Jose O. Sucuzhanay

I mentioned, in She’s Not the Man I Married, that someone may not be gendered in American way when I wrote about looking around at people on the subway. Tonight I read, in the NYT, that a young Ecuadorean man and his brother were walking home from a night out at a bar with their arms around each other. A group of thugs pulled up in an SUV, yelled slurs about them being Hispanic and about them being gay, and only left when one of the brothers said he would call the cops on his cellphone. The other brother – Jose O. Sucuzhanay – died on Friday night in the hospital.

As GenderPAC regularly points out, anti-gay violence isn’t just a problem for gay people. Anyone who is presumed to be gay, for whatever reason, can be a target. And in this case, the brothers showed affection in ways that aren’t common here in the US – even if that kind of affection is very common between men in other counties – it caused these bigots to assume they were gay men.

That’s about gender: what kinds of affection are appropriate between men, which aren’t.

I’m just so sickened and sad reading about this. For this year and for many years to come, this family will remember this violent, senseless death and this loss right before Christmas.

(h/t to kiri for posting this story in our forums)