Author: AG

The Rochester Out Alliance is hosting an event known as “Ride for Pride.” This event, now in its 9th year, aims to raise money for both the Gay Alliance and the LGBTQ Resource Center. It consists of a 50 mile bike-ride through Rochester, and has been quite successful in the past, raising over $40,000 dollars in 2017. This year, event organizers have set a goal of $70,000. To participate in the event, you must contribute at least $100, though the majority of the funds come from numerous sponsors including all different types of companies from The Bachelor Forum (a gay bar located in Rochester) to Barilla Pasta.

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Source: “Ride for Pride.” Out Alliance, Out Alliance, www.gayalliance.org/ride-for-pride/.

#OutAlliance #Bike #LBGTQExperiencesUSHistory

Gay City News is a weekly LGBTQ+ newspaper founded in 1994, and is one of the most widely popular queer news sources in the country at approximately 47000 copies distributed per day. This particularly newspaper was actually available for free in large quantities in the Brooklyn neighborhood I grew up in: Park Slope. I feel that the free distribution of queer media is significant, both because it shows that queer news is public information and not some sort of adult entertainment, and because it allows everyone, including those without easy access to the internet, to find the news.

–AG

#News #NewYorkCity #freeNewspaper #LBGTQExperiencesUSHistory

21-year-old Marvia Malik, a national news reporter from Pakistan, has just made headlines of her own as she became the first ever transgender person to hold her current position.

Pakistan is known for quite a bit of discrimination and violence towards queer people, and Malik was sadly no exception. In her own words:

“I was thrown out after [10th grade] after which I joined a beauty salon, earned just about enough to put myself through college, but it was not easy. My story is no different from that of a [H]ijra on the street you see begging.”

Since her broadcasts began, Malik has received a number of offers to become a model, all of which she turned down, saying:

“I want to strengthen my people. Everywhere we go, a transgender person is looked down upon.”

Information and quotes from:

Glass, Jess. “Pakistan’s First Transgender Newsreader Says She’s ‘Overwhelmed’ with Support after Debut Broadcast.” PinkNews, 27 Mar. 2018

 

—AG

 

 

This is my submission for the infographic assignment. My topic is the organization and presentation of labels in the queer community.

—AG

The film, Major!, provided a very human perspective on transgender women in prison. I was aware that a disproportionately large number of  transgender people were sent to prisons (as we learned from other films like Screaming Queens), but I now understand significantly more about the terrible situations that the trans people had to work through once they were there. A quote from the film which I feel sums up the situation quite well is when Miss Major was asked how the transgender women were treated in prison. Her response was “Shady as F”***in’ sh*t,” to which one of the other women in the room responded, “So normal.” Trans women in prison are treated terribly, and this moment shows a very human perspective on the situation—namely, that it’s horribly unjust.

A concept I’m still wondering about relates to the cause of the disproportionate amount of trans people (especially of color) in prisons. Specifically, I’m curious about the degree of activeness in the decision to put trans women into solitary confinement. That is, are there explicit, spoken rules in certain prisons that dictate that trans women should be placed into solitary confinement for their “protection?”

As an extension to this question, to what degree is the greater number of trans people in prisons purely a result of trans people being kicked out of their families, forced into prostitution, and other situations, and how much is it a result of other causes? For example, how much of this disproportionality can we attribute to an internalized transphobia of prison workers?

–AG

The above poster is titled “Famous Last Words,” produced by People of Color Against AIDS. The overall message to viewers is that anyone can get AIDS, regardless of race; it’s a huge mistake to assume that only white people can get AIDS.   I find the poster interesting because it challenges the idea that the only people getting AIDS are white gay men; the disease doesn’t care what race you are—it affects anyone infected in an equally horrible way. In our class, we have had several class discussions about intersectionality between different groups, and this poster continues this idea—queer issues (including, but not limited to, AIDS) affect people regardless of race, gender, sex, and other characteristics.

Earlier this month, New York’s Alfred University hosted an art exhibit called the Queering Space. Among several goals, the event was largely intended to answer the question: “What is a queer perspective?” The exhibit featured several artists including Tommy Kha, the creator of an installation titled “Return to Sender,” a collection of 88 photographs featuring the same man kissing a different person (of various genders) in each one.

 

What makes these photos interesting to me is that in each, the man looks quite bored, almost annoyed at times. In conjunction with the title, “Return to Sender,” I interpret this artistic choice to be suggesting that although Kha feels able to love whomever he chooses, the result has remained dissatisfying. Perhaps the boredom in the photographs indicates that, of the 88 people, not one was able to create a feeling of true love within him.

#LGBTQexperiencesUSA#queeringspace#photography#love

Kha, Tommy. Return to Sender. 2010, digital c-type prints, The Queering Space, Alfred University.

–AG

One particular article that stands out to me from the exhibit was one from the Democrat and Chronicle from the 1980s, titled “Wife Attempts to Save Marriage to Homosexual Husband.” The article details a woman named Debby asking Ann Landers, an advice columnist, for advice about how she married a man who later came out as gay. The detail that most stands out to me is how desperately she tried to change him, rather than divorce him outright. The article notes that Debby “stayed in that marriage six years anyway, thinking [she] could straighten him out.” Debby truly did love her husband, and desperately wanted to “fix” him, but it did not work. The tone Ann Landers responds with seems to feel very sorry for Debby; it was a most unfortunate mistake on her part to fall for her husband. In fact, she does not mention at all that her husband was struggling too: most likely trying as hard as he could to fit in and hide his same-sex attraction. While this lack of sympathy is not terribly surprising given the negative feelings for homosexuality in the ’80s, it does make me wonder: if the article were written today, would the advice really be any different? Though I’m not sure, I suspect the man’s position might still be ignored, even given improvement to the climate surrounding LGBTQ topics.

