's just limited to the "bad apples" like Andrade who actually commit the murders: here's the all-too-common-transmisogynistic trope playing out within the trial:

to wit, not only "She asked for it," but according to the prosecutor, she doesn't even get to be recognized as "she," and THAT'S -why- in this case she "had it coming," basically.

This story in the Greeley Tribune makes my blood boil. Not, surprisingly, the coverage itself, but the defense tactics in the Angie Zapata trial:

The first few times, it almost seemed like the public defenders were misspeaking.

But then, those watching the murder trial of Allen Andrade started muttering under their breaths. Witnesses on the stand continued to correct the attorneys questioning them.

Family members and friends echoed repeatedly, “my sister,” “Angie,” one by one on the stand Friday as public defenders Annette Kundelius and Brad Martin questioned them about “Justin.”

Ok, so got that straight? The defense is ungendering Angie Zapata by using a male name and pronouns. Hammering home that she had a “male” body. That she was “really a man.”

Well, what’s the difference, some more clueless cissexual people might wonder? First, this is a matter of respect. Angie lived and died as a woman. Her family and friends were adamant about that, even in the face of persistent ungendering. Of course, this is a criminal trial, not generally regarded as a place for respect. But neither is it supposed to be a place for poorly reasoned argument. Make no mistake, this is a cheap, dirty tactic.

More importantly than respect, this sets up an impossible standard for trans people to meet. Even if we out ourselves–as Angie Zapata clearly did–we are nevertheless “proved” to have been lying. It means that living her life as a woman, having the name of Angie, of itself constitutes an act of deception. In the trial’s mini-opening statements, the defense said:

“This case is not about judgment of a lifestyle,” Martin told the jury. “It’s not about whether Justin [sic] Zapata’s lifestyle was right or wrong. It’s about a deception and a reaction to that deception. … Justin’s Moco Space profile was that of a female, not of a transgender, and it certainly wasn’t that of a man.”

This article here lays out the reasoning in its title “Andrade: Stunned Victim or Homophobe.” Here, Andrade is improbably conjured as the VICTIM, not the woman he brutally bashed to death. Because obviously, a trans panic “victim” couldn’t simply walk away, couldn’t simply have been mistaken, couldn’t go “nope, sorry, not for me.” No, he’s so victimised–traumatised–by Angie’s sheer existence as an embodied trans woman with a penis, that he was forced to kill her.

Get it now?

(That's a rhetorical question. If the answer is "no," or if you're planning to argue,*** you need to -not- do it here. Yes, it's taken as granted that you're not a murderer, really. Just don't).



** fascinating. The automated spellcheck doesn't recognize "transphobia." It gives "homophobia" a pass, though.

***Kristin said...

...No matter what (and across a wide range of political viewpoints), it seems to be taken as unproblematic to center cis points of view on your experiences because cis points of view must always be validated. No matter that you're specifically writing about experiences that cis people do not have, there still seems to be this instinctive impulse to center cis experience.

...And there's a fair amount of entitlement in all of this, eh? I'm starting to think... I mean, so I've certainly fucked up in this kind of way, but here's the thing.... When cis people start to feel this instinctive urge to center *our own experiences* to the point of drowning out a story of emotional trauma and abuse... When we begin to do this *even though* we are demonstrating an extreme dissonance with the profound pain being expressed... When we can only think to engage with narratives like yours by calling the veracity of your claims into question under the guise of "objective truth"... Honestly? We ought to STFU, stop ourselves from centering our own experiences, recognize what we're doing, and deal with our blind spots without inflicting pain on marginalized people.

"It's almost like losing a child"

There are no words. From this UK Times piece, via troubleinchina:

Nine-year-old Daisy entered hospital in 2005 with a tooth infection, which turned septic. The hospital failed to supply the most basic medical care, giving Daisy neither food nor liquid in sufficient quantities. When she began gasping for breath the hospital told the parents that she would be transferred to intensive care, but this never happened.

