Transphobic incident at Seattle Pride

[Left Voice]

Taken from the Facebook page of 'Wipe Out Transphobia' and 'We're all human here - equal rights now'.

https://www.facebook.com/wipeouttransphobia


Imagine yourself taking pictures with kids in your costume at PRIDE, and a man walks up to you, snaps the faery wings you have, and says "stupid fairy's" then being told to go away that this day (PRIDE) was for HIS people.

This happened at Seattle Pride this weekend around 11:25 am on JUNE 29th. If you have photo's of a male type individual with a"beer belly and wearing black leather vest" breaking a trans* persons wings, or approaching this individual pictured please consider contacting us. The victim would like to get the images to turn over to police.

Transgender people suffer catastrophic harassment and violence every day. For this to happen at PRIDE by someone claiming to be in the LGB needs to be reported and our community bring this person to some justice. THIS is not what equality looks like!


I have to be honest- I'm angry. I'm angry that someone within the sexual orientation community would come along in a PRIDE event and break the fairy wings of a trans-woman saying "Stupid fairies". I'm especially angry given so many fantastic pictures she has of little kids coming up to her, and taking pictures next to her and seeing their joy. This kind of hostility deserves a response of our community-

This happened at Seattle Pride this weekend around 11:25 am on JUNE 29th. If you have photo's of a male type individual with a"beer belly and wearing black leather vest" breaking a trans* persons wings, or approaching this individual pictured please consider contacting us. The victim would like to get the images to turn over to police.

A wonderful Rebecca Heineman has purchased her a set of new wings- Props go out to Rebecca for being so kind and caring for our community!

[Ele'ill]

Involving the police is a terrible idea and a part of a community that I want nothing to do with.

[Wuggums47]

What makes them think the police will do anything to help?

[Decolonize The Left]

What makes them think the police will do anything to help?

As a society we have been trained and conditioned to appeal to the police as a law enforcement entity for even the most minor of incidents. It is not surprising that someone would request police action against another as this tendency is ingrained in us from birth.

That said, I think it's good to push forward with a community perspective which does not involve the police in any manner and we should attempt to do so whenever possible. This is a good place to start.

[TheSocialistMetalhead]

I didn't know transgenders were called transgenders in the lgbtq community. The more you know...

What do you suggest is done instead of reporting this? Not that something like that would do any good.

[Ele'ill]

I don't know what would be beneficial but if photos do surface they can be handed around in private to folks who go to the pride event or other events where this person might be, so that they know who it is. Otherwise folks watching each other's backs at events/on the street is a huge thing and that includes watching out for each other regarding cops who regularly engage in violent behavior.

[Jimmie Higgins]

What do you suggest is done instead of reporting this? Not that something like that would do any good.specifically that's just up to the individual, just because someone might be trans, doesn't mean they are a radical or anything. But I think an argument could easily be made that cops are some of the worst abusers of trans folks.

But more generally, it should be made into a political point, this should be brought up and made to be socially unacceptable and shameful. This requires movements, Lgb folks, straight allies, and of course transgender folks themselves organizing will be what causes a more gene neural shift in attitudes. People organizing around concrete issues will have wider social impacts on more informal sort of interactions and attitudes.

Historically overt racism didn't become unacceptable among a lot of whites because of white people, but because black people and anti-racist non-blacks fought and struggled. Without anti-racist movements, without a feminist movement, I think we can see how racism and sexist attitudes have creeped back unchecked.

[consuming negativity]

the sexual orientation community

What?

[hatzel]

What?

Agreed. Not a phrase I've heard before, and Google doesn't seem to think that it's a 'thing' either...

As a broader point:


For this to happen at PRIDE by someone claiming to be in the LGB...


I'm angry that someone within the sexual orientation community would come along in a PRIDE event...

I think there's something problematic about these lines, including the idea of a single 'sexual orientation community' that is expected to all be in it together, so to speak. I mean, they seem shocked at the mere suggestion that a gay/bisexual man could hold transphobic opinions, as if being non-heterosexual automatically means you'd be trans*-friendly, which obviously isn't the case. In fact we know from history that there have even been tensions between the LG and the B, despite these people being far closer to one another - as sexual orientations or however you want to describe it - than any are to the T (or the Q, I suppose), which is more to do with gender identity, which is in fact a fundamentally different thing, even if the two may be tangentially associated with one another. What I mean to say is that simply putting all those letters together into LGBTQ doesn't mean that every L, G, B, T and Q will associate with the other letters, or consider themselves to have a shared cause, though feeling particularly aggrieved by a presumably gay or bisexual man - as opposed to a straight man - doing this seems to presuppose some kind of guaranteed mutual understanding between everybody falling under the broad umbrella of LGBTQ. I can't help but feel that could prove to be somewhat of a hindrance, not least because it overlooks the necessity of the LGBTQ movement engaging with LGBTQ individuals, rather than directing all its attention outwards...

[Ele'ill]

The first part of my reply in this thread was going to note a distrust of community because there are harmful individuals/groups in every community sometimes the entire community. The normalcy that exists within communities is monoculture and alienating and hurtful and inadequate. A good example is this example, trans solidarity, call the cops.

[BIXX]

Another thing that I have a problem with communities regarding is their inherent positivity, where they have these goals that allow then to be assimilated, like the LGBTQ movement, as we can see the way "gay capitalism" has come into the foreground, which, while outwardly seeming accepting of LGBTQ folks, actually just oppresses us in more "complicated" ways.

As for calling the police or not... I prefer the "touch me and I will fucking kill you" way to go about this.

[QueerVanguard]

Sadly this kind of shit is all too common in the gay community. A lot of these petit bourgeoisie gays are male chauvanists and view a man changing his gender to what society describes as "female" as like the ultimate heresy. Many bourgeois lesbians also hate us for a bunch of reasons. This is exactly why these cross-class LGBTQ events make no sense, what we need is an exclusively proletarian LGBTQ movement to avoid shit like this and actually make some headway toward destroying the gender binary. Oh, and I'll tell you this much, if some asshole white bourgeois gay man ever ripped off my fairy wings I'd pop him in the fuckin' jaw.

[BIXX]

Mark this day, for I just agreed with over half of what QV just said, and I don't think that'll ever happen again.

The only difference is that I think we shouldn't have a proletarian LGBTQ movement, but just an individualistic struggle toward queer liberation.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

It's the middle-class white cis gay men who have appropriated Stonewall's legacy, not trans women.