Although it’s been some time now, I wanted to bring up the film, “Hidden Figures,” from last year. The movie focuses on three brilliant African American women working for NASA during the earlier stages of the Space Race, exploring their struggle to get the recognition and respect they deserved. What left me feeling unsatisfied was not about the movie per se, but the fact that my prior education on the Space Race (and other similar scientific endeavors) seldom mentioned people of any minority at all. As Hidden Figures showed, there were plenty of non-white women working on the project, yet I was fully unaware of that prior to watching the film. In addition to race and gender, however, my education on non-heterosexual scientific figures is sadly lacking. Off the top of my head, the only such example I can think of is Alan Turing; no other examples come to mind whatsoever, which quite frankly makes me a little sad.

–AG

In the ongoing battle over bathroom laws, Iowa Republicans  have just put forward a new bill, House File 2164, which would allow businesses and schools alike to discriminate against transgender people; it would block them from using the bathroom which matches their gender identity. Sandy Salmon, the bill’s representative, says that the bill is intended to “protect women and girls” by blocking potential sexual predators from entering the women’s bathroom.

This move comes despite mounting evidence that blocking people from using their preferred bathroom does not, in any way, reduce sexual assault. This social issue is interesting to me because it raises the point: Do the lawmakers truly believe they are protecting women? Or are they simply disguising their biasses against trans people?

#LGBTQexperiencesUSA #transphobia #BathroomBill

Source: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/02/01/iowa-just-introduced-an-anti-trans-bathroom-bill/

–AG

One concept I’ve learned from these readings is the degree to which Stonewall (and other riots that mark the beginning of the LGBTQ rights movement) involved transgender people rioting alongside gay and lesbian people. Despite the shared struggle, trans people are often forgotten as having been involved in the initial movement at all. As Sylvia Rivera hollered in her emotional speech, Y’all Better Quiet Down, “They’ve been beaten up and raped, after they had to spend much of their money in jail to get their self home and try to get their sex change … But do you do anything for them? No!” (Rivera, qtd. STAR). The movement was in no way fought by white cisgender people alone, yet the stories are both whitewashed, and neglect to mention transgender people. Even if the intent of the LGBTQ movement as a whole was not to exclude any particular subgroups, over time, “trans brothers and sisters [were thrown] under the bus in an effort to win over the hetero mainstream” (Brink). The history of the LGBTQ movement has involved people of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and races since its inception; to neglect the existence of this diversity ignores a huge part of the battle for LGBTQ rights.

Prior to this class, I had never heard about Marsha Johnson or Sylvia Rivera. Even though my prior education made an attempt to teach us to respect and understand people with different lives than our own, LGBTQ history was (sadly) often neglected as a topic worth exploring.

Sylvia Rivera was raised by her strict, Catholic grandmother after her mother committed suicide when Rivera was just 3 years old. Rivera, a drag queen by her own assessment, is credited with being the first person at the Stonewall Riot to throw a bottle at the police, sparking the now famous event in LGBTQ history (Johnson). Rivera’s life was filled with homelessness, drug addiction, and poverty, yet she had quite a bit of influence as an transgender activist (Gilligan). In particular, Rivera is known for her speech, Y’all Better Quiet Down, in which she criticizes the gay liberation movement for neglecting to include transgender people (Reyes). Despite her incredible influence over the movement, her name is often skipped over entirely. For instance, the 2015 movie Stonewall, a story based on the events at the Stonewall Riots, neglected to include Rivera, and “drew protests for ‘whitewashing’ Rivera out of the story in favor of a fictional white character” (Reyes). Rivera lived to the age of 50, when she died of cancer in Manhattan (Dunlap).

–AG

Works Cited:

Gilligan, Heather. “Sylvia Rivera Threw One of the First Bottles in the Stonewall Riots, but Her Activism Went Much…” Timeline, 16 Mar. 2017, timeline.com/sylvia- rivera-threw-one-of-the-first-bottles-in-the-stonewall-riots-but-her-activism-went-much- 4bb0d33b9a2c.

Reyes, Raul A. “A Forgotten Latina Trailblazer: LGBT Activist Sylvia  Rivera.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 6 Oct. 2015,  www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/forgotten-latina-trailblazer-lgbt-activist-sylvia-rivera-n438586.

Dunlap, David W. “Sylvia Rivera, 50, Figure in Birth of the Gay Liberation  Movement.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Feb. 2002,  www.nytimes.com/2002/02/20/nyregion/sylvia-rivera-50-figure-in-birth-of-the-gay-liberation-movement.html.

Johnson, Marsha P. “Rapping with a Street Transvestite Revolutionary.” Untorelli Press, 2011, untorellipress.noblogs.org/files/2011/12/STAR-imposed.pdf. Accessed 29 Jan. 2018.