It turned out that this was not an accident, but deliberate, and an official report on the case is being prepared by the ombudsman. As Daisy’s mother, Amanda Healy, told me: “The staff later admitted to us that they had ‘misjudged her quality of life’.” In other words, they had acted under the belief that Daisy - who loved and was loved by her parents and who, in Amanda’s words, “adored just waking up in the morning” - had a life not worth living and therefore not worth fighting to preserve.

One member of the hospital’s staff had said to Amanda, when she complained about Daisy’s lack of treatment: “People like you should realise that children like these are going to die sooner or later.” The remark that most shocked Amanda came from a doctor who was actually trying to be sympathetic, after Daisy had eventually died of a pulmonary haemorrhage: “It must be awful; it’s almost like losing a child.” It was the charity Mencap that put me in touch with Amanda Healy: hers is one of a number of similar cases involving what it calls “death by indifference” that it is pursuing on behalf of the bereaved parents.

The original piece goes on to note:

Yet even those who think of themselves as sympathetic can be astonishingly insensitive - in the nicest possible way. I couldn’t help noticing how many people expressed the view that the death of a totally dependent child with multiple disabilities, including an undeniably distressing form of epilepsy, must also have come as a relief to Mr and Mrs Cameron.

I too am the father of a child with a congenital disability - my younger daughter, Domenica, has trisomy 21, also known as Down’s syndrome. When she was born, an acquaintance who had a child with cerebral palsy told me: “Your problem won’t be that you will not love your new daughter, but that you will love her too much.” He was right, of course: it was a salutary warning not to neglect the needs of siblings.

Love should never be confused with pity, a sentiment we feel only for those whom we really don’t know at all. It infuriates me that children such as Domenica are invariably described as “suffering from Down’s syndrome”. In what way are they suffering? They have no disease. They have no ailment to “cure”, except - via the process of antenatal screening - their very existence.

What underlies this misplaced pity is a kind of selfish empathy. Someone sees a child lolling in a wheelchair and thinks he himself would rather not have been born than exist in such a condition - and so he decides that it would have been much more humane never to have allowed that child to have been born. He does not, however, consult the child.

j

Fairly comphrehensive rundown on the Australian wildfire

at Larvatus Prodeo, including comment thread. Basically, familiar sounding territory for anyone think "Katrina" or, well, you name it. Go, don't go, they should've gone, what were they thinking building their houses out of ___/living there in the first place, it's global warming it's environmentalists it's arsonists it's totally normal and to be expected it's God's punishment for legal abortion (yes, that again). and so on.

meanwhile, over 180 deaths and counting, devastated wildlife, entire towns burned off the map.

Mr. Potato Head Goes To Washington. Israel, whatever.

Withering take on Joe the Plumber Intrepid Journalist's increasingly overextended fifteen minutes Over There.

Pajamas TV is a right-wing blog whose mission statement includes “exposing both bias and deception by the typically liberal Main Stream Media”. And as Roger Simon, one of their contributors, argued that as the American press – yes, the American press – was obviously an extension of Hamas, only Joe the (previously passportless) Plumber could redress this grievous imbalance for the fact hungry nation....

(ETA: This was rather nice, also)

And then, when you've had a rueful snicker, there's a bunch of other articles there at Arab Comment; the most recent, found in the sidebar, are mostly about, well, Guess What Subject (unsurprisingly, right now, of course). Lots of writing from people who're actually intimately familiar with the Middle East, (including an Israeli or so) as in actually from and/or living in Israel or Palestine, or at least somewhere in the larger region, are versed in Israeli (for example) politics, links to other Middle Eastern news sources and blogs, that sort of thing.

So, jumping off from there, among various other places, right now I'm mostly just reading up on the current shitstorm in/on Gaza.

