Tag: violence

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Is This New York City?

Or Berkeley? The NY City Council apparently has resolved every other problem in New York, as now they’ve gotten around to banning words. First was the N word, & now the B word is on the list.

The B word? What is this, fourth grade? The word is bitch. & This whole idea is idiotic. Please leave our language alone, & maybe instead help women who are suffering with domestic violence, sexual harassment, or who are having a hard time raising children while working full-time.

Surely the NY City Council has some real problems to solve, or I’m going to write them a letter bitching them out.

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Urgent from NCTE

Today Senators Kennedy (D-MA) and Smith (R-OR) introduced the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act as an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 1585), which is being debated in the Senate this week and next. This amendment could be voted on as early as today. In short, today transgender people are one giant step closer to gaining federal hate crimes protections!

The language of today’s amendment is identical language to that of S. 1105, which the Senators introduced in April.

But to ensure that the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act becomes law, you must contact your Senators now and urge them to support this life-saving legislation.

As you read this, the Radical Right is mobilizing their base to oppose the federal hate crimes bill. They’re using scare tactics and flat-out lies in hopes of killing Kennedy’s amendment. Make sure that your Senators hear your voice and the true importance of this bill.

The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act would:

  1. Extend existing federal protections to include “gender identity, sexual orientation, gender and disability”
  2. Allow the Justice Department to assist in hate crime investigations at the local level when local law enforcement is unable or unwilling to fully address these crimes
  3. Mandate that the FBI begin tracking hate crimes based on actual or perceived gender identity
  4. Remove limitations that narrowly define hate crimes to violence committed while a person is accessing a federally protected activity, such as voting.

Find your Senators’ contact information.

The time to act is now! Call your Senators today and urge your friends and family to do the same!

(A sample letter you can copy & paste is below the break.)

Continue reading “Urgent from NCTE”

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Nothing But Red: Du’a Khalil Anthology

A 17 year old woman named Du’a Khalil was stoned to death in an honor killing and her death recorded on the cellphones of people who were watching & participating.

Police did nothing.

Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, wrote an exhausted, frustrated essay about her death, about the culture of misogyny & violence against women we all live with, & that essay has sparked an anthology in honor of Du’a Khalil.

I feel sick & leaden every time I see anything about this news, because there are so many other women who are hurt, beaten, & tortured who we don’t get to see. There are too many women I know who have been beaten or hurt or otherwise abused.

There is too much violence against women.

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Urgent Action from NCTE

We are down to the wire on the federal hate crimes bill (H.R.1592).

This Thursday, May 3, the federal hate crime bill is scheduled to be voted on in the U.S. House. We really have a chance to pass this life-saving law this year.

But what we are hearing today is that the radical right has turned their lie machine on force blast and turned out their followers. Members of Congress and their staff are telling us that the people who hate us, who are lying about us, are contacting Congress in greater numbers than we are. That’s not unusual, but it is very dangerous. It is not unusual because that’s what they do: they scare their followers into calling their representatives in Congress. It is very dangerous because it could work this time.

What YOU Can Do

1. Find your member of Congress and call him or her.

2. Sign our petition supporting the hate crimes bill by clicking here.

3. Support the passage of this bill by joining us for NCTE’s annual Lobby Day on May 14-15!

Continue reading “Urgent Action from NCTE”

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On The Road for Keroack

The Deputy Assistant Secretary for HHS’ Office of Population Affairs, Eric Keroack, has resigned. & There was much rejoicing because he was not just anti-choice, but anti-contraception.

This Bush government is really just insane. Honestly: putting someone who is against even contraception in charge of the Office of Population Affairs is like putting a wife-beater in charge of the Office of Domestic Violence.

But, that’s one nightmare over.

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Five Questions With… Mattilda

Mattilda a.k.a. Matt Bernstein Sycamore is an insomniac with dreams. She is the editor, most recently of Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity and an expanded second edition of That’s Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation. She’s also the author of a novel, Pulling Taffy. Mattilda lives for feedback, so contact her or check up on her various projects via her website or her blog.

1) I love the way you use the word “assimilation” – it always reminds me of the Borg episodes of Star Trek – but I wonder how that term plays in different audiences – say a gay male audience as compared to a trans one. How do people respond to your use of that term, and its sinister connotations?

Generally I’m talking about the way an assimilated gay elite has hijacked queer struggle, and positioned their desires as everyone’s needs. In this way, we see the dominant signs of straight conformity reimagined as the ultimate goals of gay (or that fake acronym “LGBT”) success, i.e. marriage, monogamy, adoption, gentrification, military service, etc. We can see this fundamental absurdity where housing and healthcare and fighting police brutality and challenging US imperialism are no longer seen as “LGBT” issues, but access to Tiffany wedding bands and participatory patriarchy is seen as the bedrock.

So when I articulate these politics, it’s generally the people I’m holding accountable — gay men and lesbians with power and privilege — who are the most scared. Most gay men wouldn’t know Feminism 101 if it hit them over the head, so it’s not surprising that they see getting rid of homeless people and people of color and sex workers from the neighborhoods they’ve gentrified as a wonderful service to the “community.”

Generally it’s more marginalized queers, and especially trans, genderqueer and gender defiant freaks and outlaws and misfits — as well as feminists of various formations — who are ready to challenge the cultural erasure that assimilation represents.

Continue reading “Five Questions With… Mattilda”

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MLK Jr.

In honor & celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and work today, I thought I’d dig up some of his influences. Everyone is aware of Gandhi’s impact on King, I think, but less known is that the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr was also an influence. Niebuhr is sometimes credited with the Serenity Prayer even though there are versions of it that existed before his time; he may only have put it into the form we know now. King himself best expresses how Niebuhr influenced him:

“Moreover, Niebuhr has extraordinary insight into human nature, especially the behavior of nations and social groups. He is keenly aware of the complexity of human motives and of the relation between morality and power. His theology is a persistent reminder of the reality of sin on every level of man’s existence. These elements in Niebuhr’s thinking helped me to recognize the illusions of a superficial optimism concerning human nature and the dangers of a false idealism. While I still believed in man’s potential for good, Niebuhr made me realize his potential for evil as well. Moreover, Niebuhr helped me to recognize the complexity of man’s social involvement and the glaring reality of collective evil.”

To demonstrate one aspect of what King is referring to, Niebuhr once wrote:

“Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”

That said, it was Niebuhr’s thinking on both pacificism & justice that helped King fine-tune his singular response to injustice – and for that we’re all thankful.

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Domestic Violence Drops

The rate of domestic violence dropped, in half, between 1993 and 2004. Everything you’d expect is still true, however: women who own homes are less likely to be beaten than those with low annual incomes; black women are more likely than white women to be beaten, and domestic violence against men is dropping faster than violence against women.

Analysts speculate that the lower rate of intimate violence may be linked to better police training and more funding for prosecution as a result of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act or the declining violent crime rate in general (it reached its lowest recorded level in 2005).

From the Bureau of Justice Statistics.