Slap my ass and call me internalized-anti-Semitic, but I will probably -not- be prioritizing some (other) random U.S. kibitzer's -seven- volumes' worth of thinky thoughts (purportedly) on the subject, no. Much less joining in on the ensuing discussion. I um, have an urgent appointment with a hairdresser and/or a spork.

There are a number of reasons that I haven't offered my own thinky thoughts. Arguably many of them not terribly noble.

That said, need it be said, this is rapidly becoming seriously FUBAR.

This, on the other hand, is truly horrific.

I'm just going to second Natalia here:

I’m not a PUMA sympathizer, but I think this woman’s rage needs to be heard. Her daughter, Louisa, was shot by her other daughter’s ex. She is in a coma and not expected to make it. Her other daughter is battling cancer. In 2009, it looks like this woman, Betty Jean, may lose two daughters. In a particularly horrifying twist, the man who shot her daughter is now claiming that Betty Jean was his intended target.

Betty Jean and her commenters talk a lot about advertising that celebrates violence against women - although I am as appalled by it as anyone else is, I think it’s a symptom, not the cause. Violence against women has existed for millennia, it won’t go away if we make disturbing Dolce & Gabbana ads go away, although this may be a good start.

Neither do I think that banning porn and refusing to wear tight blouses, or whatever, as some commenter suggested, is going to prevent women like Louisa to become the hapless victims of assholes armed with guns. I think this violence is much more primal and horrible than that...

There is also this: the man who shot Rodas, one George Hartwig, had already been convicted of abuse. Specifically, apparently, for attacking his wife, the -other- daughter, the one who's dying of cancer. With a hammer. In the face. Because he wanted her cancer drugs. He went to jail, yes, last summer. For three months. And then, they let him out. And then this happened. Gee. Who'd have thunk it, huh?

By the way, January is National Stalking Awareness Month.
(Via Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence)

The nuclear hetero family=endangered wet trees.

(Hey, baby, wanna plow my huge tracts of land?--shit, I don't know...)

In which the Pope is unclear on multiple concepts:

Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Credo, the Church cannot and should not confine itself to passing on the message of salvation alone. It has a responsibility for the created order and ought to make this responsibility prevail, even in public. And in so doing, it ought to safeguard not only the earth, water, and air as gifts of creation, belonging to everyone. It ought also to protect man against the destruction of himself. What is necessary is a kind of ecology of man, understood in the correct sense. When the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman and asks that this order of creation be respected, it is not the result of an outdated metaphysic. It is a question here of faith in the Creator and of listening to the language of creation, the devaluation of which leads to the self-destruction of man and therefore to the destruction of the same work of God. That which is often expressed and understood by the term “gender”, results finally in the self-emancipation of man from creation and from the Creator. Man wishes to act alone and to dispose ever and exclusively of that alone which concerns him. But in this way he is living contrary to the truth, he is living contrary to the Spirit Creator.

The tropical forests are deserving, yes, of our protection, but man merits no less than the creature, in which there is written a message which does not mean a contradiction of our liberty, but its condition. The great Scholastic theologians have characterised matrimony, the life-long bond between man and woman, as a sacrament of creation, instituted by the Creator himself and which Christ – without modifying the message of creation – has incorporated into the history of his covenant with mankind. This forms part of the message that the Church must recover the witness in favour of the Spirit Creator present in nature in its entirety and in a particular way in the nature of man, created in the image of God. Beginning from this perspective, it would be beneficial to read again the Encyclical Humanae Vitae: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against sexuality as a consumer entity, the future as opposed to the exclusive pretext of the present, and the nature of man against its manipulation.

I'll be sure and do that, reread the Encyclical Whosit; I missed a few nuances the first few times around, I'm sure, seeing as how I'm not actually Catholic and there's supposed to be this nifty separation between the Church and State around and all; but thanks so much for looking out for us all, really. Because if there's anyone I look to for the definition of "love," it's Pope Palpatine wielding crucifixes against us as though we were vampires.

"Sure, I-- I mean God-- just compared you to pollution, which if unchecked will lead into ecocide/genocide, but you shouldn't take it -personally- or anything."

Does His Holiness have anything to say about this, I wonder:

A woman in the San Francisco Bay area was jumped by four men, taunted for being a lesbian, repeatedly raped and left naked outside an abandoned apartment building, authorities said Monday.

Detectives say the 28-year-old victim was attacked Dec. 13 after she got out of her car, which bore a rainbow gay pride sticker. The men, who ranged from their late teens to their 30s, made comments indicating they knew her sexual orientation, said Richmond police Lt. Mark Gagan.

"It just pushes it beyond fathomable," he said. "The level of trauma _ physical and emotional _ this victim has suffered is extreme."...

Or this:

Here we go again in Memphis, TN. A transwoman was shot in the face and is in critical condition.

Memphis police say the shooting happened sometime around 5:00 a.m. Tuesday, December 23, 2008 in the 3100 block of Boxtown Road in south Memphis near T.O. Fuller State Park. Leeneshia Edwards was last seen about an hour earlier at the “C.K.’s Coffee Shop” on Union Avenue in midtown Memphis.

Edwards' cousin reports that Lenneshia was shot in the jaw, side and back and is undergoing multiple surgeries.


...Oliver A. FP said...
Hmm... let me get this straight.

So, mysteriously, a woman who called out the Memphis police on her ill-treatment is dead.

Mysteriously, the police investigations into her murder and the murder of a physically "similar" woman have been incredibly lacklustre.

And MYSTERIOUSLY, another physically "similar" Memphis woman has now been shot.

Gosh, the world is sometimes full of brain-teasers...

Wait, don't tell me, I know: of -course- the Pope and Rick Warren and all their enablers don't support -violence-. Heavens no. They might vote against laws that recognize us as full human beings, whether it's marriage equality or a trans-inclusive ENDA, even put tons of effort and money into making sure we can't actually any of us take a dump without fighting for years for signed permission from Traditional Values, Inc;

But, you know, they -mean so well-, do these great unctuous "spiritual" leaders of ours. Certainly they never EVER meant to endorse -actual concrete results- of their demonizing and scapegoating and politicization of their -beliefs-, especially when those results are a lot of dead or maimed bodies. It would be wrong to suggest that the young men who violently, often fatally, attack people simply for bearing the "wrong" gender markers or sporting a rainbow sticker on their car, are the shock troop enforcers of these -values.- Punishing uppity women, sluts, sodomists, freaks and deviants for their/our transgressions; after all, we're a-threat-, right? And of course these men wouldn't ever be police or (uh oh) priests or ministers or other fine upstanding members of the community; they're probably just "thugs," most of them, right? Suspicious dark poor people leaping out of alleys; just make sure we concentrate on getting -them- off the streets and into the prisons and workhouses, and we'll all be golden. Oh, and pray, of course, I keep forgetting that one. Piety makes all the difference, really.

In fact, now we learn: apparently, what they are, these various angry violent men, are radical environmentalists.

Perhaps Ben and Jerry's will make a new flavor, now that Rainforest Crunch is long out of vogue. "Heavenly Hetero Hash," perhaps. "Family Values Fudge." "Crusader Crunch."

Sleep in heavenly peace to you too, motherfucker.

...What the hell is wrong with people? part something

Just, the shoppers who trampled a Wal-mart worker to death in their stampede for the bargains: someone tell me if this is part of the War On Christmas, or says something about the economy, or, or...anything? I mean,

Other workers were trampled as they tried to rescue the man, and customers shouted angrily and kept shopping when store officials said they were closing because of the death, police and witnesses said.

At least four other people, including a woman who was eight months pregnant, were taken to hospitals for observation or minor injuries, and the store in Valley Stream on Long Island closed for several hours before reopening.

Shoppers stepped over the man on the ground and streamed into the store. When told to leave, they complained that they had been in line since Thursday morning.

...seriously, what -is- that?

And yeah, I know, there's bigger and worse news out there right now: what's going on in India, say, and a million other things that don't even make the headlines.

But...yeah, I dunno. Ho ho fucking ho, eh?

Transgender Day Of Rememberance

Please read:

Little Light on "the quick and the dead"

Queen Emily on how to mourn"

Lisa continues to collate the ongoing toll at Questioning Transphobia.

Zan, simply, Remember.

ETA: also see the full roundup at bird of paradox.

Duanna Johnson's Family needs donations for funeral

via shemale:

Duanna Johnson’s family needs donations for funeral.

The balance for Duanna Johnson’s funeral is $1195 and the funeral home is requiring Mrs. Skinner (Duanna’s mother) to pay it by tomorrow (11/14). The cost is a hardship, so we are asking anyone who can to donate. Please send any donations to:
N.J. Ford and Sons Funeral Home
12 S Parkway W
Memphis, TN 38109

If you want any clarification from NJ Ford, here is their contact number: (901) 948-7755.

Please forward this to as many people as you can!! Thanks!

Please donate or spread the word; if you can't afford yourself to donate but can put this someplace where people who can might read it, please put it there.

According to spoggly, out of state checks won't work (due to the length of time it would take for them to get there) unless you overnight them and the funeral home says that credit cards would be ideal; however, barring either of those options, it may be good to just call the funeral home and ask that they delay payment due date until it's possible to raise more funding...

ETA: More info, please read: something seems really dodgy wrt the funeral home.

What, us torture?

Sickened but not surprised:

Documents say detainee near insanity

By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer 47 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A U.S. military officer warned Pentagon officials that an American detainee was being driven nearly insane by months of punishing isolation and sensory deprivation in a U.S. military brig, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.


While the treatment of prisoners at detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan and Iraq have long been the subject of human rights complaints and court scrutiny, the documents shed new light on how two American citizens and a legal U.S. resident were treated in military jails inside the United States.

The Bush administration ordered the men to be held in military jails as "enemy combatants" for years of interrogations without criminal charges, which would not have been allowed in civilian jails.

The men were interrogated by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, repeatedly denied access to attorneys and mail from home and contact with anyone other than guards and their interrogators. They were deprived of natural light for months and for years were forbidden even minor distractions such as a soccer ball or a dictionary.

"I will continue to do what I can to help this individual maintain his sanity, but in my opinion we're working with borrowed time," an unidentified Navy brig official wrote of prisoner Yaser Esam Hamdi in 2002. "I would like to have some form of an incentive program in place to reward him for his continued good behavior, but more so, to keep him from whacking out on me."

("whacking out on me")

So. Anyone planning to ask Senator McCain about this tonight? I mean I'd really like to hear what he in particular has to say, all things considered.

Natalia Antanova on Russia/Georgia: "Darkness Falls"

source

at Global Comment:

What horrifies is me is not just the violence, as if it isn’t bad enough, but the fact that being ethnically half-Russian and half-Ukrainian, I grew knowing that the Georgians are our friends. I grew up in a household in love with Georgian culture. To my Russian mother, Georgia was “the most beautiful place in the world,” and she wasn’t alone in this by far.

The people baying for blood on both sides, have they honestly forgotten our common ties? If the forgetting is this easy, perhaps we really ought to be worried about the future of Russia and Ukraine. The unthinkable is already happening before us, and history has entered a gloomy and bewildering chapter. This is the sort of thing that happens when empires fail; it’s bloody and vile. It reeks of gunpowder and rot and the dried-up glue that used to hold together our old, red memorial wreaths.

...The absurdities of nationalism know no bounds.

The joy with which such people greet pictures of dead Georgians is diabolical. Their desire to see Russian soldiers fall due to some misguided notions regarding “glory” is equally diabolical. They do not value Georgian lives, but neither do they value the lives of their own troops or the lives of South Ossetians they are supposed to care about.

The loudest of the loud among us do not have sons serving in the Russian army, or so I have noticed.

This isn’t to say that I am a fan of Georgia’s President Saakashvili, however. I think it’s laughable that some writers are busy painting a picture of the genteel Saakashvili and uniformly bloodthirsty, fanged Russians. Have we learned nothing from Georgia’s squashed opposition? Do we really think that Saakashvili has the best interests of his people in mind? Or the best interests of the South Ossetians who are, predictably, almost invisible in this conflict?

Political elites benefit from grand-standing, regular people just lose their limbs in the process.

The West is no better in this regard...

read the rest.


source

I've been avoiding writing about this

worthless evil ratfucker who killed a sex worker, stuffed her in a trunk, and got off on what is it now? self-defense? Twinkies? anyway: go read these other people on it.

I'd comment further on it, but, um, it's just...I kind of can't right now. or on a number of other incredibly fucked up stories this past...while; like this one, (trigger warning) or this one, (ditto); and that's without even, y'know, oh, 40,000 people dead + 5 MILLION homeless after China's earthquake, and another 133,000 dead + millions devastated after the cyclone in Burma, and, well, shit that's honestly sort of beyond my scope at the moment. Whatever it says. So, just: here're the links, and no comments, I think; and probably the next post here will be about puppies or memes or something like that.

read it and weep.

scream, vomit, go numb...

megan_julca has the story.

Basically: Sanesha Stewart, a young trans woman of color, was stabbed to death on Saturday. An alleged sex worker, which, if true, would of course would mean she had it coming even more than she already did. And really, what else could she possibly be anyway? Either way: not human, certainly. As m_j puts it:

naturally it's her fault; after all, she was a "man who dressed like a woman" who "was known to wear stylish, provocative outfits with towering high heels," "was a ... flirty presence," and "had surgery to 'give him [sic] larger breasts and other female characteristics'" even though "it was clear Stewart was still a man." I mean she was just asking for it, amirite?

I mean "the suspect was apparently surprised by the victim's true sex" so it's perfectly acceptable to expect that he would respond the appropriate way and stab her to death in a fit of rage.

See, anyone who *wants* (frivolous, sexualized, appearance-oriented) female characteristics like artificially enhanced larger breasts for hirself, or *chooses* to "wear stylish, provocative outfits with towering high heels" is clearly catering to men, who in turn want nothing but sex, whether or not they are, in fact, entitled to it, that's all they WANT, this is axiomatic;

and even (or especially!) a man is entitled to at least not be -surprised- by finding unexpected body parts and/or Secret Pasts on a person he fancies or even shares any sort of public space with, certainly wimmin are so entitled to that much at least, even if they would never go so far as to physically hurt or -kill- a trans person because wimmin don't do such things, ever. As for denying transfolk access to such things as rape crisis centers: that's merely self-defense. Which is totally different from what we're talking about, here. Certainly no such excuse has been or will be employed when it comes to actual -murder- of a trans person, will it? Self defense. Oh, wait.

Because there's nothing worse than finding out you are sexually attracted to, hell, even had fond feelings about, is there? a person whose gender and/or sex is not the gender and/or sex you are SUPPOSED to be attracted to, according to God or your parents or the lads or the Sisterhood or the feverish little rabbit running your brain. Who doesn't understand -that-? the raw revulsion, the terror, the PANIC leading even unto VIOLENCE that such momentary existential cage-rattlings provides. It's only human.

and in fact, it is the very inherent or-might-as-well-be-it's-so-firmly-entrenched-by-now baseness of Man that creates such situations in the first place, is it not? Clearly only some debauched sick sexual desire would lead any -man- to take on the appearance or identity of a woman, much less sell his body to strange men, who in turn are only behaving in the way that is to be expected, animals that they are.

It is up to women to lead men to their better natures; any woman who doesn't do so but instead "chooses" to do sex work for a living, not just because she has to but actually -flaunting- her patent lack of victim status, or even wear towering high heels and stylish, provocative outfits and PLASTIC TITS is clearly a) falling down on the job b) a male-identified Enemy of Women c) a danger to herself, other women, other womens' husbands, and society, not necessarily in that order d) deserves whatever she gets. Not, you understand, that we would ever say such a thing in so many words. Except when we're forced to.

As for -men- who flaunt stylish plastic tits and towering lack-of-victim-status, even for a -second-, well, first of all, men are men and women are women and therefore a man who pretends he (never she; it is a terrible imposition to have to call a person what she wanted to be called, even in death) can be a woman -also- deserves whatever he gets, even more so, whether that's because he's betraying his Sacred Manhood or violating Sacred Wimminz Country or both at once.

Not that we would ever say such a thing. Unless we have to.

Oh, and the fact that Ms. Stewart was a woman of color? Totally irrelevant. Except when it's not. We will be the ones to decide when it is and when it's not, thank you very much. Why can't we all stick together? Why must you constantly derail from the important issues with your own trifling problems? Don't you know that ____ are ____ in ____? Fuck you anyway, you selfish [redacted], for trying to make me feel guilty when clearly I have it worse than ANYONE. There's only so much empathy to go around, you know, and I need all of it. I mean, "we." yes. "We." Whoever "we" is THIS time.

Did I leave anything out?

/rectal divination

One definition of "hurt"

In response to a question posed by "Defining My Self" in the comments of this post: this piece of news, via Questioning Transphobia and Tough Like a Creampuff (among others):

Dear [name removed],

It is with a heavy heart that I share the tragic loss of one of our community’s beautiful children. Ian Guarr, a 16-year old transgender young man from West Michigan, took his own life on Monday. The Guarr family have been staunch allies and good friends of Triangle Foundation from the beginning of their journey. Ian’s mother Amy is a founder of TransYouth Family Advocates (http://imatyfa.org), a national organization addressing the issues facing transgender youth and a national partner of Triangle Foundation’s Camping.OUT program.

Ian was one of my daughter Chloe’s dearest friends. Ian was sensitive, thoughtful, brilliant, hilarious, and painfully shy. Our world is less bright without Ian’s presence. Even with an amazingly supportive and loving family such as Ian had, the youth of our community face an incredibly difficult path. In the United States, every hour an LGBT youth commits suicide. The statistics for transgender youth are even more harrowing — the attempted suicide rate is higher than 50%!

Ian’s family did everything right. They loved, cared, and advocated for who Ian knew he really was –not just for who society wanted him to be. This community owes the Guarr family a debt of gratitude for all that they have done for Ian as well as for all transgender youth.

Triangle Foundation joins our friends at TransYouth Family Advocates and TransActive Education & Advocacy in once again renewing our commitment to working with and on behalf of transgender, gay, lesbian, bisexual and questioning youth who, like Ian, are struggling with a society that is often unwilling to accept them for the unique and beautiful people they are. Our work will continue until no young person feels that suicide is their only option...

Does that help your understanding at all, DMS? I just want to make sure we're clear, here.

Or, wait, don't tell me, let me guess, this has -nothing to do with you-, or your attitude, or indeed with any (non-transgendered) feminist, any lesbian, any -woman- (hey, we have no power! at all! not l'il old us! now: let's have a REVOLUTION, BAYBEE!) or any gay man, or -anyone- else whose hurt is somehow being taken away from by so much as fucking -acknowledging- that, y'know, -other people- have it as bad or worse, and maybe it might be best to -welcome- them as allies,people who're hurt by the same bloody system albeit in somewhat different ways, rather than go, no, this is OUR treehouse, go make your own, and lalalalala can't hear you anyway.

jesus.

what -is- it with some people?